Peter Hibbert hails from Queensland in Australia. He is the proud owner of a Standard Flying 12C which was the last iteration of the 12 before the war broke out and carries Independent Front Suspension. It was exported from the UK as a rolling chassis and then bodied by T.J Richards with their own design of bodywork. I will describe the Richards body later.
Peter tells us the story of his car in his own words:
“In June 2003 my wife Tricia and I attended a motor car swap meet which I seem to recall was at Samford, a small town outside of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia. There, in whatever glory it had - which was not much, was a Flying Standard. As it has turned out over the last 19 years or so since, it seems I was one of a rare breed who had even heard of one- let alone knew of them, or worse, had driven or actually owned one.
I knew of them because when I was 11 years old in 1956, my father bought a 1948 Flying 14 in which he drove us all around Tasmania until 1965 when he sold it to my older brother who drove it for a year or so when he traded it in on a Triumph Herald, which I think he drove into the ground. Anyway, that all qualifies my entire family as Standard stalwarts and brings me back to the present- or at least to 2003 when the sum of $A2500 (£1400 odd in UK language) made me this Flying Standard 12C’s new owner.
He had driven it from Melbourne to Brisbane, some 1800 kilometres (1100 miles), and then drove it to my home. As he departed he took the registration plates off it and vanished in his mate's car.
On my first drive, I found that it had over a full turn of backlash in the steering. How he got it here I do not know, but after re-bushing etc. and reducing it now to a gentle drift occasionally, I have spent the last 18 years (with plenty of holidays too), restoring the engine, drive dampers, re-wiring the electricals, renovating the upholstery, dash instruments, window glass- the list goes on, I finally registered it in November 2021.
Then the fun started, as anyone who has ‘finished’ a restoration knows. Radiator flush, electric fuel pump, solid state regulator, gearbox noise, oil leaks from the engine- Oh yes, and even a windscreen wiper blade that cost $40 (22.45 GBP). The oil leak turned out to be my badly cut gasket behind the front engine mounting plate which was preventing the oil from returning to the sump, so it flowed past the crankshaft oil slinger, and the noisy gearbox was- is, still, actually the differential which I removed only last week and took it to the local ‘diff-fixer-upper’.
So far I have run it on only two local club runs here in Queensland, but with the differential soon fixed and all the noises gone [I hope!]- who knows the future? Photos are taken in my backyard.”
Notes on T.J. Richards of Adelaide. The company was founded in 1916 and was later called Richards Industries. They specialised in building bodies on imported chassis from many of the world’s leading manufacturers, including Standard. As time went by, they concentrated more on bodies for U.S. manufacturers. The process was designed to accommodate the Australian laws that limited the number of completed cars that could be imported, thus encouraging local manufacture.
The bodies on Standards closely replicated the factory bodies, but with obvious differences, as can be seen on Peter’s Flying 12. The wings, bonnet and radiator grille, possibly because they were the most complex to make, were imported from Coventry, but the rest of the body, glass and interior trim were sourced locally. Note that no Richards cars appear to have had a sunroof, whilst all the factory cars had one fitted.
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Phil Homer
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Standard Motor Club
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