JustBritish

One of the most desirable British cars ever made has returned to Henley for the first time in more than 70 years. The Squire, which was first manufactured in a single garage at the top of Remenham Hill in 1934, took center stage at an exhibition at Phyllis Court Club.

More than 230 members and guests paid tribute to Adrian Squire, a former Bentley apprentice who lived and worked in Henley and had a showroom in Bell Street that is now a bookshop.

Piers Flashman, chairman of the motoring section at Phyllis Court Club, said the exhibition was years in the making. He added: “It was a great success and a sell-out. People traveled from as far as New Zealand to be part of the event.

“We were extremely lucky to have several generations of the Squire family as well as the owners of three of the seven surviving Squire cars in the world.”

Members and guests heard a talk about life in Henley during the Thirties and after lunch enjoyed a presentation called Squire, a tribute to the man and the marque, by Jonathan Wood, an auto-historian.

Squire spared no expense in his design of the car, using an Anzani 100bhp 1496cc twin-cam engine that made it capable of speeds of more than 100mph, which was rare for a production sports car at the time.

He built a fine rigid chassis for two- or four-seat versions, with attractive bodywork by Vanden Plas, and installed 15in hydraulic brakes in manganese alloy drums that were known for their ferocity.

Squire, who was 21 when he founded Squire Motors, employed several local companies as sub-contractors, including Henley pump manufacturers Stuart Turner. But his dream ended in tears. With a high price of £1,195, sales were hard to come by during those pre-war years and because of the car’s costly design only seven were made.

In 1936, the company was wound up and manufacture of the Squire ended, although two more cars were completed privately with left-over parts.

Squire himself went on to join Lagonda and was working for the Bristol Aeroplane Company when he was killed in an air raid in 1940, aged 30. The seven surviving Squires have owners across the world. Three are in America and there is one each in Britain, Austria and New Zealand. The seventh is in pieces in Holland. Last year, a Squire car was sold in California for around $750,000.

Mr Flashman said: “This truly unique and unrepeatable event, with its local historical connections, was brought to a symbolic close the next day when Dr Kallinger, who had brought his beautiful Squire car from Vienna, visited the garage on Remenham Hill.

“He then drove away up the Fair Mile — just as Adrian Squire and his clients did more than 70 years ago.”

After its first successful low-speed run last week, the British Steam Car was taken to the MoD’s Thorney Island facility near Portsmouth for a series of higher speed runs on Wednesday and Thursday.

Early reports are of the car and crew performing well, with the steam generators building pressure successfully and the safety systems shutting down the car quickly when a small defect was detected. The team of six engineers is learning to turn the car quickly and prepare it for a return run within the allotted time of one hour.

The British Steam Car’s target velocity is 170mph, which would net them one of the longest-held speed records, set by Fred Marriott, who achieved a 121.57mph flying kilometre record in the Stanley brothers’ Rocket at the 1906 Florida Speed Week. The target speed will also net the team and its principal backer and record-breaking driver Charles Burnett the records for the kilometre and the mile, as well as beating Sir Nigel Gresley’s 126mph 1938 Mallard steam locomotive, the world’s fastest steam loco. Burnett has plenty of experience of speed record breaking on water and set the offshore powerboat speed record of 137mph in 1999.

The team has already had a meeting with Edwards Air Force Base in California about the possibility of running the car on a dry lake bed next year once the winter rains have dried out. It has also reconnoitred a number of potential Californian suppliers of essentials such as propane fuel, demineralised water and team accommodation. The team also met up with the Southern California Timing Association, which will be helping the team with the surveying the record-breaking course and, of course, the timing. That’s all planned for next year, however, and after this week’s test runs the 25ft car will go into storage at the team’s base in Lymington, Hampshire.

From The Telegraph by Andrew English

British car manufacturers have won a four-year delay to the introduction of European rules designed to force them to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from new cars.

Jaguar Land Rover was granted a special deal after Britain joined ranks with other car-producing EU states to water down fuel efficiency targets proposed last year.

The highest levels of fines for failing to comply with the targets will not come into force until 2019, not in 2015 as previously proposed.

The deal means manufacturers will be able to delay investing in expensive carbon-reduction technology for several more years.

MEPs and the 27 EU member states have agreed to abandon plans to force the industry to reduce average CO emissions from around 158g/km last year to 130g/km by 2012.
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Aston Martin may cut as many as 600 jobs, the British sports car brand said today.

The possible cuts of 300 full-time jobs along with “a similar number” of temporary positions are part of a discussion between the former Ford Motor Co. subsidiary and its trade union. Aston Martin also said it’s considering other undisclosed cutbacks related to worldwide economic woes and plunging sales.
“These are regrettable but necessary measures in the extraordinary market conditions we all now face,” Aston Martin CEO Ulrich Bez said in a statement.

The cutbacks come as the automaker seeks to revive the Lagonda luxury brand to diversify its product mix beyond sports cars.
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People planning on buying a car in the new year may want to hang on until the Lotus Evora arrives in showrooms across the UK, after it was given the thumbs up by British vehicle enthusiasts.

The model scooped the title of Overall Most Rated Car of 2008 in a poll of iMotor Magazine readers.
Some 95 per cent of participants chose to rate, rather than slate, the vehicle. Mike Kimberley, chief executive officer of Lotus, said the award was particularly impressive considering the car did not go on sale in the UK until next spring.

Commenting on the popularity of the Evora, iMotor editor Mat Watson said: “Its … score of 95 per cent is truly impressive and enough to see it beat brilliant machines such as the Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4 and Nissan GT-R.”

The MG sports car is now back on sale in Britain. The company’s story is an amazing one of survival since the birth of the marque in the 1920s. It survived ownership by BMC, British Leyland, BMW and is now in Chinese hands. Yet, this nifty little sports car is still there bearing its badge with pride. So with the rebirth of the brand in Britain, it is perhaps appropriate to look at the model which drove MG into modern times.

The MG TD was arguably the most popular of all the T series cars. It followed the success of the TC Midget which made inroads into the United States market. Underpinned by the success of the TC, the TD answered calls for a bigger and better equipped car.

MG was then owned by the Nuffield Group and as the 1950s were about to dawn, major changes were taking place at the MG Abingdon factory, with Riley models also being produced there. The development of the TD was done on a shoestring because there was a shortage of investment in the brand. But what appeared was inspirational in the cash-strapped circumstances.
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