A web log, an æthereal scrap-book if you will, with a somewhat vintage flavour. News items, occurrences, experiences, thoughts and opinions related to Victoriana through to Fifties Americana can all be found here.
Another podcast to add to the list of those I posted about a month ago and again one of particular historical interest, celebrating as it does the 90th anniversary of aviatrix Amy Johnson's amazing solo flight from England to Australia over the course of nineteen days from the 5th to the 24th May 1930.
Amazing is just the word to describe her achievement considering she had only learned to fly less than a year previously, in July 1929, and by all accounts had barely 75 hours' solo flying experience when she took off from Croydon Aerodrome on the 5th May 1930 with the aim of beating the 15 days' record flight time to Australia that at the time was held by the pioneer Australian aviator Bert Hinkler.
Amy Johnson and her aeroplane Jason in India, May 1930
As it turned out events conspired against Amy and she missed out on the record by only 4 days, however she was still rewarded with a CBE in the 1930 Birthday Honours and is rightly remembered as the first Englishwoman to fly solo to Australia (and later, in 1932, breaking the record for a solo flight from England to South Africa).
The enormity of her accomplishment(s) and the manner in which they captured the public's imagination at the time can best be appreciated through the sheer number of people both in England and Australia who turned out to greet her on her arrival/ return, as well as her having a popular song written and recorded in June 1930:
Her diary and notes from the Australian flight forms the basis of this series of podcasts created by the Amy Johnson Arts Trust, a charity based in Amy's home town of Hull, and which recreates day-by-day her remarkable journey in what is a very immediate and vivid performance. They are, as the Trust's director suggests, an excellent and very timely way to mark Amy Johnson's remarkable feat and her important role as a pioneer of women's aviation. I look forward to listening to them over the coming weeks and hope they will prove popular.
While researching for this post I also came across a recently uploaded amateur production from 2010 by Cambridge theatre company BAWDS, which looks worth watching, and of course the 1942 film They Flew Alone starring Anna Neagle as Amy is also highly recommended by this blogger.
Here's another good news story to come out of the current crisis and further proof that actor Tom Hanks is an all-round top chap.
A collector of typewriters since 1979, Mr Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson were among the early high-profile individuals to be affected while travelling in Australia last month. Such is Mr Hanks' passion for typewriters that he took one of his portables with him - a rather aptly-named one as it turned out!
Now that same typewriter is back in Australia after Mr Hanks received a charming letter from an eight-year-old boy whose shared name with the disease du jour was sadly causing him problems at school. What turned into a delightful correspondence ended with Mr Hanks sending the young lad the typewriter in question with the request to learn how to use it "to write [to] me back". I'll wager that's something little Corona never expected!
The incident also serves to highlight the problems that can be encountered by people and organisations whose name falls foul of topical events. "Corona", as Mr Hanks points out, means "crown" (or "wreath") in Latin and until this year was most likely used in reference to the rings of material around the sun which resemble a crown (and indeed its use in "coronavirus" is because under a microscope the Covid-19 virus also has wreath-like projections that give the appearance of a solar corona). Unfortunately it is this latter use that is on everyone's lips at the moment, so for people like Corona DeVries it is understandably causing them some grief. Hopefully this will be only a temporary issue, however, and once this is all over we - and especially young Corona - can reclaim the word and not have it forever tarnished by this ghastly virus.
This is no doubt just as true for the makers of the Corona typewriter, for the company that produced it is still trading as Smith Corona albeit now as a manufacturer of barcode labels. It can trace its origins back to the Smith Premier Typewriting Company, which was established in New York in 1886 by the wonderfully-named brothers Lyman, Wilbert, Monroe and Hurlbut Smith. Over the following 30 years the business went through several iterations as it bought out or merged with other typewriter manufacturers including the Union Typewriter Company and the Rose Typewriter Company (renamed by Smith Bros. as the Standard Typewriter Company). In 1914 the company introduced its first portable Corona model and so successful did it become that Standard was again renamed to the Corona Typewriter Company, focussing solely on portable typewriters while L.C. Smith & Bros. continued to produce office models. Smith-Corona continued to be a major player in the typewriter market - being among the first to introduce electric typewriters in the 1950s - right up until 2005 when it finally gave in to progress and stopped typewriter production.
