Spending The "DeMob" Money
I first became aware of the attraction of cars in my early life after dad came home from the war in 1946 and decided to spend his ‘demob’ money and some more he and mum had earned through making and selling leather bags to a local clientele sadly lacking in consumer goods. He spent that money on his first car which was a 1936 Ford Model Y and which he bought for £120 and garaged in a local garage in Thorold Road, Ilford. If I recall correctly it was Young’s Garage, part of which was like a large warehouse divided into rented spaces. The smell of petrol, oil and old leather back then when I was five, excited me in a way nothing else did and I was a car nut for life.
As time went by I developed an interest in the mechanics of cars as well as for their aesthetic appeal, and by the time I was at grammar school had started collecting car books and my own scrap books of Car Show write-ups. On my bus journey to that school, I passed several car sales sites and the first car I
really wanted to own was a 1932 Austin 16 Burnham saloon. It stood for months unsold on a garage forecourt and I looked and wished I were old enough to own it. A rather racy lilac Jensen two seater sports car with two speed rear axle of about the mid thirties replaced the
Austin in my affections when at last the latter disappeared and eventually that too went and not long after I left school I became 17 and a search for a car of my own ensued.
Uncle Harry & The 1940 Wolseley 16
I had long had a liking for
Wolseleys due mainly to their looks, and this was much reinforced by taking my first driving lessons with my uncle Harry in his big 1940 Wolseley 16. It had a vastly long bonnet, due partly to the length of the six cylinder
engine and partly to the interposition of a second bulkhead to keep the engine noise to a minimum. The big quiet six cylinder engine was as impressive as the luxury leather interior and I couldn’t wait for each weekly lesson to come around. Those early lessons, though I eventually passed the test in a driving school
Ford Prefect, got me hooked on
Wolseleys and I’m still hooked now.
Eventually, even before I passed the test, I looked around for a car of my own and found not too far away in New North road Hainault, CHK 999, a Wolseley Wasp for sale in someone’s front garden for the sum of £30. That was about the going rate at that time (May
1958) for a small pre-war car in usable condition so I scraped together all the money I had (earning £5 a week at the time didn’t help) borrowed some from another uncle and bought it. Needless to say it had its faults and as well as a big riveted-on copper patch on the crank case where no doubt a con-rod had crashed through, the bores were worn to the extent that smoke billowed from the breather tube and didn’t improve either the atmosphere in the car or the temper of the Ministry Examiner during my first driving test. I did pass the second one three months later but in a less smoky car as mentioned above.
Only The River Roding Flooding Would Stop The Wasp
Despite those faults and foibles, the little Wasp was pleasant to drive and I shall never forget the sense of freedom it gave me when, after passing the test I took it out for a drive and was only stopped by the river Roding flooding the road at Abridge in the Essex countryside. It took the family and me on several trips to the seaside that summer and with the windows wide open, the smoke was less of a problem. Clacton was one of those destinations and oddly enough not far from where I’ve finished up now, buried in the countryside.
That little car was very well appointed for its time, having ten inch drum hydraulic
brakes, an overhead camshaft four cylinder 1069cc engine with S.U. carburettor and electric pump, leather seats, and easy-clean pressed steel wheels. It was one of the models produced by Wolseley before the Nuffield rationalisation process replaced o.h.c engines with push rods, and body designs often shared with Morris cars. I waved goodbye to that little car with a lump in my throat, but a thrill of excitement at the prospect of replacing it the same day with my first sports car, JH 7717, a 1934
Wolseley Hornet Special.
Reynolds of Seven Kings
I had seen the
Hornet Special in a dealer’s, Reynolds of Seven Kings, for sale at £110 in September 1958 and couldn’t wait to buy it (on hire purchase). It had vied for my affections (and money) with a TA MG and an Aero Minx in the same showroom. I chose the
Wolseley despite its faded paintwork and tatty seats because of its looks; a long impressive looking engine and bonnet, cycle type wings and an open four-seater body by Eustace Watkins. Michael Sedgwick has spoken disparagingly of the Hornet Special as a ‘boys’ racer’ but it was a perfectly competitive car with the likes of the two others mentioned above and had even better looks.
My 1934 model had headlamps with stone-guards, mounted on tall tubes with a linking cross-tube and two 45 degree braces all chrome plated. With that and an external chrome radiator filler cap, raked radiator and that illuminated Wolseley badge I couldn’t resist it. The six cylinder 1271cc engine had an overhead camshaft with that shaft mounted beneath the rockers (in earlier years the shaft had been mounted above them). Other features included a chrome plated rocker cover, knock-on wire wheels and a Lucas Startix (this was a device about six inches square and one and a half thick, that automatically restarted the engine, were you clumsy enough to stall it, after a delay of a few seconds).
