*1948/49 MY BROTHER TRIES AGAIN - CHROMED FLUTES

1936 14 h.p. VAUXHALL TOURER--HIDEOUS COLOUR AND  SOME BARBARIAN HAS PAINTED OVER THE GREATER PART OF THE CHROMED FLUTES ON THE BONNET!

Have you noticed how difficult it is to get a decent picture of a pre-War Vauxhall Tourer on GOOGLE IMAGES?  No??Not exactly the sort of thing one attempts daily or even weekly! 

But, I wanted to show you the second car to make its way into our family. Having failed to manage the mighty 1928 Buick Business Coupe, my elder brother Pat now bought a 1938 VAUXHALL TOURER. Like the Buick it was pale blue in colour and unlike the desecrated 1936 Model in the above picture , it had its grand chromed flutes extending from the radiator , tapering along the top outer edges of the bonnet as Vauxhalls had done since the King was in nappies!

                                                  Here is the actual car .Sadly only a Black and White picture -
                                                        but that is how we lived in those ancient times

The car worked well and its most memorable characteristic was the sound its carburettor made when the starter was pressed. Wrestling the folding canvas roof up and down was a regular torture - yes , I got to help! The absurdity of the cellophane side "curtains "as I think they were called , had to be seen to be believed. They each had two metal posts at the bottom which fitted into holes in the top of the front doors and the side panels behind those doors, then when the roof was up they tucked into a double set of canvas flaps on the edge of the roof  itself! The driver's "curtain"came complete with a flap at the bottom ( accommodated by the downward slope in the door top you can see in the photo above) so that he could, with some difficulty, contrive to get his arm out to give traffic signals: e.g. Forearm at 90 degrees erect and palm open for "STOP"and arm horizontal with palm extended for a right turn!! 

My enthusiasm for driving with the top down was dampened one day, when my brother was taking us all for a drive and as we passed down Parramatta Road heading East in bright sunshine past the JANTZEN factory where my brother worked, a great fat black beetle smacked me in the face at about 30 mph! Yes folks my enthusiasm for Sedans surged and has remained high!!

The canvas roof and celluloid windows somehow never kept all the rain out - it always managed to find its way in, here and there and there and....you get the picture! The VAUXHALL TOURER still manages to hold a fond place in my memory, which I find impossible to justify other than by recalling that peculiarly pleasant starting noise from the carburettor, the great chromed flutes on the bonnet oh! and I forgot - a pair of substantial and streamlined headlights!. It held its place for a few years, but then......