(24-01-2018, 09:14 AM)Albert S Wrote: Has anyone ever taken a sounding of how many "original" cars are still with us,or coined a registry of such rare creatures ?
I've been searching for several years for a genuine Ulster with no success ... in a market that's awash with incredibly rare exotica the Austin Sports is indeed a unicorn.
It would be very interesting to know how many genuine Ulster based cars survive out of the circa 180 produced,but I doubt we will ever find out. Several enthusiasts have lists of cars they have personally researched and rightly or wrongly prefer to keep the information to themselves.
It gets more difficult when a vehicle is exported and the registration is separated from the car,or the number is "stolen" off a car.I knew a row of 3 survivors which all lost their registration numbers.
I think many of the cars now sell through word of mouth rather than advertising.There was one advertised in the VSCC a while ago,correct late engine, Reg and Big back axle £35k at the time.
Albert,consider a good replica you will have just as much,or more fun driving and owning it as an original car.
Dave's right. I know of two well known and original cars that have changed hands in the last 18 months or so but all done by word of mouth, no advertising. There are lists of known genuine cars about but people are very reluctant to put them into the public domain as once all those details are out there, cloning becomes much, much easier, particularly of cars that have been exported from the UK. The advice to look for a good replica is right as well as they are just as much fun (and they are great fun). I wouldn't want to be without mine.
There is a fairly recent 'new' find well documented here - the Bowerbank car - and some continuous histories starting to be added for cars which are a bit better known: https://ulster7.wordpress.com
If indeed only 48 sports ‘ulsters’ were produced in 1930 then they must have made a stock of bodies which I am sceptical... my cars body is 81 and must have been assembled in Nov or Dec 30 as it was originally shipped Jan 31.
As far as numbers of EA Sports built, mine is number 125, registered August, '31. And here is where it gets interesting. The G/B is stamped 214 S, so definitely a 3 speed sports box. Presumably, then, at least 214 were produced. My car is not on the register as it is a B4 and no ledgers exist. I have some records going back to the late fifties/early sixties, with some racing in the seventies. Floorpan is original, body is vintage late 80's.
Unless I’m mistaken sports chassis were exported so some sports parts/ rolling chassis may not have been ‘ulsters’. It’s just the idea of having a quantity of the body’s sat there I find hard to believe.
Chris - you are so right. Because of the contemporary Australian Import conditions, only one out of three imported cars were allowed in with a complete "foreign" body (and that with a very high tariff). So quite a few Ulster rolling chassis complete with genuine mechanicals arrived here. They were placed under all sorts of locally-built bodies, thus the difficulty in recognising an AE here. Because of this most "Experts" in the UK don't recognise our sports and supersports as kosher and ignore recording our details, even though only the bodies may look different.. Rant over. Cheers, Bill in Oz
11-12-2020, 05:46 AM (This post was last modified: 11-12-2020, 05:49 AM by Tony Johns.)
Following on from Bill's post, the Ulster gearbox that I purchased here in Melbourne in the early 1960's would have come from one of the original rolling chassis exported to Australia without bodywork to reduce Customs Duties. Please note this is a recent photograph and the alloy remote was not there when I owned the car.
Mike Costigan made mention of the high taxes involved with importing complete cars on the Australian Austin thread a day ago.
Tony Johns
Tony and Bill - if it was easy to know the list of Australian 'kit' Sports chassis numbers (are they all on survivors register?) between '29 and '32, then it would be far easier to work out if they are "officially" EA-related, as they would alert everyone to clusters in the ledger positions which no longer exist. Can you post them here or send? That is the only way to locate the batches in B2, B4 and B5, other than by the few incidences where there are little registration 'runs' suggested on obviously similar cars.
Chris - yours in a B2 car and there were probably over 50 EA cars in B2 based on likely original chassis/body combinations further up the series (albeit with some big gaps of unfound or now 'sleeper'/identity-unobvious cars...), so your car seems perfectly correct to me. It also sits in a fairly obvious but small cluster/batch which could be further developed with more cars coming out of hiding to extend its range at either end.