Thurston Engineering in Ongar
Rarely was that Startix needed, the engine being so flexible with great torque at low revs, but it did suffer from worn bores and was taken out and rebored at Thurston Engineering in Ongar. It cost ten guineas (£10.50) to have rebored including the supply of six new pistons. Nevertheless number two spark plug kept oiling up as the rebore had been unable to completely remove the gudgeon pin score in that bore. It was not a great problem however and the car did many miles with me, even going up to the Yorkshire Dales in
1959.
Petrol then was about 3/6d (17½ pence) a gallon and although this sounds very cheap, you have to bear in mind that I was earning only 5 or £6 a week with the insurance company for which I worked. Cheap insurance helped though and I felt myself lucky to get that for £12.50 a year as a 17 year old driving a sports car. I spent quite a bit on the Hornet during those two years and amongst the outlay was £1.17.6d (£1.87) for a 2” Burgess straight-through chrome plated motor cycle silencer and £9 for a pair of new S.U carburettors. Again that sounds very inexpensive, but £9 was two weeks wages, not counting what I gave mum for my keep.
Somewhere Out In The Essex Countryside
The pictures show the car and me somewhere out in the Essex countryside; High Beech and the Rodings area being favourite spots. As I said earlier, the car was a bit tatty when bought and had very faded red paintwork, but in those days one was not worried about expensive resprays and the car was first painted with Valspar lacquer in cream with red wings and the following year in Brushing Belco cellulose with British Racing Green body and black wings. Even then we had polyester resin for repairs and a few holes were filled with Holt’s Cataloy. The original seats were too far gone for me to repair and I couldn’t afford to have them recovered so resorted to a pair of rather broad second-hand
Triumph Dolomite seats which were a tight fit but comfortable. The rear seat was covered with red ‘Rexine’. So that was my first sports car and second Wolseley, and it eventually went to a lad in Tadcaster, Yorkshire in September
1960.
After the first two cars I had owned which were Wolseleys, I turned to something quite different for a time and bought with my brother a 1959 Ford Escort van which of course in
1960 was almost new. Sharing this with my brother however became a problem eventually and we both decided to sell and buy our own cars, mine being a 1948 Rover Sports saloon of 2.2 litres and having the unusual valve configuration of o.i.s.e. – overhead inlet, side exhaust. I felt like a prince driving about in that and it was one of the very few cars I’ve ever had which was so quiet I often thought the engine had stalled when, say, at traffic lights. I eventually sold that to dad (replacing his cheap-to-run but noisy Heinkel bubble car) and he only got rid of it when he decided to go for a
Wolseley 1500 with a little prompting from me as I’d been impressed by one owned by a chap at work.
A 1933 Wolseley Hornet Special For Sale In Tottenham
That Wolseley was a basic ‘fleet’ model which meant it had vinyl seats instead of the usual hide and was monochrome maroon rather than two-tone. Otherwise it was a good example of its kind and must have been paradise compared to the
Heinkel, and though lacking the quiet comfort of the
Rover, had lively performance and economy in its favour. The stubby gear lever, pleasant gearbox and zesty engine made the Wolseley a very pleasant drive and I often got to use it for work when dad went to his employment in Leyton with my brother in his hump-backed
1951 Standard Vanguard.
By
1962 I was yearning for another sports car, and after scouring the ‘Exchange and Mart’ for weeks, finally alighted on a 1933 Wolseley Hornet Special for sale in Tottenham. I eventually bought this for the princely sum of £18; the body was aluminium and tatty, with the ash frame pretty deteriorated and in need of complete restoration. It drove reasonably well and had a twin cowl scuttle (about the only bit of the body I eventually saved). Having got it home I adjusted the
steering mechanism wherever I could to improve the play which was evident but not in my view dangerous – all pre-rack and pinion steering had at least an inch of play even when new. So to test the results of my endeavours I was driving it locally near Hainault Forest when pulled over by a motor cycle cop who proceeded to give me a ticket for driving an unroadworthy vehicle despite my protestations that the MoT was only a few weeks old.
