2011 British Car Festival is Just Four Months Away

Fairhope, Alabama is the place to be on October 22. The 21st Annual British Car Festival is going to debut at its new site - on the South Lawn of Faulkner State Community College in beautiful downtown Fairhope.

In the meantime, here's an image of a poster of the event -  come the next SABCC meeting on July 25th to pick up a few.

Built Like a Cannon - Goes Like a Bullet

That would be the motto of the Royal Enfield motorcycle concern that, sadly, went defunct in the 1970s. Starting out as Enfield Manufacturing Company in 1893 as a manufacturer of bicycles, the firm licensed the "Royal" portion of its name from the crown in 1911. The firm built several models for the both the British and Imperial Russian armies during World War I and even sold models with machine guns mounted.

After the second World War, Royal Enfield motorcycles were imported tot he US badged as Indians from 1955 thorough 1959. Riders at the time thought them to be a pale imitation of the classic American bike. 

Royal Enfield found a large market in India in 1949 and by 1955, "Enfields" were being built in India to meet the demand. Originally sold to the police and military markets in India, the cheap-to-run motorcycles became an aspiration of many Indian workers. 

The British Royal Enfield concern was wound up in 1971 and the only place on earth that Enfield motorcycles were produced was India. They continued production under the Enfield name until 1995 when the rights to the Royal Enfield name were acquired by the Indian Firm.

Today, Royal Enfield motorcycles are available nearly world wide and all of them come the factory in Chennai, India. 

Check this video of a craftsman hand painting the gold pinstriping on a fuel tank at the Royal Enfield factory:



I have a strong desire to own one these 500CC single cylinder "thumpers". Wish me luck.

Classic British... Tools?

An ABINGDON girder wrench

The annual trek to Magnolia Springs to attend the St. John's Catholic Church lawn party is one that I've come to enjoy. In addition to the fine food, music and antique agricultural equipment on display, there is a fascinating display of antique tools brought by one of the parishioners. While it is only a small part of his collection, the variety of tools on display is truly astounding.

I noticed that he had a number of intriguing wrenches on display bearing names such as "ABINGDON" and "Joseph Lucas". Yep, it turns out that it is the same Abingdon and Joseph Lucas that you've heard of before.

The Abingdon on the wrench is the name of a handtool manufacturer located in Abingdon - the same Abingdon famous for building MGs for 50 years. Abingdon Engineering made a wide range of equipment including motorcycles, chains and gearboxes. At the turn of the twentieth century, the firm concentrated on hand tools exclusively. 

A Joseph Lucas girder wrench

Most British car enthusiasts know the products of Abingdon Engineering by their trade name, King Dick, from the screw jacks and other hand tools found in the tool kits of classic British cars.   

The Lucas hand tool line on the other hand, is not that well known outside the UK. The firm known to us for their automotive electrical equipment and instruments (through the Smiths brand) was a maker of small metal goods in the nineteenth century. One of their main lines was small handtools such as the Joseph Lucas girder wrench in the photo I shot at Magnolia Springs.

If you haven't been to the St. John's lawn party with the club, I suggest that you add it to your calendar next year. The tools on display make it worth the trip alone.

SABCC Wine Tasting - Saturday, June 25th

Vino e Birra - Daphne, AL

Join your friends from the South Alabama British Car Club at the club wine tasting on Saturday, June 25th at Vino e Birra at 790 Daphne Avenue in Old Town Daphne.

We’ll meet at the wine shop at 7:00PM for a blind tasting of 6 fine wines.  We’ll have a brief educational session that will explain the differences and characteristics of some of the well-known varieties followed by a ‘blind’ tasting where we will use our new found knowledge to identify the wines.

There is a fee of $12.00 per person payable at the event to cover the cost of the wines provided. The club will have some cheeses and crackers on hand to enhance the wine tasting and help cleanse the pallet between tastings.

The wines to be sampled will be available for purchase if you happen to find one you really enjoy.  The proprietors are looking forward to our event and have promised us a fine experience. 

I  hope to see you there!

Annual SABCC Picnic and Al Fresco Club Meeting

The British car parking area

June has been the traditional month for the annual SABCC family picnic. Why we chose the one of the hotter months of the year is beyond me, but it is a well attended event - sweltering weather or not. Once again, the club membership asked to return to the lovely Oscar Johnson Memorial Park in quaint Silverhill, Alabama. We were very pleased to see that the small town made a few improvements to the park -  one of them being a pint-sized covered bridge across the creek that borders the park.

John Shaw gives Sandy Walter a preview

In a slight break from the traditional hamburger and hot dog fare, our own John and Barbara Shaw offered to treat the club to a chicken and sausage jambalaya lunch. The club membership brought along various dessert and salad dishes to share on the serving table.

