V.E.V. Miscellany, October 1966

Mr. King, who acted as E. A. D. Eldridge’s racing mechanic, and accompanied him on that epic 1925 journey with the Eldridge Special in a Model-T Ford van from Paris, over the Alps to Monza, and then on to San Sebastian, is living in Cheltenham. He remembers Brooklands Track being built and spent many years with the Sopwith Aeroplane Co. On the way to that so-wet Gt. Auclum Hill-Climb we met a smart pre-war Packard saloon, and the day. after August Bank Holiday a vintage Humber tourer motoring out of Rhayader, while more recently there was the all-yellow Rolls-Royce Twenty two-seater which dazzled us between Ledbury and Hereford. Lord Montagu’s 1912 Alphonso Hispano-Suiza has been to the U.S.A. to take part in a Concours d’Elegance. A vee-twin Trump combination is rumoured to have been found derelict in the West Country and someone in Peterborough has acquired a 1922 model-H side-valve Zenith-J.A.P., once a sidecar outfit, which has never been registered and is reputed to have stood outside a garage in the Brooklands area to attract custom for several years. It may even have been raced on the Track and its history is sought—it has a black tank with silver panels and gold lining and lettering. And another reader wants a photograph to help with restoration of a 1914/18 7/9-h.p. vee-twin Harley-Davidson combination he has just acquired. Letters can be forwarded.

The Bullnose Morris club Newsletter for August is as full of “meat” as ever, including an article on the Morris Minor, but it is disturbing to learn that the existing committee, consisting of Messrs. Jarman, Barraclough, Gray, Knox and Grainger all propose to retire front office at the end of the year, mainly it seems because they have become disgruntled over the cornmercialism which has overtaken the vintage movement in general and club life in particular.

A letter from the Managing Director of John Smith & Co. (Derby) Ltd. to the Derby Evening Telegraph of August 10th recalls that the late H. F. S. Morgan spent much time at their Cotton Lane factory, where much of the work on the original Morgan 3-wheeler was done, and says that 79-year-old T. T. Jones of Derby, who retired in 1952, brazed up that first Morgan chassis, using a mixture of crushed spelter and borax, in paste form, thrown on the joints after they had been heated over a hearth blown by leather bellows. The first Morgan bevel box, of brass, was cast in Smith’s foundry, Mr. Jones afterwards machining it under the eagle eye of “H. F. S.” John Smith & Co. still supply castings to the Morgan Motor Co.