Allan Dick , 9 Apr 2011

CAR COLLECTIONS

A year or two back I went to a small rural, Canterbury town and had a look at what must be this country’s greatest “Barn Find” - a collection of cars just stored away for 20 or 30 years and about to be sold, dust and all.

The collection of cars was truly eclectic. All of the cars were British - long forgotten Standards, Singers and the like. Cars that may have made us shudder when they were in their youth, but which have become highly collectable today. Orphans is the word that comes to mind. The collector and I chatted about other matters and I dropped into the conversation that I had seen a very rare car, a Standard Flying V8 at Southwards Museum.

This was a rare car - only a handful were made in 1937/38 and I’m told that they were the epitome of good taste in the streamliner era that produced some questionable looking cars.

I never realised that Standard was such an advanced thinking company in the 1930. Not only the V8 sedan, but they also developed the DOHC engine that was the basis of the legendary Jaguar XK unit. But then, the first Jaguars were simply rebodied Standard 12s and 14s.

Something obviously went dreadfully wrong at Standard in the latter part of the 1930s and 1940s because the company was swallowed by Triumph after losing bank vaults full of money.

The man with the Collection told me that the Southward Standard V8 wasn’t the only one in the country, there was also another somewhere in the neck of the woods where he’s got his barns full of cars.

If there is, and if anyone knows more about it, we’d be delighted to hear.

AND MORE

In a similar vein. I’d heard rumours of a “Mustang” P51 fighter plane sitting in a barn somewhere in or around Nelson. I’d heard the story two decades ago. After visiting the Man with the Collection in Canterbury, I flew to Nelson where I met Graham and Lloyd Heyward who had restored a Ford 49’er woodie. 

They confirmed the story - but it’s not likely there’s a Mustang there. But there is a Mosquito, complete and original, along with several other aircraft - Vampire, Kittyhawk etcetera. The owner is private, doesn’t encourage visitors and is reputed to have taken a chainsaw to the tail of the balsa wood fuselage of the Mosquito to get to fit it inside a shed. Approaches from the RNZAF Museum and Wigram, to restore the aircraft have not been accepted.

Fiat 2300S — gorgeous

LEN VAN ERKEL AND MORE

A year or so ago I was near Queenstown. Near, not in. I’d driven up the side of Lake Wakatipu from Kingston and instead of turning left at Frankton and visiting Queenstown, I turned right and headed for Cromwell. But, before I did that I stopped to visit the grave of Len van Erkel in the Frankton cemetery.I’d worked for Len back in 1967/68 just before I made a break with a conventional lifestyle and started publishing magazines.

I’d left my post-school career job at Donald Reid and Company Limited, a stock and station agent to spend six months looking after my parent’s shop at Brighton while they took a long break after 12 years without a stop. 

They’d returned and I was back on the job market with half a mind to do something in the world of magazines.

I was heavily involved in the Otago Sports Car Club as President and was also the Editor of “Wheelspin”, the monthly club magazine.

I’d also published “Motorsport ’66” which was an annual that looked at the 1965/66 New Zealand motor racing season.

Len van Erkel was a Dutchman who’d arrived here in the early 1950s in that wave of immigrants who quickly made enemies with the laid-back Kiwis because they were prepared to work hard and make money.

Len had got his financial start in life as an Electrolux salesman and in the early 1960s opened Fairlane Motors, a used car sales.

It was a triangular shaped, tarsealed lot on Anderson’s Bay Road with an old villa that served as office, workshop and storerooms.

I was a car sales groupie, but Fairlane Motors was a bit off my radar because it specialised in later model cars that were always priced at the top end of the market. I watched these things and the stock at Fairlane Motors was slow in moving compared to other car sales.

I was surprised to get a call from Len van Erkel who offered me a job as a “salesman”. He’d heard I was looking for a job and that I had connections with the Otago Sports Car Club. He reasoned that that would put me in contact with potential customers.

These were hard days in the motor industry. This was Fortress New Zealand, new cars were impossible to get and anything was worth something.

Len van Erkel was a tough cookie. But he had an approach to his cars that impressed me then. And would still impress me today.

A car did not come with the job. I had to use my 1956 Simca Aronde as transport back and forth to Brighton each day. 

And to call me “salesman” was a huge abuse of the English language. I was a yard hand. 

