V to C Miscellany, November 1987

Jrery Larks of Panshanger is anxious to trace the missing 750cc JAP engine which the late Clive Lones used for record-breaking in a Morgan three-wheeler. This ex-Brooklands Morgan now has an ex-Rhodes JTOR JAP engine; the smaller vee-twin was in the car when Mercury Motors of Harrow bought it in 1950, but it is rumoured to have been thrown out due to lack of storage space when the Morgan was in Derby in the 1950s. Can anyone help?

Somewhere in Shropshire is a field in which lie a number of derelict cars, including four or five Austin-Healeys, and an early post-war Aston Martin. It is not known whether they are for sale.

From Brescia Bits, the very specialised newsletter for owners of 16-valve Bugattis, we learn not only that Tony Hutchings has acquired the ex-Tony Rippon Brescia, but that he drove it more than 500 miles from Wiltshire to a recent VSCC Yorkshire Rally. Issue 19 of Bits lists 79 subscribers, and contains a reprint of an article about B H Davies first Bugatti which appeared in The Autocar in 1943.

Geoff Roe, its Chairman, asks us to say that it was the Pre-War A7 Club which ran the recently-reported Attingham Park Rally (under its Severn Group) and that it was one of the founder-clubs of the A7CA. The A7 Sports Register is also part of the Pre-War A7 Club. Geoff’s new address is 10 Marshall Road, Cropwell Bishop, Nottingham.

‘T’he Morris Bullnose Club got its Register of known bullnose and flatnose Morris cars off the presses in time for its Oxford Rally, and it is an excellent little record of these popular cars down to 1931, with technical notes by Robin Barraclough — well done Margaret Coding. The Morris Register’s Autumn Journal, as interesting as ever under the editorship of Harry Edwards, carries articles on Royal Morris and Wolseley cars and on an early Hereford agent, as well as rally reports. WB