.......THE
END.......
Gumpy
Gumpy
is a special car. He was born in February 1937, but not registered for the
road until December 1939. Why you may ask?
Gumpy was sent out
from the Austin factory in England to be shown at the Great Wellington Exhibition
of 1940.
This exhibition ran
from about August 1939 until about April 1940 and in reallity was a "promo"
job by the NZ Government to try and keep the spirits up because of the war
effort. Many people collect items from this Exhibition, one such item is a
sheet of paper handed out as you went into the Exhibition depicting Hitler
but you only find him after folding the paper. It says "find the fifth"
or you can download it HERE & fold it yourself.
anyway....
Gumpy was still new
because he was the Austin factory show car and had been shown as the latest
model in many English Showrooms.
By late 1939 the Austin
7 production had ceased but poor old Gumpy was part of a hoax. He knew that
he was the last of a line but poor old Citizen Joe was being feed a load of
rubbish " This is our latest Model"
Gumpy was sold off
the Exhibition floor to a man in Timaru in the South Island, I am unsure when
he was taken to Timaru but he was Registered in December 1939. What I do know
is that the new owner had a Rural Delivery paper and postal run so poor old
Gumpy was driven into the ground
The following photos
give some idea of the work that went into restoring Gumpy to her former glory.
Amazingly, for all
the miles that she had to endure, everything is still original right down
to the 3 bearing crank which is stamped to match the engine number, thanks
Sir Herbert, I am glad that you were just crazy about marking everything!
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This photo, taken in 1964 was in our VAR
magazine in the 1980s. The caption was .."where
is it now?"
Chassis no AAL 264711
Eng No 263921 |
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The finished product |
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Well,
Gumpy was in a barn and was to lay there for over 20 years until a chance
meeting with the then owner who told me about him and the fact that he was
being auctioned.
I decided that
he was mine!
I built a trailer
in 2 days , rang Bob Simms and asked if he wanted a ride to see a car.
We set off on
a 2 day trip to get to Timaru.
When we got there
Bob was able to establish that the car was genuine and we even found the original
tools!
It was a different
story when the auction started. I decided that after going all that way I
was not going home empty handed. There were bids from all over the world!.
Bob went outside and came back in later to see what had happened.
He and I are
the only ones who know what the price was and he has sworn to keep it to himself
The trip home
was full of anticipation.
The car on the
trailer caused a lot of interest, especially to a group of Japanese tourists
on the ferry crossing. I am sure they thought we were mad. They may have been
right, but they all wanted their photo taken with these mad people
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 |
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| The body was lifted off |
A shot of the inside |
Arriving home on the unpainted traler |
But
then the work began
