Obituaries

MICHAEL J WORTHINGTON-WILLIAMS MBE 1938-2021

With the death of Michael Worthington-williams MBE at the age of 83 on 8 February, the old-car movement has lost a great campaigner, historian and writer.

His first articles appeared in Lord Montagu’s then relatively new magazine Veteran and Vintage when he was a teenager. He became a leading journalist in the field, preferring to write about pre-1940 machines rather than classics.

The first vehicle he bought was an unlikely sounding 1926 BSA 986cc motorcycle/taxi combination, which was once a common sight on the Brighton streets. He unearthed it, and from then on he took an interest in vehicles that turned up after years out of use: barn-finds.

He had a number of columns in different magazines, and during the 1980s was responsible for Worthy in Classic & Sports Car, the forerunner to today’s Lost & found. How he heard about the cars I will never know. Mike never retired, he just slowed down, but kept on writing about finds and discoveries to the end. While he and I were rivals of a sort in the barn-find niche, we remained friends and occasionally even swapped stories.

He was an avid collector of the rare and unusual – at one time he had 17 old and usually unrestored cars in his stable. He later got this down to a more sensible number, restoring and keeping his 1921 Angus Sanderson for a long period before buying Arthur, a ’27 Austin 20 that was in ‘oily rag’ condition before that phrase was thought of (My classic & I, April 2002). He travelled the best part of 250,000 miles in the car, and would turn up at the Beaulieu Autojumble in it for many years having driven from his home in south-west Wales.

The historic vehicle world has a lot to thank Mike for, particularly his work with the DVLC regaining lost registration marks for cars that had reappeared, or getting agerelated numbers for imports.

He was quite happy to impart his knowledge of motoring history to anyone who asked. He helped to form The Society of Automotive Historians in Britain and served as its chairman for a long time, and was awarded an MBE in 2018 for his services to recording motoring history. He wrote books on a wide variety of automotive subjects including automobilia, of which he had a very large collection – most of it again pre-1940. I was envious of his huge library and the archives he built up over his lifetime.

C&SC offers its condolences to his wife of 44 years, Pam, and eight children. Michael Ware