Avon Memories of the early sixties

Avon Standard Memories

These splendid archive pictures and story have been sent to me by Andrew Warwick:

 "Whilst my powers of recall are still fairly reliable I thought it would be sensible to note the following.

CGP 64 was bought by me from a back street dealer in the Millbrook area of Southampton in 1959 (or thereabouts) for the princely sum of £35. It was intact, a runner, but clearly in need of some TLC. Carefully driving it home I instantly became aware of a need to anticipate the braking "manoeuvre" well in advance!

Over a period of some two years I attempted (when funds existed) to restore it as best I could to a more original condition, with the assistance of my then girlfriend-who had no qualms whatsoever in laying on her back in the cold of a winters garage to assist in the fitting of a considerable length of copper exhaust pipe!

I retained the original colour scheme-black over silver grey-having taken it back to the metal. As a young man I was not experienced in the ways of "repainting" ( much of it was brushwork) and learnt in the hardest way that painting over a red lead primer was not the correct method. Tends to come off like a banana being skinned! Returning to the base metal again remedied the situation. I recall the skuttle was made of aluminium.

Convinced that replacing all the brake shoes/linings would improve the cable operated system I ventured forth to find that on first application nothing happened-just as well I was going slowly uphill at the time, and the roads were rather less congested than they are these days. Eventually all worked reasonably well but ones sense of anticipating road conditions still required the greatest attention.

The Engine was-I believe- an OHV SS Jaguar 1.5 litre unit mated through a 4 speed gearbox to the back axle drive. I never had an occasion to carry out any work other than of a maintenance character. The most serious condition I ever encountered on ignition was when I noticed smoke coming from under the bonnet once after I had incorrectly wired up a new battery. Reversing the leads seemed to cure the problem. Later I was to completely rewire the car.

A simple tonneau covering protected the seating area when not in use, and the "blow up" front passenger seat amuses to this day. My wife recalls the windscreen wiper blades having a mind of their own when lifting over the top frame of the windscreen at quite normal speeds. I never pushed it beyond a road speed of 65mph-when it tended to wander slightly.

As is my usual practice, you can click on these photos to see a larger version:

Regrettably, my model failed it’s MOT (brakes and steering I think) about 1962/3 and I was obliged to sell it ( was it £64?-seems appropriate) to a Southampton garage in Bevois Valley. The funds helped with our wedding plans, and I was delighted to subsequently learn that it had been acquired by a local person who was even more generous in his care for this very rare and unique car from the middle 1930’s. To this day I am still unsure of its makers model designation but assume it to be an 11-12, albeit with a rather larger original engine than usual-unless of course a bigger model existed utilizing the virtual identical bodywork-as a 14-18 perhaps"

Hi Andrew,

This is without doubt one of the best looking Standards ever made, in my view. If, as you believe, the new owner lavished a great amount of care on it I have little doubt that it still survives, so if anyone knows where it is, please let me know. Send me an email or go to the Coachbuilders section on the Forum

Your car appears to be a 1935model  and I suspect that this car was originally fitted with a Standard 10/12 sidevalve engine. It would therefore have been correctly called an Avon Standard 10/12. The SS (later Jaguar) overhead valve engine fitted to your car would have been a few years later so I doubt it was the original fitment. I suspect that improves the performance somewhat

Phil Homer, Webmaster

Feb, 2006

Andrew took this car to the Standard Register National Rally in 1961 and he has sent me photographs of other Avons at that event. Come back shortly to see a feature on them.

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