A CLASSY BLUE LADY
AWARD-WINNING VAUXHALL VELOX PASX
Our story begins in the early hours of an April 2004 morning when I was awakened by noises in the dark. I put on a dressing gown and slippers to investigate these bumps in the night. I traced them to the driveway opposite mine, which belonged to Trevor Stone. Tied to a trailer by a strong rope was the street’s new arrival, a blue 1962 Vauxhall Velox PASX saloon that just hadn’t been there when I had put out the rubbish bag earlier on.
Trevor’s nosey neighbour got out his camera shortly after daylight and snapped the Velox on the trailer. He took a few other shots of the car pre-restoration, before Trevor moved to another city. We kept in contact over the years, often catching up at British Car Days, where he told me how the Velox was progressing.
Near mishap
There might have been a very different ending to this story. When we sit down to discuss the article, Trevor tells me what happened when he first brought the car home. He had left Lower Hutt with his Nissan P10 Primera pulling a trailer to collect the Velox, arriving at Hastings in the early evening. The trailer’s rear end had had to be lowered to the ground to get the car on. “We had quite a job winching the car onto the trailer, and it took three of us to push it on. It is quite a heavy car [at 1220kg],” he says. “I then began a very slow trip home, as I discovered [that] as soon as I went over 40kph, the trailer which I had hired started to sway in a worrying manner. By the time I finally reached the Rimutaka hill, it was after midnight, and, fortunately, there wasn’t much traffic, so I wasn’t