Cambridge Austin 7

& Vintage Car Club

Spring Newsletter

April 2015

Austin Seven & Vintage Car Club

A member of the Austin Seven Clubs’ Association Meetings held on the first Wednesday of each month at the Plough & Fleece, in Horningsea - unless otherwise stated on the calendar of events.

President Mary Walker

Vice Presidents Gerald Walker Robert Leigh

Secretary Paul Lawrence

Editor Gill Davis

Treasurer Fenella Leigh

Committee Alan Martin Members Jonathan McKeggie

Basil Jaques

Newsletter Printing of Newsletter - with thanks to Mike and Jean Johnson and their Staff at PRINT-OUT, High Street, Histon.

Contributions For next edition by 11th July 2015, please.

Website www.ca7vcc.co.uk Facebook Cambridge Austin 7 & VCC

The views expressed in this Newsletter are not necessarily those of the Club or Editor.

Cover Tony Dron’s restored Austin enjoying a country pub halt at The Photograph Crown in Little Walden!

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AUSTIN SEVEN &VINTAGE CAR CLUB NEWSLETTER – Spring 2015

Contents…..

Chippenham Park 5 For Sale & Photography 17 Competition Seven Worlds Apart 7 Essex Club Holiday Flyer 18 A7CA Booklet for sale 16 Calendar of Events 19/20

From the Secretary…. This year’s car activities have started well with two well attended club runs under our belt already. The Chippenham Park Run in March saw twelve vintage and classic cars either taking part in the road run or meeting us there and the Bletchley Park Run in April mustered a fine collection of seven old cars and a sprinkling of ‘moderns’ which carried our group, twenty three people strong, to Milton Keynes to explore the fascinating WWII museum.

We’ve had a lot of fun ‘off road’ as well this year, most notably our darts competition on Club Night in February. The final was won by the ‘titan of darts’ Mick Ward who managed to edge out the ‘master of hand eye co-ordination’ Basil Jaques. Well done to everyone that took part and particularly to Mick for claiming the darts champion title and, of course, the first prize bottle of wine!

We do have some more Road Runs planned for this year so please do have a look at the calendar of events and mark up your diaries now to make sure you don’t miss them. We do have a number of fairly new members to the club who are in the process of building up knowledge and confidence with their cars. If you fit this description some of our forthcoming local runs are very much aimed

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at you. Hopefully they are long enough to make it worthwhile but not so far as to put you off coming along. Before you know it we’ll have you happily driving off to the seaside in your Austin 7, safe in the knowledge that you are more likely to make it back than not without experiencing a ‘show stopping’ breakdown.

I hope to see you all at a club night or event soon,

Paul From the Editor:

As I sit at my computer putting the last touches to this edition of our club Newsletter, I can see out of the window the blue skies with fluffy white clouds scudding along that tells me it is springtime already and we are well into the season of club outings and events that seem to magically happen as if no-one does any work beforehand. I know how it feels to just turn up on the appointed day, Austin (or other) car oiled, greased and topped up with petrol – points checked, battery charged and tyres inflated to the correct psi, and then join with everyone else for a pleasant bumble around the area with other like-minded club members …… not to totally realise the hard work that goes into arranging these events. So – let’s hear it for your committee and their families who do all that pre-arranging so you can enjoy yourselves in your little cars!! And if you are not up to helping with the organising, please feel free to put quill to parchment (or fingers to keyboards) and write about your adventures for the Newsletter – all contributions gratefully received. This edition has a report on the recent outing to Chippenham – an event greatly enjoyed by those who came along. A great opening run for the club. There is also a thought-provoking article by club member Tony Dron – a great insight into his thoughts after a lifetime of sports car racing and motoring journalism – a truly professional insight into the world of the Austin 7. I have also included a flyer from friends in the Essex Club who are arranging a 5 day holiday in Essex & Suffolk in June 2016 – I am already on the list so hope to see you there!! Keep those wheels turning, Gill Davis

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Chippenham Park By Paul Lawrence

If you like Costa Coffee and Club Runs this may be of interest to you so pay attention. Most of our club runs tend to be on a Sunday and start at Milton Tesco, leaving at 10.30am. Well Michelle and I have recently discovered that Costa Coffee inside the store opens at 9.30am on a Sunday (can you see where I’m going with this?).

