Let the Fox see the chicken

Having been carless for a while due to having lived afloat for a while, my wife and I decided that perhaps we could risk a little money on getting mobile again. Just a bit of independence from having to borrow our daughter's car.

It was necessary to have a car which was at the lowest tax point or even tax exempt, but equally important to have one with low insurance (i.e. Classic Car insurance) and to be very economical.

Our original plans to use an Austin 7 came to nought when the Ruby project fell through and another could not be found, so a bit of lateral thinking came up with..... the Reliant.

Now I'm fine with the idea of 3 wheels, but Chris couldn't get used to it, so a four wheeler it had to be and when I asked around the Reliant firmament, a Fox was offered.

A rugged, simple, 848cc, 12" wheeled, pick up with a lift off van body. All in fibreglass with a galvanised steel chassis.

We went to see it, Chris loved it and now we await the little gem having its MOT test and some tidy-up.

Our plans for it are to paint it in a nice rich mid-blue called Sapphire and to detail it in very pale blue and aluminium, me being a keen basher of that metal. It sits in beige at present and, like golf, I hope I am never so feeble as to like biege.

The best kind of R & R...

After a bit of an attempted mauling on the slot racing forum from a dissatisfied customer, I felt like some relaxation away from the pressures of a super active forum full of egos.

My favourite way to do that has always been silence, solitude, perhaps Radio 4 and model scenery.

In various measures.

This had got me back to my first passion in modelmaking, model landscape and architecture. I was born, it seems, with a love of vernacular architecture and although I have often drawn it and painted it, even drawn it officially for Councils to pore over in committee meetings, it is only models of buildings which ever really satisfies.

The tiny yard office at Grindley Brook Locks, Welsh canal

I made my first building when I was about 10. It was a little scratch-built flint dashed forge. I used poppy seeds as un-knapped flints. I was given some ancient copper foil rolled into a good scale corrugated which I used for the roof. Because I had no layout as such, I put it on a grassy base and kept it as that. A scenic set-piece. I have built many such set-pieces over the years, rarely having space for a layout.

I also have a love of estuaries, having spent many childhood weekends on the Essex coastal waterways. One day, when missing the clean air and the sounds of the saltings I made this little set-piece to get it out of my system. Just about 9 inches square, I put it on whatever I had under the bench in the way of a base board, yet it turned into one of my best pieces.

I can find inspiration anywhere, as in that tiny office above, so perfect in its proportion and fitness for purpose.

This is an old village cinema, now, alas, a hairdresser's emporium!

Imagine the queues of young lovers all desperate to get to the back rows in the days when it would have definately been known as the local "flea-pit", before the ugly cement dashed finish ruined the old bricks.

Here is the little country garage in the same village as the "Cinema Salon". Now used only for repairs to cars as the government has allowed the foreign unelected parliament to force stringent and unnecessary rules on small British businesses which cost so much to administer that they are forced to close in full or in part.

I have known this place for over thirty years. You could, at one time, choose from a whole line of Austin Healeys, Pipers, tuned up Imps and Mini-Coopers, to name but a few. The proprietor himself used to race. Now he is waiting for the economy to upturn again so he can redevelop the site because rules and unstoppable vandalism have made the business untenable. Just as well that I made a model of the office years ago then, eh? Another occasion when I needed the peace of architecture. Frozen music.

Comments on the blog

Not being very computer savvy, I have no idea how to answer people when they kindly leave a comment on the blog.
I would appreciate any viewer of the blog clueing me up on the methods.

Meanwhile, Jim, thankyou for your kind comments on the models and the Albatross in particular.
I had Hull No. 135., a Mk 1. I bought it from a chap in Yorkshire. It had a Consul Corsair 1500cc pushrod, pre-crossflow Ford engine. I wanted to put a side valve 10 back in or even a Coventry Climax, but the cost of rebuilding even a humble Ford 10 seems outrageous these days, so whilst it was cheap to buy one (my wife paid £90 for it), rebuilding it to a high level was to have cost much more than I paid for the boat! So the 120E engine got a clean up and put back in. New steering pullies and cables and a respray and off it went to a new owner when I got kicked out of the CMBA for telling a home truth or two about the museums in this country. No club, no water to go fast on, no point in the boat.
If you send me a comment with just your e-mail address, I can note it, but refuse the comment for publication then talk to privately about the models.
Thanks.

