Tag Archives: Austin Seven Swallow

New Year, Old Cars

The Brooklands Museum celebrates the arrival of a New Year with an open house to all manner of interesting cars. Where else would our Special Correspondent be on January 1st? He found lots to see and enjoy.

 

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One of the very first Jensens. It is based on a Ford V8 chassis and mechanicals but has a Jensen body. It dates from 1935.

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A completely unrestored B.S.A. Ten from 1933. It has a 4-cylinder side-valve engine of 1172 c.c. and a 4-speed pre-selector gearbox in the then current Daimler tradition.

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B.S.A. was at the time also making front-drive three-wheelers and they used the same engine but this had to be turned round to drive the rear wheels conventionally on this car.

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One rarely has the pleasure of seeing Armstrong-Siddeley cars on the roads these days – they were fine, well-built, dignified cars which appealed to the well-to-do customers. This 1960 Star Sapphire is one of the last to be made before car production ceased. It used a 4-litre 6-cylinder engine with hemispherical combustion chambers, a design which was cloned by Humber for their final run of big saloons.

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It’s often forgotten that the Dennis Brothers made cars before switching entirely to commercial vehicles and buses – many of London’s buses today are of Dennis manufacture.

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This 1904 Dennis was, like so many cars of the time, powered by a single-cylinder De Dion engine.

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How to improve an Austin Seven! This 1929 Swallow version is an example of the work of William Lyons (later Sir William) which led him on to make the first SS cars which in turn became the SS Jaguars.

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A lovely Sunbeam Alpine with its body modified by Harringtons. Thomas Harrington was an old-established coachbuilder of Brighton, later Hove, whose main business after the Great War was building coach bodies but they also bodied a wide variety of cars.

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One of these Alpine Harringtons won the Index of Thermal Efficiency at Le Mans in 1961.

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You are not going to see another one of these!

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It is a one-off Alvis prototype dating from 1932 and consists of a Firefly running gear, a 6-cylinder three SU carburettored Eagle engine mounted on a narrowed Speed 20 chassis with a Charlesworth body!
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Surely the most desirable of all the Bristols?

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The 404 was nicknamed the ”Businessman’s Express” but this writer remembers spying prototypes running around near Filton as a teenager and feeling that I had seen the best looking car ever!

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Renault’s first post-war car, the 4 CV or the 750 when its capacity was reduced for competition purposes.

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This example was made at the Billancourt factory in Paris but these successful little cars were assembled at Renault’s factory on the Western Avenue at Acton until 1956.
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There were three completely different versions of the Hillman Husky.

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A sports tourer on the Hillman 14 chassis in the 1930’s, a little utility on a shortened Minx chassis in the mid-Fifties and this smart version based on the Imp 5cwt van
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A wonderful example of a 1950 Allard P1 saloon, complete with a steering column gear change and of course a big V8 engine from Ford. In 1952 Sydney Allard won the Monte Carlo Rally outright in one of these, the only occasion when a driver won in a car of his own construction.

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A bit grubby but the Bentley 3-litre looks lovely in blue.

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The Fiat 508 Balilla, named after a Fascist youth organisation, was a small car equipped with a 995 c.c. side-valve engine, 3-speed gearbox and either a 2-door closed or open body. It was introduced on 12th April 1932 at the Milan Motor Show although Mussolini had been given a preview in Rome on the 8th April. Inevitably sporting versions soon evolved and an open 2-seater with lowered body, sweeping front wings and a tail fin became the 508S. These cars were quickly plunged into competitions, an ohv engine and a close-ratio 4-speed gearbox being available from March 1934. Just two examples of their many successes were class wins in the 1933 Mille Miglia and in the 1936 Tourist Trophy at the Ards.

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Interestingly, the Scuderia Ferrari entered one for the 1934 24 Hour Targa Abruzzo at Pescara, to be driven by one Zoboli, the Fascist Party official from Modena. Proudly wearing the emblems of the Prancing Horse on the sides of the scuttle, the car finished in 7th place. Another such entry was in the 1937 Mille Miglia for Piero Gobbato, the son of Ugo Gobbato, the head of Alfa Romeo who was assassinated as he walked from the factory to his nearby home on 28th April 1945.
TAILPIECE
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Daimler did not just produce staid motor cars but got heavily involved in developing fighting vehicles for the armed forces. Their Scout and Armoured Car Mark 1 were produced in quantity during the Second World War and this Ferret was in production into the 1970’s when it gave service to the NATO forces.

David Blumlein, February 2016

Top Kop

The Special Correspondent has been a bit quiet recently, he is working on a grand project, more about that later. The Kop Hill Climb was a recent event that he attended and of course he brings us another feast of Rare and Interesting.

