This week I signed all the Canadian export and shipping paperwork to initiate the shipping the Maddox from Picton, Ontario to Seattle. The car should be picked up late next week and moved across the border to Michigan, from where it will be shipped onwards to Seattle, so it is expected here in about three weeks - hopefully by the end of September. Onward shipping to the UK next spring is also being arranged. The car will ship from the Port of Seattle to Felixtowe where I will have it collected and taken to Tarlton in Gloucestershire, its new home just west of Cirencester.
While it is here in Seattle, it will be serviced and thoroughly checked out and I will also be completing an inspection of the vehicle to present to the DVLA with the registration. As Peter Balding will be recorded as the new keeper, I can independently do the required inspection in my capacity as the Registrar of the Vintage Minor Register!
Thanks to Ted hack, I have learned that the car must have two brake lights fitted. it may already have them, but this is one more thing I will be checking. Being a 1934 model, it also has its original semaphore indicator arms, but perhaps it has also had its rear lights configured to flash.
The car is bereft of tools, so I am looking for an original Morris screw jack, wheelbrace and starting handle, if anyone has any surplus to requirements? I am also looking for a good SV calormeter and wings. The photos above show the car with an OHC set, which Ian Samuel is keeping for sentimental reasons.
One item I did pick up for it at Pre-War Prescott was a reproduction 'M" starting handle hole cap for the radiator. Ian Harris has a few if you need one. One slight oddity I have already noticed is that the car appears to have the 1933 season configuration of radiator stone guard - flat on the core. The chassis was indeed laid down in late 1933, but is definitely 1934 season.
I am also starting the process of trying to trace the car's pre-eighties history when it was in England. The black and white picture above was found in Nick Walker's A to Z of British Coachbuilders and shows the car in England. Ian Samuel has now sent me the original R.F. 60 continuation logbook and V5, and the V5 records the then owner as John Eric Biddle. A little sleuthing elicited the fact the Eric (as he was known) Biddle ran a pub and was an avid collector of old motorbikes. I have traced thre address of his step-daughter, who, according to BT.com resides at the same address as Eric in the V5, so I have written to her. Hopefully I will receive a response.
http://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/218 ... s_at_home/
I have the details of a couple of earlier owners, going back to 1962, but searches for them or their families have so far drawn a blank. The other thing I will do is try to obtain the original registration records.
Hopefully the next update will be to report the arrival of the car.