Another mystery car

[galro]

droopsnoot said:

My geography is hopeless so I don't know how close to Victoria this is, but we used to have a customer in Addison Avenue near Holland Park, when I visited there I seem to recall parking in the centre of the road.

ETA - might just have been near there, not actually that road. Perhaps somewhere I was driving around looking for parking space.

Edited by droopsnoot on Friday 4th December 13:22

It appears like you're right as this is claimed to be a old picture of Addison Avenue:



However I have not found any more historical pictures of the street. Here in Norway we have a website with with over a million historical pictures of Norwegian sities and sights ( https://digitaltmuseum.no/ ). Do anything similar exist for the UK/London?

[Roy C]

Central parking was common in areas just outside the West End in that era.
AFAIK cars still park along the middle of Hamilton Terrace (St John's wood / Maida Vale), although this may now be residents only.

[LotusOmega375D]

Is that the sound of straws I hear being clutched at?

I can't see how the geography of 1960s London is going to solve the riddle. Unless someone genuinely knows what this is, it may just remain a mystery like that dumpy French coupé a while back.

[galro]

It was a commonly seen parked in a specific street then I would have thought it would be possible to find historic pictures of that street with it in. Of course that by itself do not solve it but at least you could perhaps have been able to see it from other angles.

[Hugo a Gogo]

if it was the same car
if you could find the street (should be easy, how many streets can there be within 5 miles of central London (unless of course it was 6 miles out...)
if there was a picture of the street from the right period
if that picture showed this car
and if that picture showed a better angle than this one with it dead centre

then yeah, that would be a great help

[galro]

I don't know how many streets there were that fitted the discription. I'm not that familiar with the current layout of London let alone how it was 1970s. If they were dime a dozen then of course it would make it impossible, but if they were quite rare then I don't think it would be. If you gave the same description of a historic sight in Oslo then I would have been able to tell you pretty fast that the only place that come close to your description would be the former street in fron the city hall and the square/street in front of the old Shell building. I would also be able to find plenty of historic pictures and numerous aerials from various periods of it. I'm also able in general to find many historical pictures of the few unique cars that existed here (like here: http://digitaltmuseum.no/011013499124#&gid=1&a... ) but I don't know how good they have been at making historical pictures available for online consumption in the UK?

Edited by galro on Friday 4th December 17:57

[williamp]

Do we know why the picture was taken? Was it a publicity shot for the car? A general street scene?

[restoman]

Still waiting to be told where the OP got the picture from . . . .

[restoman]

Hugo a Gogo said:

if it was the same car
if you could find the street (should be easy, how many streets can there be within 5 miles of central London (unless of course it was 6 miles out...)
if there was a picture of the street from the right period
if that picture showed this car
and if that picture showed a better angle than this one with it dead centre

then yeah, that would be a great help

I don't think you are taking this seriously . . . . .

[threespires]

restoman said:

Still waiting to be told where the OP got the picture from . . . .

Sorry - I hadn't seen the request..

I got it off a Facebook post. Nobody there has any idea either.
I believe there are other places where it's ID has drawn a blank.

[vixen1700]

threespires said:

I believe there are other places where it's ID has drawn a blank.

So another one of these then.

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...

[996TT02]

Looks like a glassfibre rebodied Spitfire or Herald. Due to separate chassis, relatively easy. Also, bonnet setup is the same, and so is driving position in relation to rear wheels.

Proportions, size, right, look at the GT6

Edited by 996TT02 on Saturday 5th December 19:12

[sun.and.rain]

Ginetta? Which model?

Gt6, herald, etc, has longer wheelbase.

It's a real puzzler. Have searched through kit cars, prototypes, etc. Still looking. Good luck to anyone else searching for mystery car:-)

[torquespeak]

The photograph was definitely taken before April 1964, so it cannot possibly be an aftermarket fibreglass job done on a car that wasn't even around then...

Furthermore, I believe it was taken no earlier than 1960 either.

All examples of the bus model (RTW) running the number 15 route in this image were withdrawn from that route by April 1964.

All examples of the bus model (RTL) running route number 7 were withdrawn by July 1964, but given the date above is earlier, this fact is unimportant.

As someone said early on, there is a Ford 105E in the frame. This car was launched at the 1959 London Motor Show, which didn't take place until late October that year. I think we can safely assume that there wouldn't have been one swanning around Oxford Street until 1960 at the earliest.

As I said elsewhere in this thread, I'm sure that this particular Haig advert only ran on the buses from 1959-1961, so I would be pretty confident in placing this photo at some point between early 1960 and late 1961.

-Ed

-- As an aside, while the RTW model bus on route 15 in this photo was withdrawn from that route before April 1964, for the next two years it remained in the UK on other routes/storage. In December 1966 it was purchased by the then Ceylon Transport Board, and shipped to Sri Lanka (then the Dominion of Ceylon) --

[Speed 3]

Just a thought, are the registrations per year available in some sort of archive ? If they were and you worked backwards from 1962 with image search software (assuming scans of paper records unless someone's created a database) u could eliminate all the mainstream manufacturers and see whats left. To me it looks like there is an adhesive number plate on the bonnet and the two end characters appear to be like 2's, 3's or J's.

[The Surveyor]

Speed 3 said:

Just a thought, are the registrations per year available in some sort of archive ? If they were and you worked backwards from 1962 with image search software (assuming scans of paper records unless someone's created a database) u could eliminate all the mainstream manufacturers and see whats left. To me it looks like there is an adhesive number plate on the bonnet and the two end characters appear to be like 2's, 3's or J's.

Nice idea, but if this was a rebodied Ford, then you will still be left with an awful lot of 'Fords'.

Something about the wheels and the very short wheelbase keeps bringing me back to the Berkeley but just can't find anything even similar.

[sim16v]

Fascinating thread and great to read about when buses finished service, I love reading stuff like that!

Someone mentioned Fairthorpe on another forum so I had a search of those and happened on this, an EB Debonair

I thought it had a similar wheelbase and overhangs, but really it is completely different!



The Fairthorpe Sports Car Club also mentions a few other specials that could be followed up on.

http://www.fairthorpescc.com/

I also found this website that lists a lot of Ford specials, but some still have no details.


http://www.fordspecials.co.uk/index.html

[threespires]

996TT02 said:

Looks like a glassfibre rebodied Spitfire or Herald. Due to separate chassis, relatively easy. Also, bonnet setup is the same, and so is driving position in relation to rear wheels.

Proportions, size, right, look at the GT6

Edited by 996TT02 on Saturday 5th December 19:12

Something that confuses me and is illustrated in these two pictures.

Notice how the rear wheel encroaches into the passenger compartment of the Mystery car
I can't see how the designer managed to get a seat in there.

[AndrewCrown]

21924... and many others I'm sure...
This mystery can absorb huge amounts of time... I'm trying to wean myself off it, as hours can pass by in this forensic search... I've started using different language searches.. German, Italian, French... so many tantalisingly close stuff on here... http://www.icbdb.altervista.org/index.php
Last night I was revisiting Harry Webster (Standard-Triumph) and his relationship with Michelotti...
The headlights on the Zebu project got me going down another line of enquiry.. see below... and there are shades of this in the Triumph TR-S and the Triumph TR3 Speciale (Vignale)1957...
Then I found another Harry... Harry Ferguson... and there was something similar about the wheel arches on his R5 prototype..

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Edited by AndrewCrown on Sunday 6th December 13:04

Edited by AndrewCrown on Sunday 6th December 13:04

[threespires]