Driving a 1931 Austin 7 saloon to the Cote D'Azur and back "seemed a good idea at the time", and looking back on it now with more than nine more years' experience with Sir Herbert's little brainchild (or children, the stable now includes a '65 Sports) I would never dream of undertaking such a journey with a car in such a state. . . well perhaps not quite as bad !

Listening to someone else's account of their holiday usually bores me stiff, so, as far as possible I will prune this adventure down to its bare A.7 details:-

In July, 1965, my then fiancee, now my wife Jo, and I set out from Birmingham to join a convoy at Oxted in Surrey, consisting of two 1927 Morgan Aeros, one 1933 Morgan Super Sports—all "trois rues", and a Minivan loaded to the gunwhales with Jap and Anzani V-twin engines and parts. Our own car was grossly overloaded, with an orange box full of spares including a half-shaft, dynamo, distributor, coil, piston, con-rod, etc., plus a large tool box, along with a typically British, Boy Scout type tent and camping gear. With the back seat squab taken out, the luggage still touched the roof lining!

It rained solidly all the way to the South Coast, and the first incident in the marathon chain of mishaps occured about twenty miles from Dover when the off-side half shaft broke. Out we got in the pouring rain; feeling a bit sheepish about stopping the three-wheelers, since none of them had hoods, I performed the old trick of locking the diff with a brass wheel nut, and we proceeded to Dover. We said goodbye to the convoy at about 9 a.m. as they crossed the channel without me whilst I searched Dover for a place to strip the back axle in the dry.

The South Kent Omnibus Company were very obliging, and we spent about six hours in their bus garage, with the car up on a couple of bus jacks. using bus-type gasket goo and bus driver type coffee.After a trip around Dover I managed to find a little welding firm on the docks who "repaired" the old half-shaft just in case; it turned out to be welded offset at the keyway and so was unusable but fortunately not needed again.

Off we set for France by an evening ferry. arriving at Boulogne about 7.30 p.m. The rest of the Morgans, etc., were by this time, well on their way down France, and we had previously arranged a rendezvous a week later in Juan les Pins on the South Coast. Besides plug oiling and float chamber flooding the next section of the journey was trouble free. My saloon had uneven springs on the back, one being weaker than the other. On English roads the camber cancels out the effect of this very nicely, but on steeply cambered French country roads with a full load, the car always felt as though it was about to tip over sideways.

The next major trouble was just outside Dijon the next day at 35 m.p.h. when the air was rent by a deafening clatter from the engine. Out we climbed to try to diagnose the fault. I thought it was big end trouble, but a DSl9 stopped and out stepped the traffic control officer for the area off duty. He produced a long rod from the back of his magnificent steed, put his ear to the end and proceeded to listen to various parts of the now exceedingly noisy engine. He claimed that it was not big-end trouble and that it would probably be O.K. to continue, since the damage, whatever it was, had been done and no extra harm could come. The more I look back on these incidents, the more I realise what risk I was taking, knowing so little about Austin 7's at the time.

Off we set again with a steady hammering sound from the engine, and we managed in fact to reach the South Coast and camp site, 300 miles from there, without incident. The journey from Brum to Juan les Pins took seven days which, considering the handicaps, was not as bad as it sounds. We met up with the Morgans right on the front at Nice, parked on the Promenade des Anglaise in all their glory with the inevitable crowd around them. Seemingly the three tricycles and the minivan had, unlike me, chanced coming across the French Alps. They had climbed above a rainstorm up frightening gradients without mishap, but when descending had come around a hairpin bend to be greeted by a rockfall in the centre of the road. one Morgan had split a front tyre and bent the front cross tubes on the suspenSiOIl, and the mini had tom a nasty hole in its sump and petrol tank. These were subsequently fixed by tinfoil and Araldite for the former, and welding for the latter! But that is a story in itself. After we had camped, off came the sump on the Seven and I found that the little end had worked loose and dropped out, bending a con-rod, breaking the skirt off a piston and jamming once or twice between piston, the crank and cases which accounted for the loudest of the nasty noises on the last lap. The weather. of course, at the beginning of August was almost unbearably hot, so between eleven and four o'clock during the day it was impossible to work in the open on the camp site, or even hold the tools because of the heat. The obvious first step. however, was to replace the offending con-rod and piston. The spare rod I had brought with me had a big-end bearing far too small for the crankshaft, so this had to be bored out to fit. Taking the original rod as a pattern I scoured the back streets of Cannes in one of the Morgans, to find an engineering firm who would do the job What we did find was a grotty garage, containing an original 1922 tank-bodied Bugatti hidden in a dusty corner. Scrap yards in the South of France incidentally contain some really surprising old cars, usually in a fine state of preservation because of the weather.