BXE 599, where are you!...

My Uncle recently scanned in and sent me some marvellous old Box Brownie shots of his Special as it grew, back in the late 50s/early 60s.
BXE 599 started life as an Austin Seven Ruby. Stripped of her bodywork she would have looked like this.

My Uncle was only 16 when he started this project and in fact, only 21 when he sold it, having used it for getting to work and for a long journey to Bristol. Here he is in our Bristol aunt's driveway.My Dad had built specials earlier and was obviously a good help-at-hand for my Uncle, since we lived over the road from where the car was being built.

Here he gives invaluable advice on steering geometry!

Behind them in that photo, all sorts of magic happened. My Granddad made his own paints and stains in the shed in the background for his work as a grainer and marbler and off to the right was where my Nan made her own wines and repaired all the family's bikes and resoled our shoes! Beyond both was a large garden in which grew most of the ingredients of the wine making. Remarkably my Nan never touched a drop of any of the hundreds of wines she ever made. I recall her parsnip to have been my favourite. Her rosehip was delicious, but gave me nightmares!

Unique as far as I know among specials, BXE had a hardtop. A removable accessory for the winter months which my Uncle made.

The eagle-eyed Special Builders among you will recognize some nice touches of the times amongst the goodies on this car.

A finned Aluminium cylinder head, but I'm not sure of which make. A four branch exhaust manifold and a nice twin SU side-draught inlet set up.

There's also an independent front suspension set up, possibly by Super Accessories or Bowndenex. My Uncle made many of his own parts including the header tank for the then quite rare crossflow radiator.

The very professional looking double hump scuttle always sets a special apart, I think, and BXE was no exception. It always makes for an attractive dashboard shape.

The lovely old spring-spoke steering wheel sets off a nice cockpit and never better than the Brooklands Bluemell's.

I'm delighted to learn that a spare one of these which hung in my Grandad's garage for years after BXE was sold is now in my Uncle's basement and he's promised it for my Cambridge Special.

That's a very special thing for me as I used to look longingly at that old wheel every time I was in my Grandad's workshop!

If anyone knows of the whereabouts or fate of this lovely special, please let me know.

And some more....

Since posting the last piece on Specials I've decided to put my money where my mouth is effectively and I have started an Austin Seven Specials Register under the auspices of the Austin Seven Clubs Association.
So far we have 39 fully written up sets of details about peoples' cars. We have home builts, Cambridges and Ulster replicas in about that order of popularity. We have some very old, even ex-Brooklands cars, too, which I never expected.
If anyone reading this blog has an A7 Special or knows someone who does, please let me know.

More on the Specials

I knew that I would finally find some relevant pictures of my special-building family and though it took my Mum's recent death, I'm sure she'll be pleased to know that amongst her old pictures and photos were these two old Box brownie shots.

The above one is my Dad, in his de-mob suit, standing proudly by his first special. Alas no pictures exist of the later two, but it was great to even get a Reg. no. in the view.

The louvred side valance was a very de luxe feature for a Special!

And this one is of me at about 10 months old, cranking my Dad's other A7 or it could be my Grandad's car, which Dad always drove as my Grandad didn't pass his test until I was in my late childhood!

All this driving down memory lane has got me back "into" specials and I have joined the Bristol Austin 7 Club and my local old-car club and have already got a line on some parts to begin the project. I've decided to build a Cambridge style special, using as many period style bits and pieces as I can find. The search alone should be fun.

I will leave the bodywork in unpainted aluminium, with Cambridge blue cycle wings, which I will attempt to make myself, using for skills what little I can pick up from books and watching old craftsmen at work.

Here's a Cambridge from which I'm making scale drawings as it's a nice square side view.

I'm sure with enough browsing through all the kinds of books and club magazines I used to have I can re-aquaint myself with my favourite old car. Fortunately there are so many knowledgeable types out there who remember every part number, design change date and type number there is and they're always so friendly in the Austin 7 world. Few cars of such humble origins can have crossed the divide between the luxury car (Rolls-Royce, etc), the true enthusiast (Vintage Sports Car Club) and the ordinary impecunious fan ...like the Austin Seven.