So anyway, there we were, Michelle and, I on Sunday 15th March a t approximately 9.45am, sipping our skinny caramel lattes and looking out of the Costa Coffee window wondering how many people were going to come along to our first club run of the year.

We were full of hope as we didn’t think many people would have been to Chippenham Park before as it’s not open every day to the public (although they do have various days throughout the year when they open their gates to visitors). Not only that the club was offering a £5 subsidy towards the entry fee for each vintage or classic car that ventured out and, knowing how careful you all like to be with money, I thought this

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generous committee offer was bound to put us on the front foot.

I have to confess that even my high expectations were smashed as we left the car park shortly after 10.30am with a fantastic array of 9 cars including makes such as Austin 7, Riley, Triumph and Morris Minor. On route we picked up a few others and ended up with 12 cars in total gathered together at Chippenham Park.

The website will tell you how Chippenham Park is a ‘thriving family estate created at the very end of the 17th century by Admiral Lord Russell with permission from William III and that the gardens have been recently awarded the highest two-star rating by the Good Gardens Guide’. Well I don’t know about any of that but what I do know is that as far as suggestions go Fenella came up with another master stroke of genius when she suggested this as a destination for our first club adventure of 2015.

Soon after our arrival we filled the tea rooms for something warm to drink and maybe a bit of cake for some of us and then had a very enjoyable time exploring the picturesque gardens.

It was a very enjoyable and well supported event so well done and thank you to everyone that was able to come along.

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Seven Worlds Apart

A 50-year gap in Austin Seven ownership

By Tony Dron, OAP and former schoolboy

How big is your filing cabinet? Mine’s way out of control, packed with forgotten treasures that are found only when I’m looking for something else. The latest of these is my original Austin Seven file, dating from well over 50 years ago when I was a schoolboy trying to turn a ten quid 1937 Ruby into a special. Ancient Speedex and Super Accessories price lists are in there, plus correspondence with Super Accessories of Bromley and Cambridge Engineering of Kew Green. These minor gems of Austin Seven history make amazing reading today. Even allowing for inflation, the good stuff available off the shelves back then was incredibly inexpensive.

My special-building project failed, which looking back was hardly surprising as nobody in my family knew the first thing about motor engineering and I was away at boarding school most of the time. Struggling doggedly on alone in the holidays, I did get some way down the line before realising that I wasn’t a car builder. If I wanted to go racing, it finally dawned on me, somebody else would have to make the car.

That file on my special has remained undisturbed ever since. I was 11 or 12 years old when I bought the Ruby, joined the 750MC and invested in Bill Williams’ famous book. Instructed by that, I removed the body and had the chassis stiffened by plates welded under the U-channels, turning them into box sections. That cost £20, which was a lot of pocket money.

Even more, £49 to be precise, was spent on a new Speedex 750 aluminium body, which I collected from Speedex at 17a Windsor Street, Luton. I persuaded my mother to drive me there and the boss, Jem Marsh himself, helped us to strap it to the roof of her Austin A30. Looking a bit like a Lotus 6, it was a very good

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product at a bargain price. It was also encouragingly light and easy to carry about when we got home.

My long-suffering parent was then press-ganged into a trip to Bromley to buy yet more important parts, including an IFS assembly for £11, from Super Accessories at 1 Southlands Road. The impressive showroom, I remember, resembled a smartly fitted out high street shop. I could not afford any engine bits at that stage, much as I wanted to buy one of their Supaloy aluminium cylinder heads, which cost five guineas (£5.25).

According to Austin Seven legend, that Supaloy head was designed by Bromley- based Graham Broadley, cousin of Lola founder Eric, but in a conversation with Eric in 2014 he told me, “I designed that head!” Well, what do you know?

In late 1961, I wrote to Bill Williams’ old business, Cambridge Engineering, famously located in Cambridge Road, ‘behind the Coach and Horses’ at Kew Green. I did that because Jem Marsh was closing Speedex down – he was already moving on, busily setting up Marcos with Frank Costin.

All three of the businesses mentioned so far did supply some parts for standard road cars back then but they were really geared to the Austin Seven special market. They were obviously heavily reliant on selling go-faster goodies to special builders but that world was already dwindling rapidly, and by late 1961 it was a shadow of what it had been in its 1950s heyday. Bill Williams had retired and his right-hand man, Jack Brown, was soldiering on with Cambridge Engineering.