I unlocked and started the cars each day. Washed them daily and “groomed” new arrivals or trades-in.

“Groomed” was also an abuse of the word. Len van Erkel virtually restored his cars.

I had to strip the interior out of every car. Seats? Unbolted and removed. Door trims? Unclipped and removed. Out came the seatbelts. Out came the carpets. 

Then I squatted inside and scrubbed and rubbed everything left inside until it was spotless.

Then the seats, door trims, seat belt and carpets were scrubbed, hosed, dried off and left for two or three days.

The engine bay, boot and underneath were sprayed with degreaser and hosed off — sometimes two or three times.

Then I detailed anything that would stand a lick or two of black paint.

The exterior was cut and polished. No matter how good it looked, the minimum was ALWAYS a cut and polish. 

Then I reassembled the interior.

No car ever went on sale without that minimal treatment.

I always spent at least a week hauling the interior out, scrubbing, rubbing and polishing.

His cars were always immaculate. The best presented and the best prepared in Dunedin. No short cuts were ever taken. If something needed repair, it was fixed to the highest possible standard.

That’s why his cars were expensive and that’s why they were slow movers.

Because every car had a value in that era, some of his car were restored from what we would call crusher fodder today.

He traded a 1957 Hillman Minx. It was rusty, the carpets were rotted and it was noisy in bottom and reverse gears. Most other car sales would have “specialled” it for about £200 — a good ’57 Minx had a retail value then of about £295. Not Len. It was driven into the far corner of the workshop and from there it would emerge, like a butterfly from a chrysalis, looking brand new and carrying a price of £395.

Apart from him and I, there was also a full time mechanic/oddjob bloke and a panel-beater who would work nights and weekends.

I stripped the interior of the Minx, stored the seats and doortrims and ordered new carpet.

It went up on stands, the gearbox was dragged out, overhauled and put back in.

The panel-beater spent weeks cutting out the rust, brazing in new panels that were then filled with solder.

When that was completed, I put a beercrate inside to sit on and drove it to the painter where it was sprayed in enamel in the original colours — two-tone brown.

Two weeks later, it was back into the workshop where I scrubbed and rubbed the seats and doortrims, fitted the new carpets, reassembled everything, cleaned and detailed the engine and boot. The final steps were blacking the tyres and polishing the windows.

Then Len took it for a drive, returned pronouncing the Minx ready for sale and wrote the window card.

It was a good car. The best in Dunedin. Probably the best in the world.

But it was expensive.

We had lookers, but no buyers. But Len never panicked. Eventually it sold. After four months. To an elderly couple, one cold, frosty, Friday night in winter.

They traded an Austin A35 and the restoration cycle continued.

Before I arrived, Len had bought for cash an MGA hardtop coupe. It was on wire wheels and I can’t recall if it was a Twincam or not. But it was cream in colour and ex Singapore. Those MGA coupes had very rounded roofs and I thought it looked like a hard-boiled egg. A rusty hard-boiled egg.

It was not a nice car. It probably responded to Spot and barked.

But, the rust was all cut out, panels brazed in and filling done with solder and lead. No bog for Len van Erkel.

When it was finally finished it, like the Minx, was better than new.

It sold quickly because it was so rare.

No Saturday or Sunday work in that time, but always Friday night. Until 9pm.

Len was hard. Or have I already told you that? But Friday nights were his nights. He would always buy fish and chips, or oysters and chips when the Bluff fleet was working.

Out would come a bottle of Gordon’s Gin and we’d drink gin and lemonade.

They were good nights. Sometimes we’d get an enquiry or two. Sometimes nobody would call.

I got to take a car home once. It was a 1965 PC Cresta. It was almost new, and because of the shortage of new cars, Len was asking almost new price for it. It sat there for six months. One morning I started it and it ran on five cylinders. A stuck valve was diagnosed, so, off came the rocker cover and the mechanic gave all of the valves a whack with a hammer. That got it running on six.

Len gave me the car to take home that night to make sure the valves didn’t freeze up again.

Those big 3.3 litre Vauxhalls in PB or PC form were grunty things for the time, but they were flimsy and floppy. The later, smaller Victor, with that inline, ohv six was quite nimble and could really be considered a bit of a sports sedan.

My first job at Fairlane Motors was to “prepare” a 1962 Dodge.

I had seen it sitting in the front row for months. It was big, black and immaculate.