Whatever floats your boat....

Usually, people who are into scale models have a fairly narrow band of interests. Probably because they can only give their time to a limited number of projects.

Those of us with unavoidably wider tastes or the good fortune to have (or, it must be said, organise,) more time, often find ourselves being fascinated by more than one topic.

I can't help it, I'm just intrigued by many aspects of what's old and consequently, like to make models of them. Also, of course, when one let's it be known that a modelmaking service is available it becomes likely that potential customers will ask for a wide variety of subjects to be considered.

As it happened, my first truly professional commission was indeed for a boat, a small ship in fact, called the MV Peterna, a coastal sand carrier. I recieved the commission when I was just 18, had not the first idea how to set about it, but finished for a derisorilly low quotation and delivered it to it's owner, by chance on the last day of its legal service in British waters. My friend and I struggled with the model in its heavy 1/4" plate glass case on the train from mid Devon to the Essex coast and onto the vessel itself via the ship's dinghy.

We unveiled it proudly in the skipper's cabin over a warming mug of hot chocolate. The owner's wife immediately burst into tears. She hadn't seen the old girl look so good since they bought her and started their business and their married life aboard the 1915 carrier.

Strangely, it was to be many years more before I took such an interest in ships again, at least actively, by making models of them. By then I'd become a real fan of classic speedboats and record breakers. I wanted to make models of them for sale and that wish came about by my old chum in Florida e-mailing me with a potential customer in Washington DC.He wanted a model of Miss America X and Baby Horace III for permanent display in Arty's restaurant in the city, which was being refurbished with a record boat theme.

And so I built the two boats, in 1/8th scale, which is big. So big, the MA X model had to be built on the dining table because it wouldn't fit in my shed!

Now, MA X has four Packard aero engines in it, geared together as two pairs. Each engine has two superchargers, each supercharger has two carburettors. There are two plug leads per cylinder, each 2500M power unit having twelve cylinders. An exhaust stack emerges elegantly from each pair of cylinders. The steering is by a chain drive, all on view. The hull and deck is mahogany planked. It scaled out at 5ft.-3ins. long!

At the very last minute I left marks on the freshly painted seats which I couldn't remove, so I quickly carved the two toy teddy bears that its driver, Gar Wood, always carried with him for luck and covered the marks with them.Flown west by FedEx, it was safely delivered and installed in its place in a booth at the diner, where, I assume, it still is along with its much humbler brother Baby Horace. The family could eat again!

I also made some Rive Aquarama Special speedboats because I had the plans and found a real one, the last imported before Riva stopped producing them, to measure and photograph. As ever, it turned out that the works drawings were wrong, so I used my own taken from the actual boat near Southampton. My own choice of scale is always 1/12th. One inch to one foot. Beautifully Imperial. The models all had detailed engines under hinged decks, working cocktail cabinets with hand made Morano glasses and one of them even had working steering, involving a hand made worm steering box with two universal joints. Over 150 seperate parts were made in brass and nickel plated. The cloth used for the floor covering was miniaturists' canvas, hand painted. The wood, as with MA X and Baby Horace was steamed Pearwood to look just like mahogany in scale.

But I found that it seemed people were keener to throw their money at the hole in the water represented by their real boat than the mark on the mantleshelf represented by one of my models. I made a 1/6thscale model of an aluminium Albatross speedboat for a collector, which I enjoyed, but nothing further came of it. Promised articles in national magazines never materialised.

And so I gave it one last go with an all aluminium model of Miss Britain III, the salt water World Record Holder. It had a completely detailed Napier Lion W 12 engine and was impressed with nearly 10,000 screw heads with a special tool.

It sold at auction for a measly £2800, of which the thieving auctioneer took another £500 for commission and a whole raft of other "costs" of which I was never forewarned, but which I had no option to pay if I wanted my pathetic remainder, which I recieved after 6 months!

My chum in Florida also had to come to the same conclusion...there ain't no money in model boats, unless you happen to just "fit in".