Two-tone tiddler
The car that started my love of old machinery was that miniature piece of upper-crust motoring the Riley Elf, memories of which came flooding back upon reading April’s piece on the Wolseley Hornet. I got the Wolseley’s posher sister as a replacement for the tired old Mini my wife was using because I felt she should have something nicer, with more room for carting stuff about.
The blue-and-white JPK 3C was originally owned by an elderly lady from Goring-by-sea, who must have sold it due to its fuel economy – 18mpg from a Mini isn’t good!
The car was nearly 20 years old but with only 18,000 miles to its credit, and came with heaps of history of yearly servicing from the garage that was obviously ripping her off. I took the filthy air filter to the local motor factor to ask if they had one in stock, only to be told that shape of filter had been superceded at least 10 years earlier.
I decided that the Elf was too good to be a shopping trolley and retired it for use at shows: the slippery slope to owning old cars had begun. Its replacement for my wife was a Riley One-point-five (you can see where this is going).
When we sold the Elf, the chap who phoned was a Tokyo resident who had come to England to find a Mini Cooper, then decided that a Riley would be more his style. From him I learnt that in order to own a car in Tokyo you have to prove that you have a parking space for it, hence the interest in a Mini. I wonder what happened to it.
Ray Cattle
Wateringbury, Kent