Recollections

Cyridwen**

Originally registered on 1st July 1934, VY 5618 is shown, on the earliest ‘log book’ I have for it, as a red Austin Seven tourer. This registration document – issued by Northamptonshire County Council in December1960 shows the car at that time owned by a John Wm. A. Honeyfield of Northampton. Nothing much appears to be known about its earlier history but when contacted by me in 1989, Mr Honeyfield told me it was already a fitted with a Speedex 750 body when he’d bought the car in early 1960 through an advert. in the 750 Motor Club Bulletin “as a runner from the man in Hertfordshire who’d put it together and started to race it”. For about a year Mr. H ran the car (competing 6 or 7 times in Club events) and he recalled selling it on to someone called ‘Foster’.

Cyridwen by Ian Clayton.

Ian has been the initiator and brains behind the SPEEDEX Information Exchange. Here he describes how his 750 was restored and the typical none technical problems that all special builders face.

I was offered the car, somewhat deteriorated by storage in a leaky shed, in 1971 by a Twickenham work colleague named Mike Fuller who had “had it a good few years” and had briefly flirted with 750 formula events until he ran out of track at Snetterton and was obviously so worried by the cars lightness that he ‘put the car away and forgot it” (as he prepared and raced a much tuned and modded Austin Healey 3000 in Club events, I can understand his concern at the difference). My brother Peter and I shared the purchase price of £10.- I was financially overcommitted with a wife, 2 small children, a mortgage and running another Austin 7 and an old Ford at the time. VY 5618 sat for several years at the bottom of our parents garden until around 1978 Peter and I decided to split the car –He was to have the body and marry it to another Austin 7 chassis we had acquired and I would retain the chassis and mechanicals to build a more traditionally ‘vintage’ special. The bodyshell duly went off to Peters home in Bournemouth where his small boys proceeded to use it as a trampoline!!

More years passed. My ‘other Austin 7’, a 1930 saloon, was sold and was replaced by a Riley 9 but I had obviously been bitten hard at an early age by the ‘Seven’ bug and began to feel the urge to do something about the Speedex bits in my shed. I was aware that Jem Marsh and his Speedex firm had ‘grown up’ into the ‘Marcos’ concern and, with other 750 constructors and tuning equipment/ bodyshell companies like Cambridge Engineering, Super Accessories, Dante and Hamblin, had significantly contributed to the development of the British sportscar scene. It seemed sensible therefore to try to ‘restore’ the car to as near as I could to a specification that it might have been enjoying around 1960. I wouldn’t intend to race it so a ‘road’ version would be built – incorporating as many Speedex supplied parts and extras as I could. The Speedex 750 bodyshell remains came back from my brothers –to the delight of his wife –and over the months and years of Autojumble visiting, the parts pile grew.

Back in the early days of owning the Speedex 750 I’d managed to buy from Russell Kingsford-Curram, Kingsbridge Devon, a set of unused Speedex alloy wheels and Firestone tyres which had been fitted to an unfinished ‘750’ he’d discovered in a garage (he subsequently used the mechanical parts on another special and the Speedex body became part of Nick Lacey-Hulberts 750). A pair of broken Speedex seats came from a friend in Berkhamstead who’d found them full of water on the roof of the shed when he moved into a new home and I found a Speedex rev. counter on a stall at a VSCC Silverstone meeting.

The 1980’s had come and gone. I’d divorced, moved, remarried and still the Speedex 750 was sitting there – it hadn’t been worked on at all although I’d also by then found an unused Speedex ‘Silverstone’ bodyshell and started a second cache of parts to accompany it. This bought me into contact with Russell James who had started up a ‘Silverstone Register’ but this wasn’t very long lived. It was however the catalyst that set me off on initiating the search for other Speedex owners that later became the ’Speedex Information Exchange’.

Came 1991 and at last I started the sporadic rebuild of my 750 that was to continue for the next 13 years. The bodyshell had suffered its trampling and long exposure to the elements, the framing was very rusty at the bottom tubes, quite a lot of the alloy skin had oxydised, and the engine remains, although mostly complete but dismantled, were very suspect. The rear deck had at some stage prior to my ownership been cut about and a large 18” diameter hole was in the centre (for what I don’t know but a dustbin lid fitted into it exactly) I decided that as a road car was envisaged that I’d create a proper boot lid retaining the original deck shape.. The outer skin was stripped off, the rusty tubing replaced (the nose section was also made removable). I restored the chassis which had been’ boxed’ by the 750’s original constructor and added a scuttle hoop and stronger outriggers using angle iron salvaged from an old bed frame of my Grandmothers ( never throw old material away* – it might be useful one day). The shell was re-skinned with new aluminium –curves bent over a convenient local telephone pole –then fitted to the chassis and spraypainted red, the original mudguards de-dented and bolted on ( the ‘removeable’ front stays fixed permanently for my intended road use).