Jack sent me his ‘Revised 1959 List of Special Components’ and a duplicated letter of welcome, in wonderful English. It began: “By allowing us the privilege of submitting information about our components and spare parts for the Austin Seven, you automatically entrust us with the responsibility of ensuring that the details we send offer the utmost value for the money you wish to spend. We accept that responsibility and assure you that we do not treat it lightly.”

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Blimey, that flowery prose makes the England of today seem like a different country. A handwritten note, penned by I H ‘Jack' Brown in person, was added on the back of this standard letter. It reads:

Dear Sir,

We purchased the stocks from Speedex, not the business, and we shall produce some of the parts, such as those which don’t clash with our own.

Speedex are in the receivers’ hands and therefore can no longer operate.

We shall include in our list such parts as we consider worth producing – when the whole position has been clarified.

IHB

Included with Jack’s Cambridge Engineering catalogue was the similar, but much glossier publication from the defunct Speedex operation. Jack had crossed out the illustration of the Speedex 750 aluminium body, indicating that it was to be dropped. I was highly relieved that I had already bought one of those excellent bodies.

Later on, in 1964, I did become a customer of Jack’s. When my 17th birthday came up in August, 1963, I wanted my own road car. Admitting defeat, I sold the special project but, properly hooked on Austin Sevens by then, I bought a fairly good 1932 RN Saloon for £30. Although I rebuilt an engine for it and rewired the car myself, Jack did some very useful servicing for me in Cambridge Road.

The workshop there was rather scruffy and unimpressive but Jack was a quiet, charming chap with an incredible wealth of Austin Seven knowledge. As a hard- up student, I could not afford much but Jack did a lot of good things for my car without charging me much. I felt grateful but a bit guilty because his once-

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thriving business did seem to be struggling and indeed I believe he did shut up shop and retire in 1967. By that time I had bought a 1928 Austin 12 tourer and sold my RN to Roger Bateman, a friend and fellow student at The College of Aeronautical and Automobile Engineering in Chelsea.

The 12 went when, at long last, in 1968 I started racing with a new Formula Ford, which meant that I could not afford a road car of my own. I confess to buying a trailer at that point and putting a tow hitch on my mother’s Wolseley Hornet – the ‘Mini with a boot’ – which I effectively stole from her. Now, half a century later as a silly old man trying to relive his past, I have another light royal blue and black 1932 Saloon, only this time it’s one of the last swb RM models. Having been off the road since 1964, it was very sorry for itself when I found it near Reading but, to my great surprise and delight, I noticed that the filthy old engine was fitted with a Supaloy aluminium cylinder head. It took three years to restore the car and start motoring in a Seven again.

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Meanwhile, I am still very much in touch with my old college friend Roger. A few years ago, using the registration number he tracked down the very same RN that we had both once owned. It had been through many adventures but he acquired it and restored it properly. He lives a long way from me but one day we must get the 1932 RM and the 1932 RN together.

Reflections on a changed world of Sevens Getting back into Austin Seven ownership after 50 years has already proved to be much more fun than I had hoped. No reader of this magazine needs to be told why Austin Sevens are great cars but it’s worth reminding ourselves of how different things are now.

In 1965, Austin Sevens were still seen as cheap cars. We could go to any number of scrapyards and find almost anything we needed, usually for a few shillings. Harold Goodey’s place in Twford was my favourite, partly because it was like being on stage in a Samuel Beckett play but mainly because he had everything lying around on his huge but well-organised site.

A gleaming new company HQ building stands in that spot a few miles outside Reading today, complete with manicured lawns and a neatly arranged car park. Nothing like Goodey’s old, sprawling scrapyard has existed in this country for decades.

If I needed replacement glass for the wind-up windows in the doors, Goodey had stacks of original stuff on sale for almost nothing. Finding replacements for that thin laminated glass today involved deep research and it cost me about £140 to have a pair of new windows cut to size.

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Luckily, the Source Book gave me the specification of the glass but, in another sign of changed times, the Source Book itself costs a fortune these days. As they normally seem to go for about £200 on eBay, I felt very lucky when my bid was successful and I picked one up for £105 last year. Half a century ago, that sum would have bought several real Austin Sevens.

As there is nothing we can do about it, we should not complain. The world has changed and there’s no doubt that it is going to change even more dramatically in the next 50 years. With driverless cars, probably fuelled by something we haven’t dreamt of yet, in 2065 anybody with a car that requires a driver and a tank of petrol will be unusual. Whether it will be legal to take it onto the public road at all is an interesting question but I am quite certain that owners of Vintage and classic cars will have to be rather wealthy if they want to fill their tanks and run their vehicles, which they will probably have to do on private locations away from any public highway.

