Richards bodied Standard 8 in Australia

Hi Phil,

I have  a Standard 8 and I will try to send you a photo.

It's a 1946 model built by Richards and its got a little badge with Richards on the bottom of the fender

Norm Johnson.

Many thanks Norm, this is the first good picture of the  Richards of Adelaide bodywork on the postwar Standard 8 tourer that I have been able to publish on the site. If you know any history of the car or of Richards, I would be grateful to receive it.

The only snippet of information that "Google" can turn up about T.J. Richards Pty. Ltd., Adelaide, South Australia.  is that Chrysler purchased Chrysler Dodge Distributors and T.J. Richards in 1951, combining the two into Chrysler Australia Limited.

If any of our readers know anything of T J Richards's history, please post it on our messageboard

Phil Homer

The following was added on 22nd May 2005 to our messageboard but I have reproduced it here as so very few of you seem to be able to use the messageboard:

"My Great Grand father, TJ Richards,  began Richards Motor Body Builders in Adelaide South Australia. I have been doing research on our family's history and noticed your article on the Standard Motor club's Website

You can contact my cousin, Ray Emmett who developed Emmett Building Contractors in Adelaide and also owned Adelaide Motors and knows a lot of the history. Also Mitsubishi at Tonsley Park have honoured our heritage and have a lot of the history in their publications and at the Plant. They still use some of the presses from our old factory site at Keswick. You might be interested to know that my cousin Maurice Richards developed the welding process that formed the first hard top (unibody) sedans in our plants. We did the bodies of all the Chrysler products; Dodge, DeSoto, Plymouth and also my cousin Bill had the Studebaker line. My grandfather H E Richards was killed in 1928 on a motor bike riding with his head down in a rain storm by running into the back of a horse and "dray" in Hurtle Square with the just signed first Motor Body Contract for Chrysler Products in his pocket. The company was then taken by my Uncle Claude who had no children and was raising my Dad Henry Erlstone to take over the management when the family was forced to sell to Chrysler who threatened to take away their "engines", as SA had at that point not developed the smelting process for the alloys to build engines. It was in effect the first hostile takeover of an Australian company. That was the end of doing business by the "shake of a hand"! Anyway there is much to tell and you can also contact my brother Brian E Richards who has done quite a bit of research on the motor car family history. He lives at Payneham.

All the best.. I actually did not know that we had built Standard vehicles... Brian actually possessed one for awhile himself.

Milt Richards

Thanks Milt, 

I will indeed contact the members of your family that you mention. I am sure that Richards's involvement with Standard will be a fascinating topic for me to document on this website

Phil Homer