V-E-V Odds & Ends., July 1984

— The Vintage Austin Register has its Avoncroft Rally on July 15th, and its Ashover, Chesterfield, Rally on August 12th. An American correspondent, writing to the Standard Register magazine, suggests that it is a fallacy that the engine of the rare 1937 Standard V8, one of which he is rebuilding, was based on two Standard Ten blocks on a common crankcase, and he produces evidence suggesting that this eight-cylinder engine was a Coventry-Climax design. The same magazine reminds us that when Diana Wynward was playing in the “Ante Room” before the war she was using a 20 hp Flying Standard saloon finished in black and chromium, with beige upholstery. When the TV play “Dance with a Stranger” comes on the screen we shall see cars like Monica Whincop’s HRG, a 1931 Riley Gamecock, a 1936 Morgan 4/4 and other post-vintage and classic cars staging a race round Goodwood, for the story is based on the real-life one of racing-driver David Blakeley who was shot by his girl-friend, Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain — just up any TV producer’s street! Blakeley used to race an HRG and it was especially appropriate that Monica’s was used in the film, because when the Duke of Richmond & Gordon opened the new Goodwood circuit she presented the duchess with a bouquet . . . A rather surprising thing has happened in Chadwell Heath — the owner of some old cars, including three pre-war Rolls-Royces, has been told to get rid of all his collection within twelve months, as the cars, say Barking Council, “are not compatible” with Whalebone Lane South in which he lives and they and his other old cars and 30 motorcycles must be disposed of. Without knowledge of the facts we refrain from comment.