Standard 10 touring car by T.J. Richards (Adelaide).
Every now and then, photos of a really unusual old car turn up. The car shown below is a pre-war Standard, most likely a Flying 10. While there are photos of Flying 10 saloons already on the site, these are the first to be added in that show a tourer version. Judging by the notes handwritten on the reverse of both photos, I suspect the pictures were taken in Australia. If this is the case, then there's a strong possibility that the car is in fact a locally-built tourer, with coachwork by T.J. Richards, of Adelaide, Australia. It certainly matches the few other photos of similar Standards I've so far been able to turn up. A slanting badge is fitted to the car's radiator grille, another feature that so far I've only seen fitted to Australian-bodied Standard 10 tourers thus far.
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The first photo shows a lady, with baby, stood alongside the tourer, its driver's door slightly ajar. The scenery in the distance doesn't look very British to me either. The note on the reverse tells that this was a general view from the front of the owners' home, with dairy land in view.
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The second photo of the Standard better shows the rear side of the car's bodywork, with its hood folded down into the rear section. The accompanying notes advise that a small banana patch can be made out in a distant plantation, and that the curving road leading to their home can be seen on the distant hillside.
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At the time, there was a requirement that any cars imported and sold into Australia, had to incorporate a certain percentage of locally-sourced components. It was quite common therefore to ship knocked-down kits of cars, less their finished bodywork, for assembly and final fitment in Australia (my Bedford ute went through this procedure, albeit bodied by Holden's rather than T.J. Richards). The locally-built body tubs, often mated to the factory front-end panels shipped with the kit from the originating country, would then be fitted to the rolling chassis. I'm sure that the Standard tourer shown above was shipped out as an incomplete kit of parts, only to be fitted with coachbuilt bodywork by T.J. Richards (Adelaide) once it had arrived. A photo of a similar vehicle, but in this instance a Standard 8 rather than 10 tourer, but bodied by the same firm, can now be seen on here.
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T.J. Richards was a large coachbuilding firm, responsible for the coachwork on many different types and sizes of vehicle arriving at Australian ports. Many Chrysler group cars and trucks for instance received Richards' bodywork on their arrival into the country, as did lower-volume vehicles such as Amilcars, one of which resides just a few miles from me here in England. In 1951 Chrysler would take over the firm.
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Return to Page 16 in the gallery of classic vehicles.
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