by Ross Finlay (31 Mar 03)

Something went wrong with the CARkeys job allocations recently, when various other parties went to more exotic locales, and I ended up at a new-model launch where rather too much of the second-half action involved dodging traffic jams in the purlieus of Manchester Airport.

There was one consolation, though. For the first time in many years, I caught sight of a vehicle I've always fancied, an early 1950s 2½-litre Lea-Francis four-seat sports car.

At that time there were very few rival four-seaters of a sporting persuasion, and Lea-Francis engines were quite highly regarded. One of them was the basis for the Connaught Formula 2 engine, and it still seems most odd that the company also supplied 1½-litre versions of its 1767cc engine to dirt-track racers in the States. One of those smaller engines also powered the last of the Hopper Specials, which competed at circuits like Charterhall and hillclimbs like the Rest and be Thankful. Long out of sight, it was in good hands the last time I saw it, part-restored.

There were also a couple of one-off Lea-Francis engined Formula 2 cars - the Cromard and the Berkshire, but they're very much in the footnote league.

Seeing the Lea-Francis did more than put that car back on my wish list. It activated, without hesitation across a half-century, my deep-seated memory of an alphabetical list of British cars on the market during the Leaf's heyday:

"AC, Allard, Alvis, Armstrong-Siddeley, Aston Martin, Austin" it went, then "Bentley, Bristol, Daimler, Dellow" and on via "Lagonda, Lanchester, Lea-Francis" to "Standard, Triumph, Vauxhall, Wolseley." All in one breath.

So Where Have They Gone?

Well, there's still some kind of activity at AC under its current ownership, even if there's no certainty about when production will re-start.

Allard is long gone, although the memory of Sydney Allard as the first British Hillclimb Champion, the last man to win the Monte Carlo Rally in a car bearing his own name, a fast Le Mans driver in the fog, and the builder of the very hairy Cadillac-engined J2X remains. The cars continue to compete in classic events world-wide. Alvis is still around, making military vehicles. Armstrong-Siddeley was the very first British manufacturer to announce its post-war models, literally days after the European part of World War II finished.

I knew someone who had one, and I used to wonder how a company which had such stodgy designs in the 1930s came out with futuristic and clean-lined models like the post-war Lancaster and Hurricane. Of course, it was its wartime involvement with the planes of the same name, built by Hawker-Siddeley, which sharpened up its ideas. Another acquaintance rallied a Star Sapphire later in the 1950s, just before the merger with Bristol put paid to Armstrong-Siddeley car production, although Bristol cars escaped. Armstrong also introduced the neatest imaginable little gear selector, using a tiny "gate" on a left-hand steering wheel stalk.

Aston Martin? Well, that's doing OK as part of Ford's Premier Automotive Group. It seems a long time now since one motoring historian calculated that Aston would have done better financially if it had given everybody who wanted to buy one of its cars a fiver (was it?) and told them to go and buy something else instead. Austin? Well, that's deep in the reject pile.

Bentley is right in the thick of things, with huge financial support from Volkswagen and the magnificent Continental GT just about ready to go on sale. Bristol is close to getting the delayed Fighter into its single Kensington showroom. (British) Daimler has survived into its third century thanks to Jaguar's willingness to keep the old name for some of its top-rated saloons.

Dellow Trials And Tribulations

And Dellow? Built mostly for trials, that upright 1172cc Ford-engined "production special" kept going into the late 1950s, and it always seemed a pity that the more attractively bodied Mark V arrived too late. The Dellow name came from the partners in the business - Delingpole and Lowe - and it was intriguing to read, a couple of years ago, an article in the Sunday Telegraph by music writer James Delingpole. He'd had a drive in one of the cars forty-odd years on, and was quite stunned by his experience of the family's one-time product.

Aston Martin may be firmly in the mainstream, but there doesn't appear to be much hope for the second marque in Aston Martin Lagonda Limited. A couple of prototypes in the 1990s got nowhere, and now neither the factory nor the dealers seem interested.

Lanchester, having been bought over in 1931 by Daimler, which was then absorbed by Jaguar, which is now part of Ford, still exists as a registered marque name, but there's as much chance of it coming to the surface again as there is of BMW reviving Riley.

And that brings us round again to Lea-Francis, or Lea Francis without the hyphen, as it seems to be written these days. Barrie Price bought the then-dormant company in the late 1970s, and must be just about ready to celebrate his 25th year of ownership.

It's still in the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders directory, but I've only ever seen one of the modern cars, in a private garage in the Lambourn Downs area of Berkshire.

Having seen the Gordano name in an M5 traffic report recently, I've also been thinking about the fact that there used to be cars called Gordini, Gordano and Gordine. And when Mary Price wrote that column about Crashing the Egg Car, I thought it was going to be about one of the vehicles Rudolf Egg built in Switzerland, and not something connected with the chocolate industry. Which leads naturally to the curious business of the car called the American Chocolate.

Maybe not right now, though.

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