We eventually found an engineering firm who were willing to tackle the job. Unfortunately they charged me an extortionate price and then bored the white metal out about 10 thou. too big. This, of course, I did not find out until I got back to the camp site and checked it on the crankshaft. It took me two full days of solid work to get it to fit correctly, and meant filing the big-end cap flats (sacrilege!), scraping the white metal with an old feeler gauge and "blueing" the bearing intermittently with a smokey candle, having to bolt it home every hour or so to check the bearing area. This was all done with the engine in situ, and meant crawling underneath all day on the scorched grass. It eventually went together and once more I was roadworthy.We spent a very enjoyable week on the South Coast, visiting Monte Carlo, Beaulieu (French variety), Antibes, etc., and then set off home alone, the Morgans having returned a few days before us.We made a good start of about 150 miles, nursing our chronic sunburn the scorching heat. I would never have thought it possible to be too hot a draughty Austin 7 with windscreen, side windows and ventilators full open and wearing only bathing trunks (me, not the car, idiot !). we were just congratulating ourselves, when the dreaded clattering appeared again from the engine.

So the next pit stop was on a camp site on the R.N.7, halfway between the South Coast and Paris.

Off came the sump and gauze again, or what was left of the gauze, and I found the rest of the remains of the little end bolt and broken piston which had obviously lodged on the "shelf" or gauze flange on the inside of the crankcase and remained unnoticed at Nice. Fortunately no real damage was done save a few scores on the inside of the crankcase aligning with the big-ends, and a slightly bent con-rod. The remaining debris was cleared out and cast into a waste bin, whilst the sump, etc., was replaced complete with grocery cardboard gasket, since 1 had run out of original ones. Off we set again next day and reached Paris by the evening, camping on a firemen's training ground in Marie D'lvry on the South bank. We spent two days in the city. Driving a very unroadworthy A.7 saloon in Paris traffic needs no commenting on....

About twenty miles out on the journey to Boulogne an ominous rumbling developed on the overrun which grew worse and worse as we reached the coast. I was unsure at the time what the symptoms were, but I tackled it later. The crossing was uneventful except for a rather nerve-wracking time with the customs over a "souvenier" of France, and we set out from Dover on a rainy morning deafening all and sundry. About fifteen miles from the coast on a deserted country road we decided to stop on a lay by near an A.A. box. Off came the rad. and out came the engine and gearbox smothered in oil of course (how do you get oil-tight A.7 engines?) On parting the two it was found that a flywheel nut could be spun off by hand. Five hours hard work in the pouring rain had it all in one piece again, and the A.A. box was very convenient for changing into dry clothes. The next section of the journey was to Amroth Castle in South Wales to visit some relations on holiday, before returning to Brum. The saloon covered the next ninety miles or so really well. We averaged forty-five miles per hour and were feeling very pleased with ourselves. It was, of course, short lived.

