Firstly, our very sincere condolences to Bill whose wife Annie passed away on 25th June after a very long illness.
Appropriately perhaps and welcome, in our past events series, is this picture of Bill’s D0253 at Pre-War Prescott in 2013 with D0311 on its right.
Ian Grace of the Vintage Minor Register has been emailing past magazines to members as extra reading matter during the lockdown! The above picture was in the Winter 2013 edition and is shown here with his permission. As most of you will know entries are already open (and filling fast) for the 2021 Pre-War Prescott meeting.
Maybe the D Group should be considering another record get together next year at Prescott (we had 8 in 2016) as a celebration of the coming out of lockdown – hopefully long gone by then. It will also be the D Types 90th Anniversary; what better excuse! I’ll keep you posted.
Not all activity was completely cancelled for this year and this super Colin Murrell picture shows Chris Edmundson in D0442 enjoying the MGCC Donnington Meeting on 11/12 July. He was in action again to at the VSCC meeting at Mallory Park on 23rd August.
Yet another nice period picture found by Cathelijne Spoelstra, this one of D0274 on the 1932 RAC Rally.
The driver is the Hon. Mrs Chetwynd and she came 8th out of 76 entries. Not a bad result for a D Type! This is the second picture we have of this car in action (see Dispatch 24). The car still survives and is being restored – albeit very slowly!
Another period picture found on Facebook is of this young lad in his pedal car – a very realistic scale model of EX127. You might recall the works picture of a model of EX127 on the bonnet of a D Type (Dispatch 61) and the clockwork model shown in Dispatch 62.
The forerunner of 127 was of course EX120 and as the chassis was virtually the same as the D at least two 120 lookalikes were built on them as detailed in previous Dispatches.
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Dealership Dash Plates
I mentioned way back in Dispatch 6 that I had acquired a selling dealer’s plate for D0311 being the Dorking Motor Company. Instead of mounting on the dashboard I decided to put it on the tool box cover as seen in this picture.
Also in the picture is the one I’ve just acquired for D0464 – yet to be fitted – of Colmore Depot. Colmore’s were a large Morris/MG dealer and had several branches throughout the Midlands, in fact D0464 was probably supplied through their Liverpool branch but passed through Birmingham first.
Unfortunately like most things these days these plaques can be quite expensive compared to when I first bought the Dorking one. However, there is quite a choice available on Ebay.
If you don’t know the original main or sub dealer for your car drop me an email and I’ll see if we have it on record – we have most.
Cars for sale
We’ve been following the restoration over the years of the only surviving D Type Salonette – D0407. Now complete Chris Blood has reluctantly put it up for sale to pursue other MG interests. Some pictures herewith.
The car is being sold through Vintage & Prestige Classic Cars in Northampton on who’s website you can find many more pictures of the car including many detail ones.
Rear wing protectors
Spotted in the September 1933 edition of The MG Magazine is this advert for rear wing protectors – I like to call them ‘spats’. They would have fitted D, J1 and F1 models so quite a market for them.
I asked about these ‘spats’ some years ago in Dispatch as to who made the ones in the much publicised factory photograph of D0299, shown here in detail.
These are different again to the ones in the advert and as they are not mentioned in the spares booklet are from another manufacturer. These days cars come with all ‘extras’ ready fitted but in earlier times there was quite an industry making various extras and accessories for all makes of cars.
