The man behind the motors revealed
Museum opens room dedicated to its founder
The Southward Car Museum attracts people near and far to see the vast array of motor vehicles from throughout the decades, but there has been very little about the man who started it. Until now.
A legacy room, which highlights the life and times of the late Sir Len Southward, has opened.
The room, prominently located when people enter the museum, has touchscreens giving a timeline of Sir Len’s life, video footage with headsets, a variety of photographs and a lot of memorabilia.
“We tried to answer the question of who was Len and how did he make his money,” museum manager Craig Andrews said. “Those are the questions that everyone asks us. We never really had anything on that, we had a couple of pictures of him, so this is about what he did and who he was.”
Pride of place is Sir Len’s first motorcycle, an ABC, which he assembled at the age of 15, while working at Inglis Bros and Co.
By chance it came into his possession many years later when he restored it.
Sir Len was born on September 20, 1905, in Wellington, to Philip and Elizabeth, who had left England a few years earlier.
He developed a strong passion for
riding and repairing motorcycles. By 1919, at the age of 13, he had left school and started work as a messenger boy for truck and motorcycle importers Inglis Bros and Co.
A few years later, in 1921, he was working with Rogers and Hall, to pursue his interest in the mechanical side of motorcycling, then three months later he moved to Indian motorcycle agents Sutherland and Rankine.
In 1926 Sir Len and Jack Pettengell created Southward and Pettengell Motorcycle Engineers, before Sir Len took it over.
Sir Len opened Southward Motors, in 1935, before things really changed in 1939.
With import controls creating a countrywide shortage in parts, Sir Len became inspired by acquaintance Barney Allan’s philosophy that it “made more business sense to make something new than to repair something second-hand”.
Sir Len started making truck rear vision mirrors, then pram wheels, before building a rolling tube mill — and the business took off.
By 1945 the Southward team built their first continuous operation tube mill and a year later the Southward exhaust pipes were produced.
With the Southward Engineering business well established in Wellington, it allowed Sir Len to put time into his passion for speed into racing speedboats.
His speedboat, Redhead, won various competitions and he also powered it across Wellington Harbour, on February 22, 1953, to become the first person in Australasia to exceed 160km/h (100mph) on water — he reached 162km/h (101.26mph).
Redhead would set a new Australasian water speed record in 1956 at Point England, Auckland, reaching 176km/h (109.9mph).
Going on rallies in restored cars with his wife, Lady Vera, was also enjoyable and they won various awards.
His car collection had been steadily growing and by 1969, soon after he retired to let his sons, Roy and John, take over the business, he had a collection of 30 with most on display at the factory in Seaview.
By 1971 ground was broken on the new Southward Car Museum site, in Otaihanga, but it wasn’t until 1977, because of council consent delays, that construction was given the green light.
Southward Car Museum was officially opened on December 22, 1979, and now comprises about 450 motor vehicles.
Sir Len, who was knighted in 1986 for his service to the community, especially the disabled, died on February 19, 2004, aged 98.
His beloved wife, Lady Vera, died a few years ago and she left money to create the legacy room, which is named after the couple.