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Cambridge Austin 7
& Vintage Car Club
Spring Newsletter
April 2015
2
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 Members
Alan Martin 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 Facebook
www.ca7vcc.co.uk Cambridge Austin 7 & VCC
The views expressed in this Newsletter are not necessarily those of the Club or Editor.
Cover Photograph
Tony Dron’s restored Austin enjoying a country pub halt at The Crown in Little Walden!
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AUSTIN SEVEN &VINTAGE CAR CLUB
NEWSLETTER – Spring 2015
Contents…..
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
Chippenham Park 5 For Sale & Photography Competition
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Seven Worlds Apart 7 Essex Club Holiday Flyer 18
A7CA Booklet for sale 16 Calendar of Events 19/20
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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 Cottered
N.Herts Centre 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 August
750 Motor Clubs Summer Festival at Silverstone Please note this is NOT the Bank Holiday weekend!
750 HQ Nicky Emmerson [email protected]
5th – 6th September
International Autojumble Beaulieu 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.