The line forms here

John and Barbara arrived early at the park to set up their very impressive jambalaya cooking rig and get the south Louisiana treat on to cook. A cast iron coking pot sat in the middle of a gas burner on wheels simmering away and perfuming the east side of town with the mouth watering aroma of lunch. Ron Wolverton and Becky Kramer along with Richard Cunningham dropped by early to help with the dining arrangements in the pavilion. By the time the majority of the membership arrived, the serving table was covered in tasty dishes and the jambalaya was ready to serve.

Grace was said by Philip Kreis and the line formed for lunch. Heaping plates of good things to eat were carried to the picnic tables and the conversation died down to near silence while the hungry crowd ate. Soon, seconds were deemed to be in order and they were found to be as delicious as the first helpings.

Jack Ross models his headgear

Club President, Noel Eagleson, sensed that appetites were sated enough that the business portion of the meeting could begin. First on the agenda was selection of a charity to receive a donation from part of British Car Festival's proceeds. It was determined by the membership that we will make a donation to Faulkner State Community College - Fairhope Campus for use as the school sees fit. It was pointed out in the discussion prior to the vote that we have used the Faulkner facilities for club activities for a number years and the school has never asked for any fee or other remuneration in exchange.

The highlight of the day, however, was the judging of the decorated straw straw hats that President Eagleson requested the membership to wear. There were levels of participation from "over the top" to "this is a straw hat, right?" Noel appointed two impartial judges and they selected a first and second place for both women and men. The winners were:

• Linda Ross - first place -with a British pop culture themed hat

The obligatory group photo

• Becky Kramer - second place - with a springtime flowers theme

• Tom Schmitz - first place - with a Mardi Gras theme

• Your Humble Scribe - second place - with a classic Mini theme  

Gift cards from Stein Mart and Harbor Freight Tools were handed out to the winners.

Noel closed the meeting, reminding everyone that the next one would be the fourth Tuesday in July at the Lake Forest Yacht Club in Daphne.  

Sheared Sheep, A Classic British Marque and Bathroom Faucets

Are you aware of a connection between a classic (and, sadly, defunct) British marque and a US purveyor of kitchen and bath plumbing supplies?  Yeah, I didn't think so.

An Australian concern that manufactured sheep shearing equipment employed a young British engineer named Herbert Austin who caught the bug that many other young, enterprising men did at the turn of the twentieth century - the desire to build his own car. While he was employed in Australia, young Herbert met, wooed and married his wife and when the firm decided to uproot from Melbourne and move the works to the industrial heartland of England, he followed.

Wolseley Tri-Car

Setting up the Wolseley Sheep Shearing Company factory in Birmingham allowed the business to be closer to to their suppliers, but the 'off season' meant that other work had to be performed to prevent losing skilled workers to layoffs (or redundancy, as it is termed in the UK). Herbert saw that bicycle manufacturing would fill the niche nicely and the Wolseley bicycle was born.When motorized bicycles came on the scene, Herbert saw a good fit for his factory, as he was now works manager.

The first Wolseley car of 1895 was more of a powered cart, as many others were at the time, with the driver and passenger sitting back to back on the three-wheeled, tiller-steered contraption. In 1901, the automobile division was spun off as an independent business. From this humble beginning, Wolseley would become the leading producer of automobiles in the pre- WW I period.

In 1905, Herbert Austin left the Wolseley automobile firm and raised enough capital to put an all-new design in production and the Austin automobile marque was born.  The sheep shearing equipment stayed with the original Wosleley firm and and Austin was lured back as chairman of that division - post he held from 1911 until 1933.

1909 Austin

By 1927, things weren't looking so good for the Wolseley automobile group and it was purchased by William Morris (of the Morris Automobile concern) as his personal property. 

The original Wolsleley group continued to produce its' sheep sharing equipment and worked actively to diversify itself into other fields and it successfully entered the electric fencing, industrial wheels and building supply businesses in the UK. In the US, the modern Wolseley firm purchased a plumbing and industrial supply firm in 1982 called Ferguson Enterprises.

Today, Ferguson is known for its high end kitchen and bath showrooms in North America. But they don't sell sheep shears.

A Henry Manney Treasure Trove

Photo by Patrick Manney- All Rights Reserved

It's no secret that I am a huge fan of the wit and wisdom of motorsports and automotive writer Henry N. Manney, III. I've lamented in these humble scribblings of how little there was to be found on the Internet about "Our Friend", but I think I've found the mother lode.

Henry and Anne Manney's son, Patrick, has scanned and uploaded a trove of family photos to a Flicker account and I have to admit, I spent about 45 minutes going through them. Now, not all of them are of Henry the Third - most of them are of family and friends with a few letters thrown in - but they are a moving look at the Manney family's life in Southern California. 

There are numerous photos of Anne in her days as a ballerina in Paris and a lot of old carte de visites of what I assume are ancestors of the family, but the most endearing ones are of the family looking over their new home in Corona Del Mar, California.

If you were a reader of Road & Track 'back in the day' take a few minutes to check out this delightful photo collection.