As you will see from the website, Less passed away recently and I just received a very nice letter from his son Richard.
From Register records, Les bought his CMS rep in 1989 from Peter Whalley. Les paneled it in ali and fitted 'M' Type wings. it hasn't been used for a long time. Harry Edwards has picture of it being collected from S England as a wreck by Peter back in the sixties - at the Morris Register's Cowley Rally - on a trailer behind Ian Jennison's Jag.
This is the CMS rep from which Enrique Llinares took his CMS ash frame patterns. So why was a replica car used as patterns? Because Peter's brother Ian owned an original CMS (MU 2005, chassis M26956) which was broken up for spares. The restored driving chassis went to MG dealer Terry Bone (so no prizes for guessing what happened to that). And a replica copied from the original with Ian's car went to Peter and was fitted to M6671 which started life as a fabric saloon.
Now, Richard also reports that he has recently acquired the Riley 9-engined Minor kit offered for sale in the VSCC Newsletter. Strongly suspecting this to be the car associated with the logbook of JA 1083 - the famous Rosemary Burke saloon that was famously rebodied as a tourer by Terry Dickie, I recently called the vendor who had just sold it and couldn't find the buyer's details. So here it is. The original chassis is under the tourer rep. now owned by David Aston, and the original body of JA 1083 now resides with Alasdair Kennedy up in Scotland, ex-Tony Gamble, ex-Gideon Booth, ex-Ian Grace, ex-Terry. Alasdair needs it to replace the rotten body on his saloon KR 6685 (M25648). The chassis that Richard now has is currently unknown, but he intends to remove the Riley engine (to put in a racing special) and replace it with a Minor unit, and is interested in finding a body for it - perhaps a Hundred Pound body - if the Register gets organized enough to run off a batch of frames.
Finally, Richard reports that, when 17, he stripped and rebuilt another rolling chassis which was fitted with an alloy paneled steel tube-framed body in a fifties style, full M Type engine, with M type brake drums and later MG knock-offs. He has a chassis plate with this car - SV 22370, engine 22813A, and the old buff logbook shows it to be a black tourer, first registered in 1934. However, the frame has no visible markings, so it is not certain that the chassis matches the chassis plate and logbook. And to make matters worse, the car came with three spare sets of dumbirons - none of which carry the corresponding chassis number!