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1914 Marlborough
The Marlborough was an Anglo/French car. In 1909 production was taken over by T.B. André, of shock absorber fame. The cars had 4-cylinder engines, 3-speed gearboxes and shaft drive.
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This car is powered by a 1043 c.c. side-valve Ballot engine. Ballot was a French engine maker which later turned to car production. Their 3-litre straight-eight Grand Prix car finished 2nd (and 2-litre 3rd) in the 1921 French Grand Prix at Le Mans. Ballot is best remembered for its 2-litre 4-cylinder sports car, the 2LS, the first production car to have a twin-overhead camshaft engine.

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1947 Alvis Duncan saloon
Pictures 0546 and 0549
The all-aluminium car bodies built by Duncan Industries of North Walsham, Norfolk, are usually associated with the early Riley-engined Healeys but the company made 30 of these sports saloons on the Alvis TA 14 chassis.

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The car had a 4-cylinder 1842 c.c. OHV engine. It is thought that about 15 survive.

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Berkeley 2-seater sports
Most car enthusiasts think that Colin Chapman’s beautiful Lotus Elite of 1957 was the first car to have a glass-fibre chassis-body but it wasn’t – this Berkeley sports car, which made its début at Earl’s Court in 1956, was! Built by Berkeley Caravans of Biggleswade, a firm with vast experience with glass-fibre, the car had a 2-stroke twin-cylinder engine driving the front wheels. Fabricated aluminium structures were bonded into the underbody at the centre, as can be seen, and nose to provide additional beam and torsional strength which were necessary in an open car. The design was conceived by Lawrence Bond, better known for his mini-cars.

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1926 Morgan Family
Morgan’s first four-seater was seen at the 1919 Olympia Show and this “Family” version of the famous three-wheeler was the company’s most popular model during the Twenties.

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This car has the optional OHV Anzani 1078 c.c. water-cooled engine giving about 40 b.h.p.

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1925 Cubitt Tourer
Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire may seem an unlikely town in which to manufacture a motor-car but it was here in Bicester Road that Cubitt’s Engineering Co built the Cubitt car from 1919-1925. It was a subsidiary company of Holland, Hannen & Cubitt Ltd, builders who were responsible for the new east wing of Buckingham Palace and the Cenotaph among many other London landmarks. The Cubitt car was a straight-forward design with a 2185 c.c. 4-cylinder side-valve engine. Rather big and heavy, the car was slow to sell. In 1922 the ex-Napier head of A.C. Cars, S.F.Edge, bought Cubitt and engaged J.S. Napier (no connection with the Napier car) from Arrol-Johnston to redesign the car. (It was J.S.Napier who designed and drove the winning Arrol-Johnston in the first Tourist Trophy in 1905). Napier made no drastic changes to the Cubitt, replacing the cantilever rear springs with semi-elliptics and fitting an underslung worm-drive rear axle; he gave the engine aluminium pistons and lighter connecting –rods. But by 1925 the company had gone into voluntary liquidation. This tourer is one of the last survivors as is the car in the Aylesbury Museum.

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1919 Hispano-Suiza H6B
This was designer Marc Birkigt’s post-war masterpiece, built in the Paris factory to rival the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost and Phantoms.
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It had a 6-cylinder 6.6-litre engine with the camshaft driven by a vertical shaft, a feature derived from his amazingly successful World War 1 V8 aero-engine (A8) of which nearly 50,000 were produced, many under licence (Wolseley in Birmingham for example). The shaft can be seen at the front of the engine.

TAILPIECE

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Your correspondent is about to be whisked up the hill in the Rowlands’ superb Austin Seven Swallow, courtesy of his friend Robert.

David Blumlein, November 2013

A New Year’s Resolution

Been a little quiet here at DDC Towers since the New Year but our Special Correspondent has been out and about. Attracting his attention was the traditional New Year’s Day gathering at Brooklands. He shares with us some of the hidden gems that were on display around the old race track.

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Volvo PV444

Probably the best and toughest of all the Volvos, the PV444 was conceived during the war (Sweden was neutral) and was first seen in Stockholm in September 1944. Volvo had been persuaded to purchase a 1939 1.3-litre Hanomag to study its unitary-body construction and this in turn influenced the new car and also the engine which was a 4-cylinder overhead valve with pushrods unit with a 3-bearing crankshaft and gear-driven camshaft. The car had coil spring suspension all round, independent at the front.

Production could not get underway until a flow of supplies was assured and this gave the company time to subject the car to the most rigorous test programme and when cars started to be produced in February 1947,Volvo had a really tough 2-door saloon.