I got fined for that and in due course found, after further checking all the steering, that a fault existed in the front cross member on which the radiator was mounted. This also carried the steering box and as the heavy rivets which joined the cross-member to the chassis rails had become worn, they enabled the front cross-member as well as the steering box to move when the wheel was turned, hence permitting excessive movement. I guess it was a ‘fair cop’ as they say as well as being the oddest steering fault I ever encountered.
A New Bluemels Brooklands Steering Wheel
I spent much time and money on this car and stripped off the body, retaining only the scuttle, reconditioned the whole chassis and engine (a complete set of brake linings for example cost £2.13.4d; a new Bluemels Brooklands steering wheel £4; having the five wire wheels sandblasted and stove enamelled including 36 new spokes and the carriage was £15.3.0. and having the
radiator recored and the header tank resoldered was £10.8.0. and these examples are but the tip of the iceberg).
Finally after all the restoration of the chassis, I drove it, fitted with cycle type mudguards, and regulation lights etc. down to Lenham in Kent where Messrs Kingsford Booty and David Myal-Smith of the Vintage and Sports Car Garage built a new boat-tailed body incorporating the old scuttle, with an ash frame covered in fabric. The final cost of this (£162) included a new aluminium bonnet with louvered sides. Recovered seats and new carpet and a solid walnut dash completed the restoration and I could relax and drive instead of work on the car at last.
Some of the work had involved digging the tarpaulin-covered chassis out of the snow (the winter of
1962 /
1963 was a bad one with a solid three months below zero) in order to work on it as I had no garage in those days and work had to be done on the concrete in the front garden – those were the days of enthusiasm gone mad! The little Hornet Special performed pretty well as its straight six 1271cc engine had loads of torque and the new body was very light, and I had a lot of fun whizzing around the Essex bye ways until one day a massive lorry on the wrong side of the road crushed me into the verge, breaking the drag link and even bending the front axle.
After the repairs I decided on a more modern car and bought a
1962 MG Midget which I guess was rather more practical and certainly more economical at almost 50 mpg when driven carefully; the best I could get from the Wolseley was a bit less than 30 mpg despite the good power-weight ratio. Perhaps you always have to pay for that smoothness and torque of a straight six!
A 1962 MG Midget
The
Midget was a pleasant little car, though I found the separate side screens kept in the boot a bit of an irritation, and I suppose the car had a lot of the primitiveness of a pre-war sports car without what I saw as their great looks. After a year or so the
MG gave place to a two year old Riley Elf (sorry not a Hornet but pretty close). Those two cars were the youngest cars I ever owned; they subsequently seemed to get older and older till I now have the 82 year old Wasp, now (from last September) at last on the road again for the first time since 1958!
The next Wolseley to enter my life was a large 1933 16hp ,again found in the
Exchange and Mart which in those days was my bible and compulsive reading every Thursday. AKO 150 was a big all-black saloon with excellent bodywork, faded paint and yellow-clouded laminated windows, but its looks were the epitome of automotive beauty to my eyes and I bought her for about £60 somewhere in Kent if I remember correctly.
The restoration that followed was fairly comprehensive and the engine came out, needed no re-bore but had the crank ground and the ends re-metalled. While this was going on I restored the interior with new headlining, refinished the wood trim and made new carpets as well as cleaning the leather with methylated spirit (which I found to be superior to any proprietary leather cleaner) and finishing it with some sort of leather cream which I think mainly consisted of lanolin. The leather in this car was really excellent both in condition and style and even the door panels were trimmed with it, having large map-pockets with flap covers.
This car was re-sprayed green with black wings and top above the waistline and with new chrome and large Lucas P80 headlamps, looked an impressive beast. She drove very nicely too; the freewheel which was optional via a knob on the steering column, helping economy and the automatic clutch being an interesting feature. This latter was also optional at the turn of a knob and operated when lifting off the accelerator when the induction vacuum worked the piston in a cylinder of about 6 inches diameter linked to the clutch operating lever. The very well made interior was completed with a well-designed walnut dashboard that had the comprehensive set of instruments mounted in the centre on a black-finished metal plate.
Progression was not entirely sparkling as the reasonably powerful two litre o.h.c six-cylinder engine had a lot of weight to pull, but the looks and finish of this car made you forgive it almost anything except perhaps its propensity for front axle tramp when hitting certain types of uneven road. Quite scary, and I never cured the problem before I sold the car in 1969 for the princely sum of £198 after paying a dealer 10% commission; just about breaking even on expenditure which did not of course include all my work, but after all, old cars for most of us are a fascinating hobby rather than a money-maker.
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