Goodbye Roy – you were a legend by any other name...
Roy Cary, owner of Roy of Hornchurch, passed away peacefully at home on February 18, 2021. On behalf of all
Classic Scooterist readers, we take this opportunity to send our condolences to Roy's widow, Helen, and the rest of his family.
From the late 1960s, Roy's shop became well known for pushing the boundaries of Lambretta tuning with the likes of Doug May, Ron Moss and others tuning machines and racing them under his Royspeed banner, which resulted in the winning of many scooter sports trophies. The shop went on to become well known for building scooters to individual customers' specification, but sporting a ‘Royspeed' logo; this, in turn, led to the birth of the mythical ‘Royspeed dealer special' (Roy himself has been quoted as saying there was no such thing). All of this helped to cement the shop's name in the annals of scootering history.
Roy had many other business interests over the years and at one point, he was also the UK's Fantic Moto Concessionaire (in fact, when the shop finally closed its doors in 2010, a forgotten pile of Fantic spares were found in the loft).
Roy's shop at 35 High Street, Hornchurch was his business base for more than 50 years, but finally closed when the town centre was redeveloped. At that point in time it was being run under the ‘Classie Chassis' banner (effectively selling
‘big boys' toys' and upmarket children's products). The company moved premises, but eventually closed down in 2020.
My connections to Roy started off in a not dissimilar way as to how I came to know Arthur Francis. I knew of the Royspeed name, but had never actually met Roy himself; that was eventually to come via my connections with his scooter shop manager, Dick Sedgley and his associate (and friend of Roy's) John Roberts. All of this eventually led to me finally meeting Roy. Shortly after this, in 2009, we published an interview with him in Classic Scooterist.
Roy was a person who could only be described as a colourful character – not only by me, but by many other people who got to meet him. I experienced this firsthand on one occasion when he treated me to dinner; we went to a local restaurant where the staff obviously knew and loved him judging by the way they ran around after him (I suspect – although I'm not entirely sure – that he was actually their landlord). Anyway, after a rather pleasant meal, he said: “Mmm, didn't enjoy that much – I'm not paying for that”; then he got up and walked straight out of the restaurant without paying, leaving me sitting there; it took me a few seconds to gather my thoughts before I got up and legged it out of the restaurant behind him.
Having had time to reflect, I suspect this was just part of Roy's showmanship and that he actually had an account with the restaurant concerned. Maybe he just did it to see what my reaction would be, as he did have a sparkle in his eye for the rest of that day.
Roy, you will be greatly missed by all who knew you – especially by Helen and the rest of your family; may you rest in peace whether you are up there, or down below (I suspect the latter, given some of your mischievous antics).