Coming through Basingstoke in Hampshire, a deafening crunch and judder stopped the back wheels for a second. I pushed it out of gear as quickly as possible and coasted to a halt on a long country road, at 10 p.m. at night about five miles out of town. This was our moment of ultimate depression. We pushed the car on to the grass and camped in the adjacent field for the night, pitching the tent in darkness for the 'nth time. The next morning—a Friday, I crawled underneath on the side of the road and off came the sump again, to reveal an awesome sight. A con-rod had snapped at the little end, come down and concertined itself against the camshaft. The piston and little end were intact at the top of the bore, but the COI1rod shaft had compressed like plasticene into a mangled piece of metal about 3-inch long, curling around on itself but amazingly still intact. I have this mounted on a plaque on my wall to this day. The big end was perfect, as was the crankshaft and case, with the exception of the casting around the camshaft centre bearing which had broken away and thus written off the crankcase. Five different people stopped in the morning to see if there was anything they could do. The last was a farmer who once owned a Seven (haven't they all !) and after having had the problem explained to him, informed us that a neighbour of his had the remains of an Austin in his farmyard with which he had intended to build a mini tractor about ten years before but never got around to it. After we had packed the tent and all the accompanying rubbish, he hitched our car up to the back of his landrover and towed us seven miles to a little place called Tadley and into this farmyard, sure enough the very rusty and rotten ramains of a 1932 tourer stood next to the pigsty in the weeds with, lo and behold, an early coil engine.

The next three days were one of the most enjoyable sections of the holiday. We camped in the farmyard and spent the whole of the days in the open, building one good engine out of the two. Although full of acorns, leaves and muck after eight years in the open the second engine was still free to turn.The farmer's son owned a small local garage and really went out of his way to help us by taking the now half dismantled engine down to his garage and cleaning it thoroughly with a paraffin spray, also providing many needed gaskets from his old stock. The old farm couple themselves kept us fed, provided us with tools and took us out for drinks in the evenings. Neither of them would take a penny for their troubles. The engine rebuild included sorting out and grinding valves, swopping piston rings for the best selection and filing down where appropriate!

A little story came to light about the village whilst we were working. Tadley is better known as Tadley-God 'elp-us to the locals, ever since an intrepid balloonist made an emergency landing in a local field about the turn of the century and spotted a local yokel, asked where he was, and received the above reply.

Monday morning saw us on our way to South Wales after cheery goodbyes to the kind farmer, wife and son. We took the wrecked engine with us, squeezed in on the back seat along with a good rad core off the derelict car, and all the camping gear, spares, and tools of course. Space inside was really becoming minimal now, with belongings packed between the two front seats, and under our legs on the floor, we even had to sit on the blankets because of lack of room in the back. 1931 Saloons short chassis variety have a fabric top, of course, and no chassis to speak of underneath the back, so some sort of luggage-rack was almost out of the question. Nightfall saw us in South Wales and we stopped in the early hours on a deserted lay by on a country road, and fell asleep in the front seats until 5 a.m. Rather bleary-eyed and stiff we trundled on again and covered about ten miles until the car seemed to gradually develop a sideways drift on even the slightest corner. I suspected a slow puncture so dismounted to investigate and found that indeed the rear nearside tyre was punctured, the cause being the spokes cutting into the inner tube. On investigating further I found that both the back wheels were collapsing under the ridiculous weight in the back. The hubs of both wheels were capable of being moved quite independently of their rims! I jacked up the back of the car and replaced the worst wheel with the spare, and we then continued on our way, driving much more gingerly than before. Amroth Castle was reached the same afternoon and we received a grand reception from the relations. We stayed the night and slept in beds for the first time in three weeks. The last stretch from South Wales to Birmingham we completed in one day. Not only did we have the drunken back wheel to worry about, but the newly acquired engine unfortunately had four sump studs either stripped or broken, so our oil consumption was down to 10 to 15 miles to the pint. Every stop made through the Hereford area meant fishing the frying pan out of the back and positioning it carefully under the sump to catch the oil then pouring it back down the filler when setting off. Valhalla (home) was reached about midnight, still under our own steam, much to everyone's surprise.

This was, believe it or not, the most enjoyable holiday we have ever had. What capped it all was, that after two thousand three hundred accident-free miles driving in assorted traffic with typically feeble brakes I came out to the car next morning and stoved the back of the body in by reversing it into a Land Rover on my own drive! I have taken Sevens to the Continent twice since, to Holland and Brittany, without one mechanical fault or trouble of any kind. Experience? No, just luck.