V-E-V Miscellany

The Bean CC has published a list which shows it to have six two-cylinder Perrys (the fore-runner of the Bean), three 11.9 Perrys, 34 Bean 11.9s, 30 Bean Fourteens, five 14/40 and 14/45 Beans, nine 18/50 Beans, nine Bean commercials, plus a few others of which no details are available, on its register. Its ABC sections know of 115 motorcycles to the design of the ingenious Granville Bradshaw, with another 25 of which details are not fully recorded, and no fewer than 63 owners of ABC Scootamotas or Scootamota engines, including your Editor, with his 1919 e.o.i. engine; pretty remarkable, considering that most of these motorcycles and scooters date from before 1922. The nephew of Etienne Lepicard, who died in 1972 and who was responsible for Derby and Donnet-Zedal racing cars in vintage times, seeks information about these cars, especially FWD Derbys, and their drivers. Following out remarks in the Jubilee issue, Prince Marshall has since issued another number of Old Motor to subscribers, so this magazine is by no means dead. An "elderly Rolls-Royce" is reported as possible derelict in Wales; we hope to investigate.

The Morgan Three-Wheeler Club is most commendably active. While the VSCC may one day add a straight sprint to its fixture list, perhaps over an old-time seaside promenade course, the Morgan chaps not long ago had sprints at Norfolk Park, Sheffield (666 yards, with bends) and at Duxford (a straight 1/4-mile), and at a camping week-end in the Lakes they tackled Hardknott Pass, the Morgans of the party embracing ten F-types, a Family Sports, an Aero, an MX Super Sports, a Sports, two Super Aeros, an MX Sports and a Special SS, etc. Thirteen Morgan 3-wheelers went to Beaulieu and they were even talking of a Night Trial! Great enthusiasts, who deserve full support! The Membership Secretary is Mike Bamber, Flat 75, Withdead Court, Lodon Road, Brighton, Sussex. Richard Odell continues to dig out history appertaining to his sand-racing side-valve Riley, RW 104. It seems unlikely that this was turned into Victor Gillow's Brooklands SV car but odd that the latter overturned in 1930 and smashed its radiator cap and that when Don Wood bought the sand-racer in 1957 it had a wooden bung for a radiator cap. Just a coincidence, presumably! The Watford Evening Echo recently published a picture of Saunders Garage, Marlowes, in 1922, with a Chevrolet Tourer outside, a bull-nose Morris in the entrance and BSA motorcycles in the showroom windows. The garage was sold in 1946 and the site redeveloped in 1956. That you sooner or later see a VW Beetle is borne out by a picture of the site as it is today — with two Beetles passing by!

The Trade has sold a rare 1919 side-valve four-cylinder Hispano-Suiza tourer to a Tokyo firm specialising in vintage car, we learn from Rober Fisher Ltd., who packed it for shipping. It travelled in company with a 1934 Rolls-Royce P2. The Hispano-Suiza carried a screen-mounted searchlight and the badge of the Royal MC of Spain. While we were at Llandow for the VSCC Race Meeting a one-time Rover agent in Cardiff at the time of the 9/20 and 14/45 models showed us photographs of tuned 8/18 and 10/23 Talbots he used to own, one of them endowed with disc wheels and a pointed-tail two-seater body, another with a Fiat Eight f.w.b. front axle. There were also photographs of his three-wheelers, one made from Model-T Ford parts, another with Ford Ten engine, and Rover Specials, in a doorless version of which he had arrived at the course. The tubular, braked front axle from a vintage Chrysler has been found in a wood in Mid-Wales, where there are rumours of a buried Bean, and in a house in Buckinghamshire have been found the remains of what appears to be a four-wheeler version of the vee-twin, front-wheel-drive BSA.

The Surrey Vintage Vehicle Society has discovered a photograph of the Lakers Hotel, Redhill, in circa-1925, with a bull-nose Morris and another car passing by and a Humber doctor's coupé and what may have been a Daimler in the forecourt, this being the hotel where they hold their monthly meetings. We hear that the Le Mans Singer Nine and another of the Singer Nines which we reported as in the Swansea area are now being restored, while the person who is restoring a semi-derelict 1935 Singer Le Mans Speed Model in Durham wants to trace the original owner of the car, Reg No. BLW 650, a Mr. L. J. Flack who probably used it in the Land's End, Edinburgh and Torquay events of 1936, when he was living in Ealing. A reader in Yorkshire is restoring a 1923 8/18 Talbot/Darracq coupé and needs details of what the body should look like. Letters can be forwarded. Among the many congratulatory letters our Golden Jubilee issue provoked, we were glad to receive one from J. S. Worters, the great Brooklands rider, who prepared the Multi-Union which so nearly broke the car lap-record. N. J. Mavrogordato wonders if two hotels frequented by Donington habituees have survived? One was the "Black Boy" in Nottingham where the German teams stayed (three-star in 1939, when dinner cost 5s.6d.) and the other was "The Hotel That Is Different", between London and Donington, where visitors signed their names on the walls.