8 Alvibatics March/April 2016

H ello Heather and thank you for inviting me to write a few lines about my new

pride and joy. I’m sure that it’s all part of an advancing disease that I caught at a very young age and for which there is still no known cure. I am referring of course to the compulsive attraction of wanting to own and maintain a car that was built before I was born.

In my youth, the financial constraints imposed by my years of studying and training, my love for sailing 16ft. skiffs and the demands made on my remaining time by my attraction to the opposite sex, meant that my first foray into restoring cars was made with an Austin Seven. These little cars were the starting point for many future vintage enthusiasts.

Getting married and setting up a home has a major controlling effect on most young blokes and I was not exempted from these. However as time passed and the initial load of married life gradually eased I started to resume some of my lifelong passions. First I returned to my love of building wooden boats which I have continued as a lifelong obsession and built and rebuilt a succession of boats up to 60ft. Secondly, following a phone call out of the blue from one of my old vintage car friends, I decided that I should restore another car.

I started with a 1922 Vauxhall and spent many hours assembling a pile of parts that I purchased from a chap who was better at taking them apart than putting them together. With my wife Jan we had many enjoyable trips with the Vintage Car Club of Qld all around South East Qld. The rot started to set in again because I then purchased the bones of another Austin Seven which I built into a Sports Special in order to try my luck at the premier event of the club year which was the annual Avocado Hill Climb that was held at the mountain property of Des and Edna Donnan at Palmwoods. As time marched on a man from England rang me one Sunday evening and made me an offer for my Vauxhall that I couldn’t refuse and suddenly I was without a touring car again. The Austin seven was out of the question for long trips. I heard on the club grapevine that a very rare 1926 Rolls-Royce Twenty HP sports that had previously been owned by Graham Singer was again for sale from a deceased estate.

Without having seen the car for 25 years I bought it over the phone and flew down to Sydney with an overnight bag and small toolbox and drove it back to Brisbane in the rain all the way, stopping from time to time to make adjustments to the carburettor and ignition system. The further I went the better it went. I carried out a total restoration of this car over a period of about 12 years. When I sold it recently it was one of the few regrets I have ever had. About 8 years ago following another unsolicited call from a member of the VCCQ who thought I needed more to do with my time, I became the owner of a 1933 Rolls-Royce limousine which, had it been an animal, would have been put down.

I threw myself into this challenge and after spending all the daylight hours that were available 7 days a week for nearly 4 years I reconstructed this pile of rubble into a very respectable R-R saloon. I drove this car for a few years until a nagging condition that I had suffered for some years got the better of me.

Every year at the VCCQ annual concours, I would take my two Rolls-Royces along and they rewarded me with a trophy on 2 occasions, but the appearance of Bill Ewing in his Alvis Speed 25 always put me at a disadvantage, not to mention Dean Prangley with his Speed 20 dhc or Graham Singer with his gleaming 12/50 ducksback. The beautiful flowing lines of a Speed model Alvis of any type definitely put the rest of the field between a rock and a hard place when the judges were doing their rounds. They seemed to take longer to assess the features that scored more points on their judging sheets whilst they were under the spell that was evidently cast around these most gracious cars.

It was on one such occasion that I decided that I would sell all of my cars and pool the resources in order to buy one of these beautiful sleek and captivating vehicles called Alvis. Mind you I didn’t want any old pile of bones as I believed that I didn’t have another restoration in me, because when I restore a car all the work regardless of the trade work required would be carried out by me in my own workshop. But with my 72nd. Birthday rapidly approaching and the depleted condition of my mortal frame due to several serious surgical rearrangements of my spine

CXM98 Rob Gabb

March/April 2016 Alvibatics 9

and shoulders as a result of a couple of careless accidents I came to realise that my years of being bullet proof and able to jump tall buildings with a single bound were over. These days I have trouble jumping over an empty wine carton with a run-up.

I spent six months calling everyone in Australia who owned the type of car that I would like to buy without result, so I began to peruse the overseas market to see if there was anything available within the scope of my available finances. This was not an easy task. The prices in the UK of the type of car that I wanted stopped me in my tracks, until one day I came across a 1935/6 Alvis 3½-litre drophead coupe coming up for auction at Brightwells and the recommended minimum and maximum prices expected at auction got me in. I thought what a fool I would be to buy a car sight unseen on the other side of the world, with only the description given by a used car salesman along with a few complementary photos. However as the auction time approached and I had looked at the photos 150 times and convinced myself that the author of the description was an honest man and a trained valuer and the fact that it was one of only two drophead coupes that were made, I decided to go for broke and buy it.

I registered as an absentee bidder, sent a substantial deposit over to meet the requirements of the auction and rang and told the auctioneer that I wanted to buy it. The details of the auction and the trials and tribulations of getting the car to Australia is another story on its own. The net result is that I am now the proud owner of the Alvis which has been growing on me ever since it arrived in spite

of the extensive list of defects that I have found with it and the financial thrashing I took to land it here. I don’t intend taking it off the road for major work for some time and I will just keep it maintained to a safe standard and enjoy driving it. The car has an extensive pedigree from being purchased new by Lord Kenneth Mackay, the Earl of Inchcape, to the previous owner who drove it for 52 years.

I have extensive documentation which will take ages to go through which details most of its former life in the UK. I have been able to register it with its original number from 1936 but Qld Transport & Main Roads insist that I mount their reproduction number plates which display the small letters “QLD” at the top in place of the original plates which I still have. For the sake of sentimentality I think it is nice to have the car branded with the same number that has been displayed continuously since it was sold new. Many members of the VCCQ have been encouraging me not to restore it but to keep the patina that it arrived with so I’ll limit my original efforts to eliminating some rusty spots and servicing all the machinery.

This article has gotten off the rails and become a long winded “This is Your Life” volume with a little about the car at the end for which I must apologise. If anyone’s interested I would be happy to write a short and concise report of the financial traps that await the unwary and even the cautious like me when importing a classic car from UK into Australia. It’s an experience not to be repeated and with the value of hindsight I would approach the process from an entirely different angle. Attached are a couple of photos of the car and the current owners.

Rob and Jan Gabb and the 3½-litre dhc (see inside front cover for another photo of the car)