14-05-2020, 10:10 AM
About five years ago I posted on the old forum about the remains of a SWB Arrow Foursome that we had discovered in NZ, The car is owned by a friend of mine and after years of research as well as the restoration of a 16/6 he is about to make a start on the job in earnest. How fortuitous then that I had an email arrive a couple of days back form a chap who had read the thread and decided to contact me. He was saying that he wondered if it was his old car and describe a few features together with the name of a person who owned the car after him.....they matched exactly. What follows is the story that he then related to me and has agreed that I can share with you, enjoy:
What an extraordinary story!
The ‘bug’ as we used to call was built in 1932 at the Arrow works in west London and was first registered in Bournemouth. LJ was a Bournemouth registry code at that time. I have no history prior to my purchase except that the young couple I bought from had recently made a tour of Scotland in it! It gets worse, they took his parents and their baby too!! That must have been a round trip of at least 1,000 miles. All that probably explained why the clutch slipped which it did regularly due to a little oil ingress, seemingly a common problem with 7s.
I found the car on the street in Lymington, Hampshire in 1957 where I lived and regularly drove down to Devon (pursuing a girl!) a round trip of over 150 miles. Then I took it to London, where I was working, for a year or so where the car was safely parked just behind Buckingham Palace.
In 1960 my brother and I drove to the Côte d’Azur in south of France via the Massif Central mountains; it took 4 days each way so we only had about 4 days in St Tropez! Quite a trip that was, about 2,500 miles and the Bug was much admired by the French even pushing us into an old crocks event in a town called la Chaise Dieu. We got very drunk that evening and slept in a field! The car worked perfectly until we got back to the north when the starter motor jammed, a very large French mechanic just stood on the starter handle and it freed.
Then my attention was caught by a Lotus 6 (1957 I think and enormous fun) and I sprinted and raced that several times at Brands Hatch. I then sold car to my brother Ivan. He was training to be a surveyor in the Isle of Wight and Jimmy was his ‘mentor’ in an estate agency there. The car was passed on to Jimmy as it needed some attention and my brother had moved on. That would have been around 1963/4, Ivan cannot remember. From that moment on we lost touch with Jimmy except that he had emigrated.
However, at some point during the 1980s I was wondering what had happened to the car as I had seen another restoration Arrow on the market for about £30,000! I still had connections in the IoW and put out feelers and found that Jimmy had emigrated to NZ, somewhere right down south. I wrote a letter to him to be passed on by a mutual acquaintance but I don’t think it ever got to him. Not long after that I was told Jimmy was over to move all his stuff from one barn to another in IoW. But he had gone by the time I got on the trail and it all went cold. I think the car was in bits by then, but not certain. So it was extraordinary coincidence that I followed a 7 trail to find your info online.
As for your queries, I regret we do not have the log book which was passed to Jimmy, so says my brother. I have found a couple of photos but I have more somewhere and am still looking. I do have a Pitmans A 7 handbook, last reprint version 1959, but you may have one already. Let me know if you would like it and I will post.
I think Jimmy must have dissembled the car and sent it to NZ in the mid ‘80s but not sure.
My brother, not a great tech fellow, would very much like to have news of Jimmy so by all means pass my address to his wife.
Photos to follow shortly.
Best of luck with the project and please let me have some news occasionally.
Best wishes
Andrew
What an extraordinary story!
The ‘bug’ as we used to call was built in 1932 at the Arrow works in west London and was first registered in Bournemouth. LJ was a Bournemouth registry code at that time. I have no history prior to my purchase except that the young couple I bought from had recently made a tour of Scotland in it! It gets worse, they took his parents and their baby too!! That must have been a round trip of at least 1,000 miles. All that probably explained why the clutch slipped which it did regularly due to a little oil ingress, seemingly a common problem with 7s.
I found the car on the street in Lymington, Hampshire in 1957 where I lived and regularly drove down to Devon (pursuing a girl!) a round trip of over 150 miles. Then I took it to London, where I was working, for a year or so where the car was safely parked just behind Buckingham Palace.
In 1960 my brother and I drove to the Côte d’Azur in south of France via the Massif Central mountains; it took 4 days each way so we only had about 4 days in St Tropez! Quite a trip that was, about 2,500 miles and the Bug was much admired by the French even pushing us into an old crocks event in a town called la Chaise Dieu. We got very drunk that evening and slept in a field! The car worked perfectly until we got back to the north when the starter motor jammed, a very large French mechanic just stood on the starter handle and it freed.
Then my attention was caught by a Lotus 6 (1957 I think and enormous fun) and I sprinted and raced that several times at Brands Hatch. I then sold car to my brother Ivan. He was training to be a surveyor in the Isle of Wight and Jimmy was his ‘mentor’ in an estate agency there. The car was passed on to Jimmy as it needed some attention and my brother had moved on. That would have been around 1963/4, Ivan cannot remember. From that moment on we lost touch with Jimmy except that he had emigrated.
However, at some point during the 1980s I was wondering what had happened to the car as I had seen another restoration Arrow on the market for about £30,000! I still had connections in the IoW and put out feelers and found that Jimmy had emigrated to NZ, somewhere right down south. I wrote a letter to him to be passed on by a mutual acquaintance but I don’t think it ever got to him. Not long after that I was told Jimmy was over to move all his stuff from one barn to another in IoW. But he had gone by the time I got on the trail and it all went cold. I think the car was in bits by then, but not certain. So it was extraordinary coincidence that I followed a 7 trail to find your info online.
As for your queries, I regret we do not have the log book which was passed to Jimmy, so says my brother. I have found a couple of photos but I have more somewhere and am still looking. I do have a Pitmans A 7 handbook, last reprint version 1959, but you may have one already. Let me know if you would like it and I will post.
I think Jimmy must have dissembled the car and sent it to NZ in the mid ‘80s but not sure.
My brother, not a great tech fellow, would very much like to have news of Jimmy so by all means pass my address to his wife.
Photos to follow shortly.
Best of luck with the project and please let me have some news occasionally.
Best wishes
Andrew
Black Art Enthusiast