This has all served to remind me of my most recent typewriter acquisition, which is - you've guessed it - a Corona! I say "recent", it was actually over a year ago in March 2019 when, passing the window of my local charity shop I espied a topping-looking Corona Special portable in pride of place in a display case. The condition was immaculate - clearly it had been professionally restored - but the price was barely a third of what I'd seen lesser examples go for on eBay. It was rightly attracting much comment from other passing shoppers (one of the volunteers later said "I knew it wouldn't hang around for long") but unfortunately I was unable to get at it straight away as work kept coinciding with the shop's opening hours. I was eventually able to duck in early one afternoon and convinced them to hold it for me for a week while I went to get the money and arranged to pick it up on the Saturday. I am therefore now also the proud owner of a 1920s Corona [Special] (I haven't been able to identify the exact year as I can't find the serial number, which has possibly been obliterated by the restoration).
The case has seen better days but no less than one would expect from something nearly
100 years old - in fact to still have the case at all is quite remarkable!
It doesn't look much like a typewriter in the above photos, does it? "How does it work", I hear you ask? Well, take it out of the case...
Still looks a bit odd, doesn't it? Well, see how the carriage is held over the keyboard by the two arms? Lift the carriage up and it pivots over and onto the typebars, whilst the keyboard rises up from underneath. Hey presto!
A very clever piece of machinery and one I am immensely proud to own. Sadly I haven't had a chance to use it in anger yet - life getting in the way as ever, plus it needs a new ribbon and the spools seem unwilling to move even when fully loosened. Hopefully I'll be able to get it up and running soon and then, perhaps, a typecast will be in order!
To return finally to the original article, Robert Messenger over at the oz.Typewriter blog has also covered this story with some splendid pictures of the two Coronas together(!) that I have not seen elsewhere. It is all in all a lovely story that shows those involved in the best light and has (hopefully) created a new typewriter aficionado in Corona DeVries. In any event it will doubtless be something he will remember and treasure for a long time and with luck will help him forget his troubles with small-minded bullies. Once again it is a case of typewriters (with the help of Tom Hanks) to the rescue!
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana" (as the late, great Sir Terry Wogan once said) and once again time has indeed flown by - like an arrow, if not like a banana - since my last post on here. You can't keep a good blogger down, though, so here I am again with a news item from last month featuring a wonderful lady adventurer who this blogger greatly admires.
I've featured the adventures of modern-day aviatrix Tracey Curtis-Taylor on this blog before, specifically when she set out a couple of years ago in her 1942 Boeing Stearman biplane to retrace the route taken by the pioneer female pilot Lady Mary Heath from England to Cape Town, South Africa in 1928. That journey was subsequently made into a B.B.C. documentary and jolly fascinating it was too.
Towards the end of last year Ms Curtis-Taylor undertook a new challenge - to follow the same route Amy Johnson took on her famous England-Australia flight of 1930. In the same Stearman biplane as before Ms Curtis-Taylor took off from Farnborough in Hampshire in October to make the 14,000-mile journey across Europe, the Middle East, India, South-East Asia and Australia, just as Amy Johnson had done more than 80 years previously.
As the above article explains, Ms Curtis-Taylor landed at Sydney airport on the 9th January, thereby completing this massive trek and following in the slipstream of one of her inspirations and a proper heroine. Tracey Curtis-Taylor is both of these as well, not only for her remarkable recreations of historic endurance flights but also for helping to keep the memory of these early aviatrices alive today, not to mention her involvement in encouraging more young women into the field of mechanical engineering.
