Car-lovers’ last cuppa for 2019
Age: Favourite song? Favourite colour? Favourite game?
Four, I mean five!
You Are My Sunshine
Red
Duck Duck Goose. I like to pat on the head and get chased
Who is your best friend?
day care
What makes you laugh?
When I let go of the balloon when it’s big and it farts and flies everywhere My brother push me Monster
Riding bikes but
What makes you sad? What are you afraid of? What are you really good at?
sometimes I crash into cows
What is your favourite thing to eat for lunch?
Weet-bix, sugar and milk
What is your favourite fruit? Apple What do you want to be when you grow up?
helicopter pilot
How old is grown up?
Archie, he’s at a different
Six foot tall
A
DUBBO’S Classic Cars and Coffee went off with a bang with its last event for 2019 last Sunday morning at Victoria Park, with the parking spaces along the drive and around the Cenotaph packed, and some vehicles needing to park on the grass.
As usual there were plenty of cars that haven’t been seen before as well as old favourites that needed some closer scrutiny, like Peter Heywood’s immaculate 1932 Citroen.
Mr Heywood says people think Citroen and imagine all the tiny traditional French cars, so they’re shocked when they see his car and realise it’s a substantial motor car more on the order of a pre-war Cadillac or Horch.
“Many people don’t know, and I didn’t until I started restoring the Citroen, that the brand was up there with Mercedes and quite a few of the other European makes of the day, and this one was the top of the range luxury model for
Citroen at the time,” Mr Heywood told Dubbo Photo News.
“In Australia we got a lot of four cylinders which were more the run-of-the mill cars. This is the only one that I know of in the southern hemisphere, it used to be the French diplomats’ car in Canberra.
“Mechanically it’s a very advanced car for the 1930s. Citroen generally was ahead of the time – if you look at the motor under the bonnet now, it looks like it’s 20 years ahead of its time,” he said.
One of his major challenges during the 10-year, workingtwo-days-each-week restoration was sourcing parts, most of which were almost impossible to find.
“I wanted to do it original and there were no other parts available in this part of the world so I had to make a lot of the parts – that was the hard thing. Some came from France but not many,” Mr Heywood said.
“We tried as much as possible to do this original rather than put something else in it that wasn’t on the Citroen when it was built.
“We had to source a differential; it didn’t have a diff and we actually found one; but making things like the mascot of the top of the radiator, that’s cut out of a solid piece of brass and hand-filed. The bumper bars, they were all missing, all the mudguards and running boards were all gone so they had to be hand-made and it goes on and on and on, nearly every bit that you touch had to be made,” he explained.
After the mindboggling number of hours dedicated to getting his pride and joy on the road, Peter Heywood likes nothing better than driving it down to Dubbo Classic Cars and Coffee to have a yarn with mates and fellow car enthusiasts.
“It’s lovely, really good, especially after the work you put in to do these cars up it’s a great feeling to be able to show it in public, that’s what makes it worthwhile,” he said.