13-05-2023, 08:22 PM
The ship of Theseus
This afternoon I sat down in my favorite café and went through the papers which I got together with my newly purchased van. Exciting! The van was once a classic "barn find".
The car was manufactured in February 1935 with chassis number 215985 and engine number 216357 and was delivered to a Cambridgeshire baker in March of the same year. He used the car for his bakery until 1940. After that, the traces of both the wagon and its owner are lost. He may have been drafted into military service and passed away, but that's just speculation. In any case, according to the documents, neither he nor his car turned up again after the war.
In 1989, 49 years later (sic!), a Mr. John Spauls finds the car in some overgrown garden, possibly under the open sky since 1940: completely rusted, the roof has collapsed, the chassis has sunk into the ground, the fenders are leaning on the wheels, the doors lay next to it. For any of us, the car would probably have been stone dead, but Mr. Spauls - to whom we cannot thank enough - restored the car from the ground up. And he was obviously a "rivet counter" who reconstructed absolutely every component as faithfully as possible to the original.
The chassis could not be saved, so he bought an identical one from an RP saloon as a parts donor. This bears the number 192374 and was manufactured in March 1934, probably around March 20th. hereabouts. The front end also comes from an RP sedan, the entire rear end is new. There are endless invoices from all sorts of companies that were somehow involved in the work, and the Seven Workshop also supplied many parts.
So there is not much left of the original bakery wagon, after all the engine and transmission were there from the bakery days. Of course, they were completely overhauled at the time. Because he couldn't get the stuck pistons out of the block, Mr. Spauls put the whole engine in the freezer for a few days (sic!), after that it was fine with a little hammering. It's all in his restoration diary, which he also kept. His perfectionism went so far that he asked the city archives for photos so that he could reproduce the labeling of the bakery back then. Unfortunately, nobody could help him in this matter, so he made a deal with an existing bakery and stuck their advertisement on the car.
Now we come to the subject of «First registration in 1992». At that time, the bakery trolley had the registration number AVE 375, which could be determined from the fragments found in the garden. With his urge for the greatest possible authenticity, he wanted to put this original registration number on his car again. But because in England the numbers are tied to the chassis number, this was not so easy, because - we remember - the chassis was no longer the original one. The never-ending correspondence with the most diverse authorities, clubs, the British Industry Association, etc. proves this. As a result, he was finally informed: "The number is no longer in the register, if you want the AVE 375, you have to re-register the car". And that's what he did in May 1992.
After Mr. Spauls' death the wagon came into the Goodman collection, who replaced the Bakery signage with his own, which currently survives. Now this will also have to go (it is only glued on), because I will now have our own company logo glued on. Of course not the real thing, that's far too modern and technocratic, but one that's adapted to the style of the time. It won't bother Mr. Goodman anymore, because he's no longer with us either.
Conclusion: I now have a car that is three things at the same time: a restored original, a not original, but genuine chassis with a rebuild and a replica from 1992. It's like the ship of Theseus, a dialectical approach: is the car original or not ? The original chassis number has disappeared, and yet the car is still alive, although strictly speaking everything around the engine was freshly composed with used and new parts. But in the end it doesn't matter to me, I really just want to drive. But first of all there is still a bit of work to be done, the way it is now it cannot be approved. More on that later, here on this channel.
This afternoon I sat down in my favorite café and went through the papers which I got together with my newly purchased van. Exciting! The van was once a classic "barn find".
The car was manufactured in February 1935 with chassis number 215985 and engine number 216357 and was delivered to a Cambridgeshire baker in March of the same year. He used the car for his bakery until 1940. After that, the traces of both the wagon and its owner are lost. He may have been drafted into military service and passed away, but that's just speculation. In any case, according to the documents, neither he nor his car turned up again after the war.
In 1989, 49 years later (sic!), a Mr. John Spauls finds the car in some overgrown garden, possibly under the open sky since 1940: completely rusted, the roof has collapsed, the chassis has sunk into the ground, the fenders are leaning on the wheels, the doors lay next to it. For any of us, the car would probably have been stone dead, but Mr. Spauls - to whom we cannot thank enough - restored the car from the ground up. And he was obviously a "rivet counter" who reconstructed absolutely every component as faithfully as possible to the original.
The chassis could not be saved, so he bought an identical one from an RP saloon as a parts donor. This bears the number 192374 and was manufactured in March 1934, probably around March 20th. hereabouts. The front end also comes from an RP sedan, the entire rear end is new. There are endless invoices from all sorts of companies that were somehow involved in the work, and the Seven Workshop also supplied many parts.
So there is not much left of the original bakery wagon, after all the engine and transmission were there from the bakery days. Of course, they were completely overhauled at the time. Because he couldn't get the stuck pistons out of the block, Mr. Spauls put the whole engine in the freezer for a few days (sic!), after that it was fine with a little hammering. It's all in his restoration diary, which he also kept. His perfectionism went so far that he asked the city archives for photos so that he could reproduce the labeling of the bakery back then. Unfortunately, nobody could help him in this matter, so he made a deal with an existing bakery and stuck their advertisement on the car.
Now we come to the subject of «First registration in 1992». At that time, the bakery trolley had the registration number AVE 375, which could be determined from the fragments found in the garden. With his urge for the greatest possible authenticity, he wanted to put this original registration number on his car again. But because in England the numbers are tied to the chassis number, this was not so easy, because - we remember - the chassis was no longer the original one. The never-ending correspondence with the most diverse authorities, clubs, the British Industry Association, etc. proves this. As a result, he was finally informed: "The number is no longer in the register, if you want the AVE 375, you have to re-register the car". And that's what he did in May 1992.
After Mr. Spauls' death the wagon came into the Goodman collection, who replaced the Bakery signage with his own, which currently survives. Now this will also have to go (it is only glued on), because I will now have our own company logo glued on. Of course not the real thing, that's far too modern and technocratic, but one that's adapted to the style of the time. It won't bother Mr. Goodman anymore, because he's no longer with us either.
Conclusion: I now have a car that is three things at the same time: a restored original, a not original, but genuine chassis with a rebuild and a replica from 1992. It's like the ship of Theseus, a dialectical approach: is the car original or not ? The original chassis number has disappeared, and yet the car is still alive, although strictly speaking everything around the engine was freshly composed with used and new parts. But in the end it doesn't matter to me, I really just want to drive. But first of all there is still a bit of work to be done, the way it is now it cannot be approved. More on that later, here on this channel.
