Various Cars - not interesting enough for separate threads

Is Sep a bit picky then? 🤣🤣
Post away 😊

Took me a minute   I guess there is only so much room in headers - corrected.

So the Midget still isn't running. and the NAS drive cord remains safely stored. So, another car. Last year also on the aforementioned Kijiji - well here is the story for my club magazine.

1930 Austin 7 Boat tail Tourer – Occasional Dispatches
This story begins, as do many of my British Car stories, on Kijiji. Truthfully it starts sooner than that. For some time now I have had a hankering for a 100 year old car. Nothing could be further from my era but, there is something very elemental about them. Then, in 2016 we found ourselves at the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu. By chance, there was an Austin Sevens show that day. It was love at first sight. That’s where Kijiji comes in. Not regularly, but occasionally I would search, and, to my great surprise, last summer one appeared. In pieces, for restoration, an Austin Seven on this side of the pond! Emails were exchanged, phone calls were made and shortly I was making my way to the Ottawa Valley to meet Richard, the owner.
It very quickly transpired that he didn’t want to sell the car; he wanted someone to adopt it. This was the car he had driven on his honeymoon and even though he was getting too old to restore it, he wanted it to go to a good home. Apparently I passed the interview, some shekels changed hands and I became the proud owner of a 1930 Austin 7 Boat tail tourer. (90 years old this year!)
Not too much later I borrowed my brother in law’s minivan, brought a friend and together carried the car down from the garage loft and fit the entire thing, including extras, in said minivan! A trip home and it is safe and sound in my back shed awaiting some loving attention. Honestly it is third on the list, but in the meantime, this is what I know.
The boat tailed tourer (two seater) is one of 1501 cars of this model made. 63 are recorded to have survived. It is sufficiently rare that people initially though it was a custom body produced, perhaps for the RAC, but, in fact it was produced as a lady’s car for driving to the club and to tea. It has an aluminum body though parts (like the boot lid) are still wood covered in canvas. Richard bought the car upside down in a field, which accounts for the fact that the windshield is lower than normal as it came from another car. As mentioned, Richard drove the car on his honeymoon and when he and his young family immigrated to Canada, he left the car in the car of a friend with strict instructions that the friend use it but not take it apart! The friend took it apart. Thus when Richard returned to Britain, discovered the evidence, he put the car in a crate and shipped it off to Canada (much to the relief of his friend’s mother in whose garage the pieces resided)
Once in Canada, this penniless immigrant had to deal with customs – and the payment of duty. So, in the middle of the night with a trailer behind him he drove to the customs office in Montreal. This being the early 1960’s; original purchase price in pounds less depreciation from 1930, converted into Canadian dollars; “Right, that will be $5.00 sir.” A relieved man made his way home and stored the car until now.
But the trail doesn’t end there.
Since acquiring the car I have frequented the AustinSevenFriends website and forum. Somewhere someone posted a link to the Kithead trust, a trust in England which particularly exists to preserve historic registrations of vehicles in England, particularly buses and commercial vehicles. In Britain the license plate number stays with the car and so, it is much easier to discover the history of the car. The original license plate number (MW 6137) is still attached to the radiator. At this website, I was able to discover that the letters, MW, were assigned to Wiltshire and Swindon. The website further provided information about the local historical society which had the old registration records. An email and twenty four hours later, I had a picture of the original registration of my little car!
On January 31, 1930, the car was registered to A.H. Graves of Savernake Forest; Marlborough. Written in pencil on the book was the word Skurrys. According to the 1931 Kelly Trade Directory, Skurrys is Skurry’s Ltd.; Motor & Automobile Engineers, Car Agents & Garage, 30 & 32 High Street, Swindon. The directory also lists the owner: ‘Arthur Herbert Graves, Durley, Savernake Forest, Marlborough’. Needless to say I quickly posted this on the Austin Seven website where someone quickly fleshed out that Arthur Herbert Graves was born 26.08.1895, died 29.03.1966, leaving an estate of £2955 (£56K today ) and that in 1939 he was described as an agricultural estate agent, living at the Durley Estate Office, Durley House, Marlborough. And all of a sudden I had the original owner of the car.
As mentioned, it will be a while before I get to the car, but, I am on the trail of some other previous owners and will keep you updated.

Here are some pics.

What it looked like once upon a time



And what it looked like the day it arrived





Incidentally GTViva - the entire 7 is in this shed (behind the grilles and bumpers) alone with about 20% of the GT and 1 box of MG Midget and 2 1/2 Honda CT90's (belonging to my daughter)

Can you change the thread title to various car adventures - owner cant be bothered to create seprate threads? They certainly are interesting enough to deserve their own place in the spotlight. what a great selection you have and all with superb back stories. I have seen a few baby austins pootling about my neck of the woods over the last few months and the appeal of them is really starting to grow on me. On our rural-ish roads their lack of outright performance certainly isnt a hinderence!

There's a '37 7 in 'our' fleet, (technically it's the Mrs' oldest toy bought as a shared toy/pressie with her dad for his 85th to make some memories with). The below pic is from when he was surprised with it at his oldest friends house.


Having picked it up the day before, we had no idea how it was mechanically, nor how much fuel was in it. They jumped in it like two school boys and promptly disappeared down the road with no mobile phone between them and with us having no idea of where they'd gone - was hilarious and was one of the last times they were together before his friend sadly passed away. Memory making mission was certainly accomplished that day.

It's not been out that much this year but hoping to get some good use out of it in 2021. Superb little things for running about in.

Those models are amazing.

Please keep this stuff coming!

It's gorgeous!  What is it?

eta - thought I'd see if I could track it down by Googling 60s Japanese cars, no such luck - but found this, which I love!

Bwahaha 

Well as people intriguingly search for Austin's Fair lady's love child (see what I did there) a joyous update. I may have mentioned that I let the smoke out of the wires on the Midget. I got a new alternator (Delco) and rummaged through my box of broken Vauxhall wire harnesses to find the right colour wires in the right gauges (mostly worked). Got everything back together and <sigh> car started, nothing burst into flames but the car didn't charge either. research ensued. Much poking, prodding, continuity testing, voltage testing, and interweb searching later I realized that I had not wired the solenoid correctly. As such the exciter wire to the alternator was not getting power. So a little swapping and everything works - hurray! So the car runs, still the wiper motor needs sorting but that can wait I think until the spring. Now just a nice(ish) day to get it off to storage.

In the meantime, I am left wondering - why if it was wrongly wired did it even start. I guess we'll never know