There were no thoughts of competition for several years but when drivers like Gunnar Andersson started to work wonders in rallies with the car Volvo had a change of heart and signed him up as a “works” driver.
The successes were too numerous to list here but mention must be made of Andersson’s victory in the European Championship in 1958, Tom Trana’s two outstanding wins in the R.A.C. Rally in 1963 and 1964 and Joginder Singh’s win in the 1965 East African Safari in a second-hand car!

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Ford Popular
Based on the “sit up and beg” Anglia shown at the 1948 Earl’s Court Motor Show, the Popular was introduced in 1953 but with the 1172 c.c. side-valve 10hp engine which found its way into so many competition cars at that time. It was a very basic car aimed to provide cheap reliable transport – it came with no heater, vinyl trim, only one vacuum-operated windscreen wiper (you could opt for an extra one for the equivalent of £2.47), very little chrome (even the bumpers were painted) and was offered only as a 2-door saloon.
Production was transferred from Dagenham to Ford’s Doncaster factory in 1955 and the car was made until September 1959 by which time over 150,000 had been sold. This 103E model was the last British car to be produced with a side-valve engine.

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Reliant Sabre 6

We normally think of Reliants as 3-wheelers and these constituted the company’s main source of activity but by the Sixties they were also making some sporting 4-wheelers. The Sabres with 4-cylinder engines were the most common but Reliant also offered a six-cylinder version, the Sabre 6.
Despite the company’s limited resources it was felt that this car was both powerful and rugged enough to be thrown into international rallies. It had a Ford Zephyr 2553 c.c. engine with Raymond Mays head and three Weber carburettors. In 1963 two of these works cars took the first two places in their class in the gruelling Coupes des Alpes, the second placed car driven by Roger Clark who was having his first works drive.
Just 77 Sabre 6s were eventually made in 1962-63.

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Jaguar XK120

Here is an unspoilt example of the beautiful car which stunned the world at the first post-war Motor Show at Earl’s Court in 1948, complete with those lovely rear wheel spats that were worn by the early production cars. Indeed, Jaguar left them on when the factory took three of the cars in red, white and blue to contest the first Silverstone Production Car Race in August 1949, giving the XK120 a début win.

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Austin Seven Swallow

And here is how Jaguar effectively began. William Lyons had started by making sidecars for motorcycles in Blackpool and by 1927 he was making 2-seater car bodies on Morris Cowley and Austin Seven chassis; the idea was to tap into the market for more individual cars at low cost. When he showed his Austin Seven Swallow to the London dealer Henlys, they ordered 500 provided a saloon was added to the range. This was done in 1928 and by the November Lyons was seeking larger premises in Coventry so as to be nearer the centre of motor manufacture. He went on to make attractive bodies on other chassis such as Fiat, Standard and Swift and all this led to his launching in 1931 his own marque, SS, which grew into Jaguar.

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Singer Roadster

Before the war Singer made their famous Nine sports cars which did well in rallies, races and trials and were serious rivals to M.G., all in addition to their wide range of production family cars. After the war they replaced their sporting cars with the Roadster which was a 4-seater touring model rather than a competition-based car. It had the sound Singer overhead camshaft engine and coil spring independent front suspension but did not create the sporting successes of its forebears.
Rather interestingly a privately-entered Roadster was the last Singer to run in an international sports car race when it finished 13th in the 1953 Tourist Trophy at Dundrod fifty years after the little 4-seater Nine made its first appearance at Le Mans where it too finished thirteenth!

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A.C. Zagato

Here is a car we know little about so far! Its formal title is the A.C. 378 GT Zagato and it is a product of the Brooklands Motor Company. It has a tubular steel space –frame chassis and is powered by a 90 degree aluminium V8 of 6.2-litres (378 cu.in.) driving through a 6-speed manual gearbox. The body is by Zagato and that firm’s characteristic double humps on the roof can be seen.

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Tatra 603

Good to see a Tatra 603 which has finally escaped from its communist influence for these cars were not available to the buying public, being reserved for the ruling authorities and eastern European presidents. They were first seen in the 1955 International six-day motor event in Zlin.

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They did, however, put in some unexpected appearances in the West when they were allowed to compete in the tough variations of the Marathon de la Route during the Sixties. In the last Liège-Sofia-Liège in 1964 their entry came 15th. This rally was by then causing all sorts of complications passing through different countries so it became an endurance event on the famous Nϋrburgring. For 1965 contestants ran for 82 hours and Tatras came 3rd and 4th in the GT category; a year later in the 84 Hours they finished 3rd, 4th and 5th in the GT class, winning the Trophée des Nations. Their final success was in the 1967 84 Hours when they finished 4th and 5th overall. Perhaps we should not be surprised because the Czechoslovakians always made very strong cars.
The picture shows its unusual rear-mounted air-cooled V8 of 2.5-litres.

Tailpiece
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A beautiful early Bentley 3 Litre

David Blumlein, January 2013