My predecessor, whoever he was, had done the full scale resto’ job some six months earlier. But Len had a customer coming in and to make sure the Dodge was looking its best I had to give it a cut and polish — inside the door jambs, around the engine bay — everywhere where there was black paint. 

I thought all it needed was a wash and chamois, but Len was insistent. It took me two days. And then the guy didn’t buy it.

The car had a history. 

Len had “dealt” the car off a Christchurch dealer. A well-known Christchurch dealer who just happened to have raced a 1962 Dodge in a three hour race for production saloons at Ruapuna some months before. Only it was red.

The black 1962 Dodge at Fairlane Motors had new rear tyres and front tyres that had tread grooves that were twice as wide as they should have been! 

It was the same car that, before the race, had been given a quick coat of red water-based paint that was easily hosed off afterwards.

Len had a stock of cars that was a bit conservative but he was a car fan and he would always have one or two vehicles that he bought, traded or dealt because they appealed to him.

His drive car for much of the time I was there was a 190SL Mercedes-Benz — cream with red leather.

A car on the front row that was my favourite was a red Mark II Jaguar on chrome wires with blue leather. It also had a bit of a history. Like the Dodge, a dealer had also raced it once or twice and like the teenager who got pregnant, it was sent out of town.

The car was just three years old and was immaculate. Look closely and you could see the front left guard had been repaired after a reasonably heavy accident. 

Ernie Sprague, always on the lookout for late-model Jags at that time, called in, pronounced it a good car, but at £2,195 it was a bit expensive.

Len offered me a deal on it. If I shaped up and sold a car a week for six months, he would finance me into it at easy rates over an extended period. I was so excited I couldn’t sleep for nights.

But it never happened. Len’s cars were simply too expensive to be fast sellers.

As well as the Jag, he also had a couple of the first Australian Ford Falcon Futura Coupes. They disappointed me — too much plastic glitz.

But the car that was the stand-out was a 1962 or 1963 Fiat 2300S Coupe. This was a very rare car then and today it’s even more valuable.

It was a two door “GT” designed by Sergio Sartorelli from the Ghia design studios. Although conventional, it was beautifully proportioned and wonderfully detailed with a large glass house. 

Inside there was tan leather with a black dash, round Veglia instruments and a big diameter, wooden rimmed, three spoke alloy steering wheel.

It was, and remains, a beautiful classic.

Powered by a 2.3 litre, six cylinder, inline engine, cast iron block, aluminium head and around 150bhp. I think it had triple side draft, twinchoke Webers. It drove the rear wheels through a four speed manual gearbox, made a sound like Italian opera and would nudge 120 genuine miles per hour.

God, that was a gorgeous car.

One fine, summer’s morn’ Len arrived in the 190SL and said, “Let’s go for a drive”, grabbed the keys for the Fiat and we headed as far south as Milton and I drove it back.

It was gorgeous to look at, but it was pure heaven to drive.

The car was eventually bought by Jack Oakley of Wellington. Jack had raced a scruffy old U2 and appeared to have no money. But suddenly he was flush. Rumour was an inheritance.

He bought the original McRae Twincam single seat racing car and the Fiat 2300S which he used as a tow car. Both cars got untidier and untidier as the season wore on. 

At the end of the season Peter deLore bought the McRae in appalling condition. While Graham Vercoe in his worthy epistle, “Historic Racing Cars of NZ” says deLore sold the car, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he still has it.

The Fiat? I have no idea, but it was such a stunning car, it would be a tragedy if someone didn’t rescue and restore it after Jack Oakley finished with it.

I left Len van Erkel at the end of 1966 and did the motor racing season that summer, publishing “Motor Year Book 1967” before briefly again trying my hand at selling cars, this time with mate Barry Vuyk at Vogue Motors. But writing had become an addiction and by June 1967, I was working for myself, publishing a fortnightly motor racing newspaper, “Autonews”.

Len was an unusual man. He was hard, he was aloof, but he was also fair. And I learned a lot from him.

He eventually closed Fairlane Motors, built a warehouse on the site and went deer-farming in Queenstown. That’s where he died, suddenly.

All of these thoughts came back to be in a split second as I stood in the warm summer sun in the quiet graveyard at Frankton.

Len’s grave is marked by a creative, black marble stone amidst the much older and rather more traditional stones and somehow, that didn’t surprise me.