What the world will be like in another 50 years is, of course, of limited interest to most of us now. Perhaps it’s just my romantic notion but I hope that our Austin Sevens will still be around, properly preserved and used somewhere. Meanwhile, we should enjoy using them as much as possible, and not think of them as cheap cars any more. Those days are gone.

That had not quite dawned on me when I bought what was then an old wreck of an RM four years ago. I had to pay £1,000 for it at that time, which seemed a high price but I was quite wrong about that. Similar restoration projects have been selling on eBay in the past year for up to £4,000 and, now that I know a bit more, it’s easy to see that such prices are very reasonable.

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How much people are happy to pay for old vehicles is a mysterious subject that can be quite baffling, even for those of us who attend auction sales of classic cars regularly. Austin Sevens have risen in value at these sales in recent years. Let’s take just one example: at the H&H Duxford Imperial War Museum sale in April, 2013, a very respectable 1934 Type 65 sold for £15,120. It had a well- restored body but it appeared to me to need a fair bit of attention on the mechanical side and some tricky bits were missing or incorrect.

Still, you might think that over £15,000 was a fairly good, perhaps quite a high price. At the same sale, a 1932 Brough Superior BS4 motorbike, the rare model powered by an Austin Seven engine, was also sold. It went for £246,000 – yes, a quarter of a million quid. The bidding was keen, meaning that at least two people thought that bike was worth 16 good, rare Austin Seven cars.

Somewhat bemused by those two results, I left the sale thinking that all our Austin Seven four-wheelers are mightily undervalued. They should not be

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fetching six figures, obviously, but the historical perception of our cars probably explains why they are still so cheap in relative terms.

If we want a mass of Austin Sevens to survive into posterity, we must accept that their values will have to rise quite steeply in the near future. This is not a personal plea and I stand to gain nothing by this – never to be sold by me, my Seven will still be in the garage at home when my personal remains are carted off in a box. It is a simple fact that for any old car to survive it helps if it’s worth more in a restored state than it costs to restore it, and a supply of replacements parts is vital for that.

This is where we, as Austin Seven owners, are in a most unusual and incredibly fortunate position. Before I got back into owning a Seven, I had assumed that the hackneyed old saying, ‘You can get the parts for a Seven’ was probably true enough but I had not realised quite how true it is. The availability of high quality new parts for Austin Sevens from all the well-known suppliers is extraordinary.

Never complain about the prices of these new parts, which I suspect are far too low at present. This is an accident of history: Sevens used to be cheap cars and the market for Seven parts has not quite caught up with the harsh commercial reality of modern life. It is vital to the survival of our cars that these heroic suppliers of all the right bits stay in business and make a decent living doing it. The same goes for the specialist restorers and the knowledgeable experts we can turn to for help with the trickier mechanical jobs.

If it’s not possible for these people to make a decent profit, our cars will not have a future. Looking further ahead, what will happen when we need new cylinder blocks, crankcases, gearbox and back axle castings? That day will come and when it does our specialists must be financially comfortable with the idea of putting them back into production. Tooling up for that will not be cheap.

Someone, I am sure, will be reading this and getting angry with me for trying to push prices up. Don’t be angry, think again. We all like to get things at a good

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price and there was a time when we could do that because Austin Seven parts were worth almost nothing – in those days you could probably rummage around in any English hedge and find some useful Austin Seven bits for nothing, but that was in the distant past.

It’s also worth pointing out that I have no connection or interest in any commercial business involved in Austin Sevens, nor am I a rich man. I am simply an owner, a customer of those admirable enterprises – and I pay full price like anybody else. My thoughts here are focused absolutely on encouraging a healthy future for all Austin Sevens, in other words the survival of our favourite little part of the world.

Most of the cars launched since Austin Seven production came to an end have disappeared because there are no parts available. In the 1980s and 1990s I ran a 1959 Ford Zephyr Mk II historic rally car. Those Mk II Zephyrs and Zodiacs were once one of the most common sights on our roads.

