RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30692, 6 March 1965, Page 42

RANDOM REMINDER

THE RESTORATION

Have you ever met Alldays and Onion, AngusSanderson, Maudslay, Clement Talbot, Clyno, Franklin Unic, Straker-Squire, Chandler, Stanley, Maxwell, Hotchkiss, SizaireNaudin, Jewett, Perry, Saxon, Darracq, Davis Horstman, Deemster, Ansaldo and Bean? No? They are not a clutch of best-selling authors, a world Rugby team or a special committee of the United Nations. In fact, they are all right here in Christchurch and, with any Sort of luck and the right breeze, they should all be safely bedded down tonight at Mt. Cook. For all these exotic names are no more than a random choice from the magnificent collection of more than 300 veteran and vintage cars which this morning will begin a 1300-miie international rally, the biggest ever held outside Europe, from Christchurch

down to the wilds of the Haast and back again to Christchurch, where they will be on display just, it is to be hoped, as magnificent as ever. They range from the gleaming aristocrats of the late twenties to a diminutive 1902 model with just one cylinder, a tiller to steer her by and transmission arrangements consisting largely of rope. But children, don’t refer to them, please, as old bombs as they set off on their journey. Some of them have enlivened many a stately home, dwelt in aristocratic garages and even followed hounds. Others, until a few years ago, were rusting remnants in the bottom of a duckpond, quietly mouldering in forgotten sheds or dreaming of past glories as their engines drove a workaday sawbench or pump. The rusting rubbish has been restored to new with more care and attention than the most

paternal health service could bestow on their owners. It would simply be churlish if any of these cars repaid that kindness by breaking a back axle on the starting line this morning.

The vintage men are fanatics. One we know was a great lover of trees and he was in something of a dilemma when he discovered the bones of a 1908 Alldays on a farm with not one, but five trees growing through it He got a man to cut the trees at ground level and remove the debris before he swooped on the skeleton and bore it away. So you can imagine the feelings of the nephew of an eccentric old lady who had a rare 1924 model in Vancouver. She died recently and left all her assets to her parrot—a bird whose expectation of life is said to be 90 years. It could be very much shorter than that parrot thinks. •