Tracey Curtis-Taylor mentions "not wanting to stop [flying]" in the above clip and the good news is she that she isn't intending to any time soon. That report briefly mentions the shipping of her aeroplane to Seattle for Boeing's centenary celebrations next year, but before that Ms Curtis-Taylor has stated her intention to fly her biplane across the breadth of the United States as her next adventure and I for one can't wait to follow her progress on this new feat of endurance, continuing to emulate the pioneer women pilots of the early 20th century. Congratulations, Ms Curtis-Taylor, and the best of luck on your next endeavour!
**Further good news in relation to this story is that the B.B.C. will be broadcasting another documentary later this year following Tracey Curtis-Taylor's England-Australia flight. No details have been released as yet but expect it to be shown on one of the main B.B.C. channels some time in the Spring.**
This month's post focuses on the the fascinating B.B.C. article (linked above) regarding one of Britain's most obscure and long-forgotten aviatrices - Constance Leathart.
The Beeb has gone into some detail about this remarkable lady in their article for the regional Inside Out programme, so I do not intend to repeat all of it again here. Suffice to say it appears that Miss Leathart was every inch a most indomitable woman, at a time when women needed such spiritedness in order to break into the male-dominated world of early aviation.
Her appearance in the majority of the surviving photographs of her shows this plainly; usually sporting a short side-parted haircut and often wearing shirt, tie and tweeds she could easily pass for a man. This allowed her to embark on many fantastic-sounding aviation adventures, from air races to long distance flights (not to mention repairing aeroplanes on the side!), culminating in being one of the first women to sign up for the Air Transport Auxiliary during World War Two. Even then her adventurousness continued unabated - as it would if you were able to fly myriad military aircraft, particularly the Spitfire!
Behind the exciting lifestyle and the overturning of gender stereotypes, though, seems to me to be a very sad portrait of a lonely outsider. Leathart herself admits to dressing in the masculine style in order to try to please her father, who had wanted a boy child. To see her self-deprecating notes on her own photographs is heartrending; her exclusion from most ATA publicity shots on the grounds of her not being of the "pin-up" style is equally saddening (and in the photo featured in the accompanying article of Miss Leathart standing with the rest of the ATA women one can even sense there a difference and an element of exclusion - whether on Leathart's part or not we may never know).
Her spirit of adventure still not sated, following her war service she became a UN Special Representative to the Greek island of Icaria - helping to provide food and medical supplies by air. She eventually had to give up flying in 1958 and retired to a farmhouse in her native North-East, where she spent her time caring for rescued donkeys. She never married and, when she passed away in 1993, in a final display of tragic seclusiveness requested to be buried in an unmarked grave (thankfully her friends disregarded this and marked her resting place with a stone from her outside swimming pool).
Although it's splendid to see Constance Leathart's life be recognised, I do feel she (and the other aviatrices of her time) are worthy of whole programmes to themselves. Hopefully one day we shall see even greater recognition of these pioneering female pilots.
On a related note I'm thrilled and delighted to see that modern-day aviatrix Tracey Curtis-Taylor, who presented the B.B.C. report on Miss Leathart (and whose recreation of Lady Mary Heath's 1928 Cape Town-Goodwood flight I blogged about two years ago) is currently recreating Amy Johnson's epic 1930 flight from England to Australia. By now somewhere over the Middle East and on her way to India, Ms Curtis-Taylor aims to land her vintage 1942 Boeing Stearman biplane in Sydney some time early in 2016, before shipping the aircraft to the west coast of the USA to continue across that continent and so make it a genuine round-the-world trip!
I heartily commend Ms Curtis-Taylor for striving to keep the memory of these early aviatrices alive through her own flying adventures and I admire her greatly for both this and the courage and drive it must take to undertake such expeditions. Those of you in the U.K. (or with access to B.B.C. output) may remember that a documentary of Ms Curtis-Taylor's South African flight was broadcast shortly after its completion and I'm pleased to see that discussions are underway to produce a further series of programmes covering the Australian and American flights (and beyond!) for airing in the first half of 2016. Until then I'm sure you will join me in wishing Ms Curtis-Taylor continuing good luck as she makes her way to Australia. Soft landings and no dud engines!
