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Hi all, Just by pure chance, I thought that I would write to a previous owner that my A7 was registered to 54 years ago this owner appeared on the old type buff logbook and remained in his name right up until 10 years ago. I knew it was probably a long shot thinking this chap would have been a young man at that time given the dates involved. so thinking he may have passed away by now or moved away from the address that I wrote to, or that the letter would go, just unanswered. To my amazement, he called me one evening some two weeks from first writing to him. He gave me a lot of info on the car and journeys that he and the family made, including sending me Photos of when he toured the South of France in the car and camping holiday with his young wife.
He also said, that he still had lots of spares in the garage that I could have which I have arranged to collect.
The real value for me is making contact with this long distant owner with history and pictures to add to the pleasure of my A7 which could have so easily been lost If I hadn't made that chance contact.
Have others had this kind of exciting contact?
My little A7 has taken me much further than I could have hoped.
Regards RPM
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Location: North Hampshire
Car type: 1928 Chummy, 1935 Pearl
25-02-2020, 02:34 PM
(This post was last modified: 25-02-2020, 02:37 PM by Gordon Puzey.)
Back in the early 60s I always wanted a Chummy but they were £75 and a Ruby was only £25 so it had to be a Ruby. I eventually got round to buying what I thought was a nice original 1928 Chummy in 2005. A few years later an old lady was in her local grocers in Ironbridge and spotted a chap wearing an Austin hat. She asked him if there was any way of finding out if her old Austin 7 still existed. It turned out she was talking to a local enthusiast who promptly checked the register and found her old Chummy registered with the A7OC. A few days later I had a call from our club secretary giving me the ladies details to contact her.
The outcome being I took the Chummy up to Ironbridge to take the lady out for a drive. Whilst having afternoon tea she produced her wedding photographs from 1952 with the Chummy as her wedding car. These were followed by photographs prior to the wedding of her boy friend removing a Mulliner Fabric Saloon body and replacing it with a Chummy body from the local scrap yard. These photographs can be seen in the Gallery. So my nice 'original' beloved Chummy was not a Chummy at all but an ex Mulliner. The lady called Betsy gave me all of her photographs which I now treasure along with my non Chummy which I love all the more for having that history.
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fabulous stories!
My old Nippy turned out to be the first college car of someone who contacted the Nippy archive site fairly recently looking for a car! (He bought another one 60-odd years later)
And after that it was up with NECWPA club members of which I'm now in touch with still-Austin 7 owners. Then two further owners all with photos... rich experiences.
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I think the English car enthusiasts put far more emphasis on their car's history than other countries do.
bet there are some fantastic owner's stories. Gordons encounter was amazing too.
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British car enthusiasts please.
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Sad that you can no longer get an ownership history from DVLA.
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Location: Leeds
Not Austin related, but i used to own a Porsche 912 targa which had come from California, 20 years earlier. It had been owned by a member of the LAPD and I found his address on an invoice in the history file. So i wrote him a letter asking for any additional info about the car, and i got a response (via email) which included lots of detail about his ownership and several pictures over the years of his ownership.
Stuart Bullen
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British car enthusiasts please.
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yea!! sorry Ian, yes British all this great island.
Regards R.
Also to Robin Oldfield comments, you can't get anything out of DVLA these days unless you have a good enough reason and researching previous owners isn't one of them.
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These little pieces of history are priceless.
My Ruby has been in the family since 1954, nevertheless a couple of years ago I managed to trace the wife and son of a previous owner. The wife recalled her annoyance at having to sell her sewing machine to pay for the tax and insurance when they bought it in '52. They were the only people in their road with a car yet it still attracted ridicule from local kids. Sadly they didn't have any photos. The son had remembered the registration number all that time and was delighted to hear from me.
Peter.
