Little Known About 1914 Brit Light Car

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28728, 28 October 1958, Page 15

Little Known About 1914 Brit Light Car

"The Press’’ Special Service

DUNEDIN, October 26. Anyone who is an expert on the British light car and its component parts can pride himself on being perhaps the only such person in New Zealand. Two Dunedin enthusiasts, Messrs D. E. Sparkes and B. G. Cdughlan, are trying to reconstruct a model of the car, but are nonplussed by chassis details and body design. Inquiries throughout the Dominion have so far brought forward no information, and even a letter to a vintage car magazine in England has had no result.

Mr Sparkes found only passing reference to. the car in books on the subject of vintage cars and. according to the secretary of the Vintage Car Club of New Zealand, none was listed in the Vintage Car Club register of Great Britain. The Brit, described as a cycle i car, was manufactured by the now defunct Britannia Engineering Company, of Bridport, England, in 1914. Mr Brookes and Mr Coughlan are assembling the basic parts of what is probably the only model of the Brit in New Zealand. Mr Sparkes said they had not even seen a photograph of the completed car to give them some idea of the bodywork. , A two-seater, the Brit is

powered by a 9.6 h.p. “Precision” V twin air-cooled engine with a 90deg friction drive to a transverse shaft driving a V-belt to the rear wheels. This much is known —but little else. The engine is little bigger than that used to drive the average motor mower. What original parts remain have had a somewhat chequered history. Brought to this country by a member of the Methven family, the car later passed on to Mr S. McCracken, who consigned the temperamental vehicle to the rubbish tip in disgust. Found a year ago by Mr Sparkes and Mr Coughlan, the engine has been stripped and cleaned—it is believed it has done only about 100 miles—and the other original parts renovated. But the car is far from finished, and both men are more than a little perplexed about completing the vehicle. If and when it is completed, they intend to compete with it in vintage car rallies.