Just over one year ago I featured the story of Australian "vintage adventurer" Ron Wade and his intention to drive his 1930 Ford Model A from Beijing to Paris in the Peking-Paris Rally, then across the continental U.S.A. and finally from London to Cape Town - and trying to break world records into the bargain!
Now Mr Wade and his car have made the news again and I'm delighted to see that they are on the verge of embarking on the second stage of their around-the-world adventure - the "Ocean 2 Ocean America Challenge" - having successfully completed the gruelling Peking-Paris Motor Challenge in a remarkable 33 days earlier this year! I never doubted that they would do it and the old Model A has proven to be a sturdy motor car I knew it would be. (Incidentally if you ever get the chance to read the account of the original 1907 Peking-Paris race by Luigi Barzini Jr. - son of the journalist who travelled with the winning car - I can highly recommend it.)
The next challenge for Ron Wade and his Model A begins, fittingly enough, on Columbus Day (the 14th of October) when they begin the Ocean 2 Ocean challenge - to drive across the U.S.A. from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific (and, in a nice touch, Mr Wade will carry a bottle of water taken from the Atlantic Ocean and empty it into the Pacific upon his arrival!). Here they hope to break their first record - to undertake the journey in less than 60 hours! Will they do it? Well, you can follow their progress on the Vintage Adventurer website; I for one am sure they'll manage it.
I'm equally certain they'll beat the London-Cape Town record too, although that attempt has yet to be confirmed. No doubt we will hear of Ron Wade and his Model A again when it is; in the meantime, good luck to him in the Ocean 2 Ocean and "good on yer, cobber!" for being such a gentlemanly good sport all in the name of charity and "vintage" adventure.
At first glance you may well wonder why such a headline as the one above is appearing on a vintage blog like this and I wouldn't blame you. I think I can speak for most areas of the country (and maybe even the world) when I say that those who write for local newspapers tend not to display the same journalistic talents as your average Telegraph or Times reporter(!).
This particular local story then, which caught my eye despite its editorial shortcomings, hasn't taken place in the present but rather one hundred years in the past. However elements of the incident have a certain modernity about them and the main protagonist could be said to be something of a pioneer - how often now do we hear of people parachuting or doing some other daredevil activity for a charity or promotion and think nothing of it?
But in 1912, when manned flight was still very much a talking point and parachutes in their infancy, adventurers and thrillseekers throwing themselves out of balloons (and aeroplanes) was quite the novelty. We may think of base-jumping and skydiving as fairly modern activities but in truth very similar attempts were being made a century ago. One such trailblazer is the subject of this article - Australian balloonist Victor Patrick Taylor.
Hailing from Sydney Victor Taylor, fascinated as many were by early attempts at flight and particularly lighter-than-air craft, discovered the art of parachute jumping while working in America in 1906. Pretending to be an already-established Australian parachutist (using the name "Captain Penfold", which would remain his professional soubriquet for most of his subsequent career) he befriended a local San Franciscan specialist and - despite never having actually jumped before in his life - quickly learned how. He spent the next two years in San Francisco, heavily involved in light-than-air travel (culminating in he and a friend dropping firecrackers from an airship on to the US Fleet moored in San Francisco Bay!), before he returned to Australia in 1908 to start a career in ballooning and parachuting. There he undertook many balloon flights across the Australian Bush and, in an early example of fundraising, was sponsored by local government and businesses to the tune of £25 a day (with 33% going to local hospitals) to do balloon ascents and parachute jumps - the latter often dangling precariously from a trapeze mounted outside the basket.
