Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[consul 57]

some of you may know eddie cochran was involved in a fatal accident in april 1960 on the A4 in chippenham, he was in a mk2 consul taxi.
there now stands a memorial there recently upgraded.
on sunday at the frome, somerset, craft fair & classic car meet i took the consul along to see what it was like as i had seen plenty of pics and the do get a lot of classics there, anyway we had the usual, i had one of those, i got some spares ect chats but one chap had the most interesting story of them all.
the chap spotted the consul and told us this story.
his dad a mr pugh who owned pugh's garage in chippenham and he was the one who towed in the consul taxi from the crash site.
there are pics of him looking at the mess of the car.
he told his son that he had to chase away a lot of teds from the garage yard for ages as they all wanted souvenir like trim & wing mirrors ect, mr pugh did not know who eddie was or that he was a famous singer & guitarist, he just though another crash victim, we had a good chat and found his dad passed in 86 so could not provide more into sadly.
the young mr pugh was only born in 61 so never saw the car.
eddie died later in bath hospital and the other passengers were his girl friend sharon sheely & gene vincent, who were both injured but recovered, we had quite a chat about it and being a rocker myself it was even more interesting to me.
the taxi disc from the car was sold a few years ago for ?450.
spookily the first owner of my consul was also a mr pugh from dagenham!