My love of Rolls-Royce cars has given me ample opportunity to study the products of many of the great British coachbuilders prevalent before the Second World War. I have seen dozens of pre war bodies made by theses famous companies stripped out for restoration over the last 20 years. Beneath their beautifully shaped and finished exteriors and wonderfully appointed interiors, the bodies are often very poorly framed. Inadequately sized timbers that have sagged, cracked, and often snapped, are an all too common occurrence. Badly made joints are often seen stuffed with rag, bent nails or old carpet in a vain attempt to stop them moving and squeaking.
Of course poor framing leads to damaged panels. With time the whole body can sag into a different shape to that originally intended by the designer. Splits and cracks start to run across stressed panels, doors drop so badly they can hardly be closed, and before you know it you have a vast amount of very costly rectification work ahead.
The problem of course was the very small numbers of each body design that were made to keep them exclusive. It was uneconomical to tool up properly to make framing for 2 or 3 of a particular design. Improvisation inevitably took place to keep costs down. With no crash tests or research and development put into such bodies it is not surprising they often proved to be anything but hardwearing. Austin on the other hand would be making hundreds of bodies all of them identical. It was therefore worth the expense and trouble to tool up properly to produce them. Accurately produced components could be assembled quickly, and with repetition the workforce became highly skilled at getting the job right every time. Austin’s coachwork was more expensive than other coachbuilders but it was designed to meet the specific needs of their own chassis and built to a very high standard of quality.
Austin cars may not have the glamour and elegance of a Rolls-Royce or Bentley but they are certainly worthy of equal respect.

My search for a car ended when I bought “Aunty Betty” a 1924 Austin 12/4 5 seat touring car from Bruce and Fay Schaw of Auckland New Zealand. The car was advertised on the internet and the price seemed very reasonable so I sent an e-mail to the vendor asking if the car had been sold or if it was still available. The next day I received a reply stating the car was for sale and the price had been lowered. Bruce kindly obliged me with numerous photographs and descriptions of the parts of the car I was interested in. We had several telephone conversations about the car, its history and what came with it. When I was sure that the car had its original engine gearbox and axle and that it was very sound bodily I could think of nothing else but buying it. The one drawback with the car was its lack of four wheel brakes.

A visit to my friend, mentor, and Austin expert Tony Smallbone (known to many of you as the ever helpful technical adviser to the VAR UK) put my mind at rest to some extent on that score. Tony said “you’ll love that early car they are a delight! They have such lovely steering and excellent handling they are a pleasure to drive. You’re a careful driver and know how to handle a vintage car. You will hardly notice the difference in the brakes but will appreciate the nicer handling.” I have the greatest respect for Tony’s knowledge but I’d be lying if I said I was totally convinced about the 2 wheel brakes.

Aunty Betty seemed to be so right for me in every other respect. She was the ideal candidate for me to pour all my time and love into restoring. So I decided to take the plunge buy her. I wrote to Bruce telling him I was interested in doing a deal quickly.

His reply surprised me. He was deeply troubled by the thought of selling the car to someone who would ship it out of New Zealand.
He had tried very hard to sell the car to a New Zealander over a period of almost 12 months and had failed. The only serious interest had come from a chap in Britain but he had been asking questions for 6 months and didn’t seem particularly keen. Bruce told me he had promised the former owner that he wouldn’t sell the car overseas. A man of his word he had tried hard to honour his promise without any interest from Austin enthusiasts in NZ. I told him I respected his position but felt he should have told me up front that he felt this way. Bruce told me he would make up his mind within 24 hours so I would just have to wait. Bruce’s priority was he had to be sure that the car would be properly cared for. Some people who had expressed vague interest in the car had wanted to keep it outside or had been overseas dealers after a cheap deal. Satisfied the car would be cherished and very well cared for with me he finally agreed to sell.
The deal we did bought me the car, a huge amount of spare parts, and a large box of literature and history. There were so many parts they filled the entire interior of the car and the luggage carrier on the rear. Bruce went to a great deal of trouble in preparing Aunty for her voyage to England. Shipping regulations demanded that the car be drained of all fuel and oil. Bruce diligently drained off all of Aunty’s fuel and oil etc even draining her rear axle. He removed her hub caps and replaced them with aerosol caps to prevent them being stolen, and placed her calormeter with the spare parts inside the car. He must have spent days carefully packing every bulb screw and bracket, before packing them into Aunty before her trip to the docks.

I set about the task of organising shipping from Auckland. I finally settled on RJJ freight and shipping based in Felixstowe. They arranged to put the Aunty in a container in Devonport Auckland and ship her via the Suez canal to Felixstowe in approximately 6 weeks.

With the car containerized and on the high seas I set about researching her history. Bruce kindly sent her documentation to me by air mail so I was able to start my research before the car arrived in Britain.

The first person I wanted to contact was Douglas Wood, Aunty Betty’s 3rd owner. Bruce had told me he had met Douglas a few times and he had found him to be a very knowledgeable man. Bruce had also told me that Douglas had written about Aunty Betty when he owned her, so he seemed the perfect person to ask about Aunty’s past.

I rang Douglas on the morning the car left Auckland. He was very surprised to hear from me but remembered the car very well. He described her as a marvellous and totally useable car that he’d enjoyed owning. He said the car had never been messed about with and was very original which set it apart from most of the other cars still surviving. He went on to tell me about his life as an Austin agent and that he had been a director of Seabrook Fowlds, the company that had sold Aunty Betty as a new car. After making contact with Douglas I wrote to him asking some more questions about his ownership of the car and if he could shed any further light on the history of the car in particular the Seabrook Fowlds connection.
Soon afterward I received a very friendly e-mail from Douglas’s son Chris offering to communicate with me on his father’s behalf. At the age of 93 Douglas was no longer able to write easily so Chris kindly stepped in to help. I am indebted to Chris for the tremendous amount of help he has given me during my research, he’s become a great and much valued friend. It is thanks almost entirely to Chris that I can write the following detailed account of Aunty Betty and her life in New Zealand. Without Chris’s help and Douglas’s excellent memory this interesting story would have been lost to posterity.

Aunty Betty was ordered by Mr G.H. Scott who was then the Austin Motor Company’s senior representative for the whole of Australia and New Zealand! (No small area to cover) 3 identical cars were ordered on behalf of Reuben Dexter of Dexter Motors Ltd Albert Street Auckland New Zealand. Reuben Dexter had been a partner in one of New Zealand’s first Austin agencies known as Dexter and Crozier Ltd which had originally operated from Christchurch but expanded in later years. They opened a branch in Auckland around 1918 when Reuben Dexter relocated to the city. After dissolving the partnership between himself and David Crozier in 1923, Reuben continued in business in his own name in Auckland selling used cars as well as maintaining an Austin agency.