In 1912 Taylor travelled to England and became the 376th person to obtain a pilot's licence and Royal Aero Club certificate. It was shortly after this achievement that he was approached to perform the jump featured in this article. As a publicity stunt Sandow's Chocolates requested that he jump out of a balloon over Hyde Park in London dressed as Father Christmas and hand out bars of their chocolate to any children present. As the accompanying account tells the weather had other ideas and Taylor, the balloonist & co-owner Frank Spencer (Ed. to UK readers - I know!) and Gaumont cameraman (and later polar explorer) Hubert Wilkins were caught out by the winds and found themselves speeding over the outskirts of Chelmsford, Essex - 35 miles from London - almost before they knew it.
Taylor, in his Santa costume, prepares for take-off in Hyde Park
As you can read Taylor, anxious to get down, jumped out when a hole in the clouds showed them to be over open country and although his parachute opened properly he still managed to hit his head on landing, momentarily knocking himself out! When he came to he found himself surrounded by curious locals and their children. Quite what they made of the whole business I can scarcely imagine! Not to be defeated Taylor gathered himself together and promptly handed the sweets out to the Chelmsford children instead!
After this partial success Taylor went on to become possibly the first person to perform what we now term a BASE jump in Australia, parachuting 150ft off a Sydney bridge in 1914. During the Great War he served in the Australian artillery, being wounded and invalided out the Army in 1917 with shell shock. In 1918 he returned to America where he continued his aeronautical exploits for another twelve years. He died in 1930, aged 56, from digestive illness the causes of which were never determined.
I was delighted to discover the history of this eccentric chap, who billed himself as "the Australian Aeronaut", and hope you have enjoyed it too. It is good to see that his exploits have not been totally forgotten, particularly his link with my county town - not 15 miles away - which involved as it did a remarkable festive aerial adventure that took place almost exactly 100 years ago.
Last year I did a post about a chap in Michigan who ran a Model A Ford as his main car every day for a whole year (and who still drives it frequently today). Now a "vintage adventurer" (what a great term!) from Australia's Gold Coast is planning to beat the current record - set in 1936 - for the fastest journey time from London to Cape Town by a Model A in his own car, according to this article that popped into my inbox this morning.
Mr Wade sounds like the archetypal adventuresome Aussie (and seems to be proof that an active lifestyle can be good for the health) and all-round good egg, much like his compatriot I reported on at the beginning of the year, who similarly drove his Model T Ford across Australia and then from Durban, South Africa, to Moscow.
Not only is Mr Wade aiming for the London-Cape Town record but he intends to take part in the Peking-Paris race beforehand and then ship the Model A to America and drive it from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles - in short here is another vintage car and driver who will have travelled around the world by the end of next year!
Whether successful or not vintage man and machine will have followed in the wheeltracks of many an historical endurance racer in famous long-distance journeys such as the Peking-Paris race, the London-Cape Town route and the myriad others who continue to this day to prove what the motor car was and is capable of. It will be a testament to the car's longevity and strength that it should be able to undertake this trip, although Mr Ward has taken care to refurbish all the mechanical components which is fair enough. It should be remembered, though, that cars of this vintage were engineered for rough use simply because the road networks that were in existence at the time were limited at best. A round-the-world trip should therefore be quite possible even in a 1930 Model A. I fully expect to read about Mr Wade's adventures and arrivals in Paris, Cape Town, Los Angeles and finally his home town of Wongawalla in 2013 and I'm sure the documentary he will be making en route will be a fascinating record of the endeavour. The best of luck to him and his car.
I promised you a corker of a story for the next featured article to appear on this blog and I do believe this delivers. On my birthday (near enough) too; what a bloggy present! This could easily enter my personal top ten, if not the Stats' most popular. Why, because it features airships! A particularly vintage mode of transport that regular readers will know I am quite enthusiastic about and which is long overdue for a resurgence. If that isn't enough it also marries these fantastic machines to an undertaking of historic and thrilling proportions - an around-the-world race!
