December Car In The Room - II
by Dennis Whimp
The December 2021 Wednesday evening car in the room was one of the best known and most photo’d vehicles of our club. Bill and Adelai’s 1929 Austin Chummy. When they joined the club over 50 years ago they had a 1934 Austin 7 Ruby saloon which was extensively rallied and which has only recently been sold. An early 20’s Chev open tourer followed and then in 1986 Bill was able to purchase the Austin 7 Chummy from Reg Ponman. Reg was quite a character and when he emigrated here, he brought in a number of Austin 7s from Australia along with a Mini Moke that I subsequently purchased (that is another story). The Austin 7 was reasonably complete, but in poor condition. The body came off so that the chassis could be welded as it had broken in half. Bill gently coaxed the aluminium door skins back into shape, rubbed it down and painted it. The engine was reconditioned by one of our club members at the time, an Auckland upholsterer made the side curtains and the car was ready to go. The fabric convertible top was the original that was on the car when it was purchased. The speedo mileage recorder only has 4 digits so every 9,999 miles if flips over to zero. It has done that many a time but Bill has no idea how many as the book with all that data in has been lost. The car has taken Bill and Adelai all over NZ to National and Austin Rallys plus almost every club run since it went back on the road. In 1992 it was at Palmerston North, Christchurch in 1996, Blenheim in 2002 just to name a few. It’s been on the Denniston Plateau and coming up Arthur’s Pass pre-viaduct, it was 9 miles uphill in low gear. It was almost the same distance in low gear going down into Hamner Springs off the Molesworth. It is a tribute to this little car with pistons smaller than most lawnmowers that since the car was restored, Bill has had to do no motor work on it. Bill’s bit of advice to us was that on this car, if you break an axle, you can push it in and still drive home. 6
Side Curtains February 2022