They were really good cars in their day but, as they went into old age and came to be seen as classics, their enthusiastic owners still thought that owning them should be a dirt cheap hobby. Consequently, the supply of new parts began to dry up. The last set of ‘new old stock’ rear lights for a MkII Zephyr went for nearly £500 more than 20 years ago and I haven’t heard of another ‘new old stock’ set turning up since then. One enterprising young man did set himself up in business at that time, selling used parts for 1950s Fords and he did try to get new rear

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lights made. He failed because he was unable to get close to the required quality at anywhere near an acceptable price. How many of those cars are left now?

I rest my case. As Austin Seven owners, we are unbelievably lucky and, after 50 years away from Sevens, I really do appreciate just how fortunate we are. Far from expressing shock at the high prices being fetched for Austin Sevens, we should encourage a degree of inflation because it’s the only way they and our all-important suppliers and specialists will survive and thrive into the future. Let’s say it again: our cars stopped being cheap transport decades ago.

Even so, I do like to remind owners of new cars that we still get 40-50mpg, which is better than nearly all of them actually achieve despite the unreal claims of official fuel consumption figures.

A 1931 advertisement for the RM standard saloon stated, ‘Economy is the watchword – therefore buy an Austin Seven now. Only £118!’ In 2015, the car will cost rather more than that but you will still go a hell of a long way on 4.546 litres of fuel – and enjoy every mile of it.

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For Sale 1932 Austin 7 RN Box Saloon Maroon/Black. New headlining. New carpet. 4-Speed synchromesh gear box. Good overall condition. £7,950.

Contact Tony Cropper 07918 664304 (Cambridge area) Email [email protected] (Photos available)

Photographic Competition2015

The title for this year’s competition is “Whatever the Weather….”

As usual the competition rules allow for no more than 3 entries from any member of the club and the photograph must be taken by a club member!

The photograph should be taken between 1st September 2014 and 31st August 2015 and can be submitted to any committee member in any format (electronic or print).

The competition winner will at announced at the AGM.

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Calendar of Events.

Sunday 3rd May - Treasure Hunt. Meet at Tesco, Newmarket at 10am for a 10.30 start.

Wednesday 6th May - Club night at the Plough & Fleece for a Noggin n’Natter

Wednesday 3rd June - Club night at the Plough & Fleece for a Bring your Car Night

Sunday 21st June - Road Run to The Raptor Foundation, St Ives Road, Woodhurst. Adult (16-60yrs) £5.50, Senior £4.50, Child (4 - 15yrs) £3.50. Leave Tesco Milton at 10.30am http://www.raptorfoundation.org.uk/

Wednesday 1st July - Club night at the Plough & Fleece for a Noggin n’Natter

July – Possible evening event to Ivor Searle (Further Details to follow)

Wednesday 5th Aug - Club night at the Plough & Fleece for a Noggin n’Natter

Sunday 16th August -Road Run to Ickworth House (National Trust), near Bury St Edmonds. House and Gardens: Adult £12.60, Child £6.35, Park & Gardens Only: Adult: £6.25 Child: £3.15. Leave Milton Tesco 10.30am http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/ickworth/

Wednesday 2nd Sept - Club night at the Plough & Fleece for a Noggin n’Natter

Sunday 6th September – Car of the Year, Fenland Camping and Caravan Park, March Road Wimblington. The club's annual flagship rally to include self judging, a free barbeque and some light heatred driving tests. Arrive from 1pm

Wednesday 7th October - AGM, Plough and Fleece, Horningsea. Yearly adresses, awards ceremony and compimentary sandwhiches

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Other National & Local Events that may be of interest:

Date Event Contact 16th-17th May Spring Autojumble Beaulieu www.beaulieu.co.uk

28th June North Herts Rally N.Herts Centre Cottered Janet Edroff [email protected]

28th June Aldreth Vintage Event Kim Smith [email protected]

5th July 53rd National Rally at Beaulieu 750 HQ Nicky Emmerson [email protected]

22nd -23rd 750 Motor Clubs Summer Festival at 750 HQ August Silverstone Nicky Emmerson Please note this is NOT the Bank [email protected] Holiday weekend!

5th – 6th International Autojumble Beaulieu September www.beaulieu.co.uk

The 750 Motor Club Austin Championship events calendar is published on the Austin 7 pages of the club's website: www.750mc.co.uk

Do you have a favourite event you want to advertise …… we have the space!!

And don’t forget we will continue to meet on the 1st Wednesday of every month at the Plough & Fleece in Horningsea.

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