I'm struggling to find the words to convey my enthusiasm for this idea - I mean, airships... flying around the world... visiting UNESCO World Heritage sites! It sounds incredible - a never-before-tried, once-in-a-lifetime event. Although even I started off thinking the accompanying video was a trifle hyperbolic in its language the more I think about it the more excited I become. Is it too much to ask, though? The World Sky Race, as it is known, has already had a long gestation period with launch dates having come and gone. It would be a monumental task in both monetary and logistical terms and is the brainchild of just one man. But some big names in aviation seem genuinely interested and more importantly members of UNESCO appear quite sympathetic to the idea, so there may be a good chance for it. I certainly hope so!
It wouldn't be the first circumnavigation of the globe by a lighter-than-air ship, of course, as the German airship LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin undertook its own around-the-world flight in 1929. That journey captured the public's imagination and cemented its place in aviation history. Many dozens of books have been written, articles published and documentaries recorded - including the recent 2009 Dutch drama-documentary Farewell (shown on B.B.C. Four as Around The World By Zeppelin, as you may recall). Why should it not be the same for the World Sky Race?
Those involved in the enterprise speak of its potential attraction to the public of today and I for one agree with them. I'd even accept the airships having to be plastered in advertising if that's what it takes to realise this idea. In this age of the Internet and instant communication, where distances are forgotten and travel is sanitised, a global airship race could serve as a reminder of the thrill and excitement of travel, the great expanses that make up our planet and the human endeavour it can still take to cross them.
Such was the kind of reaction to the famous long-distance aeroplane races of the 1930s, when friendly competition and national pride combined with cutting-edge technology to create spectacles that enthralled thousands - if not millions - of people as they followed these pioneering aviators as they raced across land and ocean in their attempts to be the fastest. Like the 1929 Graf Zeppelin circumnavigation these journeys were the great adventures of their day. As the human race becomes ever more sedentary with its computers and automated machines, events like the World Sky Race take on an even greater rôle - a challenge that requires strength, endurance and skill; proof that long-distance, circumnavigational racing by air still has its place in the 21st century.
Eleven years ago the 2001 London-Sydney Air Race gave me some idea of what it must have been like to follow the pilots of the 1930s in their similar England-Australia flights and proves that there is still an appetite for this kind of event. Indeed record-breaking and endurance flights are still happening on a regular basis, but the suggestion of using airships is a novel yet worthwhile variation. Worthwhile thanks in no small part to the involvement of UNESCO and the desire of the man behind the World Sky Race for these majestic "sky ships" to visit heritage sites throughout the world on their journey inspiring children everywhere to discover more about these important locations in a fun new way and showing these remarkable natural and man-made landmarks in a new and stimulating way to people all over the world. For this noble reason alone the World Sky Race deserves to succeed.
The United States Army are known to be testing a new airship design and while the military aspect may not sit well with the peaceful, educational nature of the World Sky Race both it and the worldwide race would do wonders for the public perception of airships and go a long way to ushering in a new age of lighter-than-air travel. If the World Sky Race stays on course then come 2014 I shall definitely be at Greenwich to cheer the participants on as they start their momentous journey and perhaps begin the renaissance of the airship.
In February I did a blog post centred around The Mrs Bradley Mysteries, the short-lived 1999 Twenties-set murder-mystery series starring Dame Diana Rigg, which was being shown again on B.B.C. Four and which inspired me to purchase the DVD box set.
At the time I remarked on how it was a shame the series was not a great success when first broadcast and that there were no more than 5 episodes, with nothing else quite like it coming along since. Well now there is a new murder-mystery drama that to these eyes has a lot [of good] in common - Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. The catch? It's only broadcast in Australia!
A fairly recent creation (1989), Phryne Fisher looks to be very much the home-grown Australian heroine but in many respects is much like Ariadne Bradley - perhaps even a younger version of her. The protagonist in seventeen books (so far), which have already been picked up and turned into a 13-episode series by Australian broadcaster ABC1, she is somewhat reminiscent of both Mrs Bradley and also the earlier Tuppence Beresford from the 1980s series Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime (Tommy & Tuppence).
