Alan's Standard 9 Avon Coupe.
If time travel was available, I'm sure Alan - who sent me the photos of his marvellous Standard 9 Avon Coupe - would be hot-footing it back to 1957, the year that he sold this cracking little car for the sum of 60 pounds, and grabbing the keys back. Survivors of this rare coachbuilt model, based on the Nine's chassis, are few and far between indeed. Alan's car was registered HX 1790. It doesn't show up on a search of the DVLA's site, but does this car survive? Perhaps it languishes un-registered in a shed somewhere, or else was exported and "lost" to this country? Does anyone know what happened to it?
|
|
The first of Alan's photos is a frontal view of the car. The image refers to it as a Standard Avon Special, but I think in the literature of 1930 or 1931 - the date of this London-registered car - it was referred to as a Standard 9 Avon Coupe. The building in the background is the Balmer Lawn Hotel in the New Forest. The hotel continues to this day, although has received some modifications to its roof (not for the better!), and there is a now a cricket pitch in front of the building.
|
| (Please click the thumbnail to view full-size image.) |
|
|
|
The proud 25-year-old owner is behind the wheel in this next photograph, taken in Sefton Park, Liverpool, in 1955. The compact dimensions of the car, with its faux dumb-irons fitted to the rear sides of the roof, and the sliding side windows installed in the relatively shallow doors, can be seen clearly in this picture. Small pre-war coupes are some of my favourite vehicles, and this is a little cracker. Hopefully it lives on somewhere, just waiting to be re-discovered. I'm grateful to Alan for sending the pictures over for sharing on the site. A similar but larger car, the Standard Avon 16hp Sports, can be seen on this page of the site. A photo of a similar car to Alan's in preservation, with slightly later pattern wheels, can be seen on the Standard Motor Club site.
|
|
|
|
Return to Page 15 in the gallery of vintage cars and vehicles.
|