Unlike both those two series, however, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries appears to have been a great success in its native country. It is also rather interesting in that it is set in 1920s Australia, and this seems to have attracted viewers keen to connect with this period of their nation's history. (If any Australian readers would care to pass comment, I'd be interested to know if I've called it right, and what you think of the series). I don't know about you, but I'd be interested in the setting too - we see and read so much about Twenties America, Twenties Britain, even Twenties Europe yet comparatively little about Twenties Australia. A programme set in that time period in Australia would go some way towards filling that void, I feel sure.
Neighbours and Home and Away are both great export successes for Australian television and I from what little I've seen I see no reason why Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries shouldn't be as well. We all know vintage and retro is riding the crest of a worldwide wave at the moment and I'm sure that any cultural references that might exist in the programme wouldn't detract from it or spoil our enjoyment of it. Come on, ABC Television - send Miss Fisher abroad, it looks positively topping!
Two stories here from before Christmas that I kept back until now (good thing too, as there's not a lot else in the way of newsworthy vintage happening out there so far, it seems). They're so similar in spirit that I reckon they can both be covered in one post, involving as they do two vintage cars undertaking long-distance tours with their owners.
The first story begins all the way over in Australia where a vintage car enthusiast and sometime "adventurer" has already driven his 1913 Ford Model T clear across the country (a total of over 2,000 miles) before having it shipped to South Africa to continue right through to Moscow. This epic road trip is designed to commemorate two similar long-distance drives that took place 100 years ago, and what a way it is to do so!
It just goes to prove what sturdy vehicles these early motor cars are, and reinforces my (and many others') view that these machines need to be used and can withstand great mileages and prolonged use. The Model T was designed to travel on dirt roads, and be easy to fix, so Melbourne to Moscow shouldn't be beyond it(!). In 1907, five years before the journeys mentioned in the article, a fleet of cars undertook to travel from Peking (Beijing) to Paris in the famous Peking-Paris road race (and if you can get hold of a copy of the account of the winning team, which included journalist Luigi Barzini Sr., do so). These cars thrive on use, and there is nothing worse in my eyes than these wonderful vehicles sitting motionless behind a museum tape. The reactions this Australian fellow has seen so far on his travels prove that vintage cars can engender a sense of camaraderie the world over.
I wish this Aussie adventurer the best of luck and hope he and his Tin Lizzie successfully make it to Moscow.
The second story is confined only to Great Britain and Europe but is still a marvellous tale of travel and history. French car-maker Delage produced some of the most beautiful cars of the interwar years, including the now ultra-rare D1 S5 featured in this article. This particular car has such an amazing history, yet another reason why it needs to be driven and displayed widely. I'm glad to see that the current owner restored it and does just that, having travelled all over Europe in it in his quest to find out as much about its past as possible. It's also heartwarming to see that a new generation get so much enjoyment out of the vehicle, I hope they continue to have fun with it while enriching the lives of everyone it comes into contact with.
I do love these barn-find stories, but even so this one looks like it's going to take one helluva job to get it looking like it should (above) again! One can only assume that the winning bidder knows what he/she is doing and that they feel pretty sure of themselves in getting this Bugatti rebuilt cost-effectively. I suppose it's entirely possible to get it looking as good as new for £132,000 - at least there are some parts present (including the all-important chassis) and there are doubtless many Bugatti specialists out there who might be tempted to take on the restoration of it. New parts can be fabricated using old designs and the rarity value of this model (only 385 made between 1926 and 1927) means that it should be a worthwhile undertaking.
Of course it may be that the new owner wants to keep it as is, like the Type 22 from a few months ago - a sort of automotive artwork. Although by all accounts the Type 22 is not as valuable a model as the Type 38, so I expect in this case something more will be done. It may take a while, but with any luck this motley collection of parts will one day be a beautifully complete example of a rare pre-war Bugatti.
Here we have another reminder of how skilled aeroplane pilots are. A hearty well done to this chap for doing his level best to avert disaster and saving the lives of all 6 of his passengers. A story that highlights the best in people - determination, skill, bravery and calmness. Something that we can be appreciative of and which, best of all, has a happy ending.
