Member newsColin HamillJanuary 09, 2020A30

A30 Utes - a UK contact

Member newsColin HamillJanuary 09, 2020A30

After my last visit to Brisbane and attendance at AMVCQ club meetings and events, I was contacted by Paul Canty, the overseas contact for the A30/A35 UK Club.

Paul was very interested that I had one of the very early A30s produced in 1952. He asked me if I knew of any other A30/A35s still surviving in our far away corner of the world (NZ), and would I give the owners his details. I sent him photos and a blurb of the history of my own A30, along with contact details of a friend of mine, whose wife owns an A35. Isn’t it amazing what comes from being out there on the World Wide Web!

After a few conversations with Paul via email I found him very generous in his willingness to share his knowledge. For instance, I had no idea what month my A30 was first registered in NZ, just the year, 1952. In those days only the year seems to have been recorded, as that is all that the NZ Motor Vehicle Register has on file. Paul was able to deduce for me by the car’s colour, which is a respray of the original, called Sandown Fawn, that my car was built at Longbridge sometime from July onwards in 1952, because July was the month in which they started using that colour.

Of course, if I really wanted to know the build date, I could pay a fee and have a search done in the UK, but I’m not quite that bothered about it. He also told me that you can go pretty close with the build date yourself, by finding an original Lucas part still on the car, as Lucas date-stamped everything they built. A good place to start is the wiper motor, because they virtually never stopped working.

He told me they were still finding A30’s in every corner of the old British Empire, plus other countries, such as in South America, all over Europe, Africa and Asia. I guess that anything with wheels on is definitely going to spread its tentacles, if given a period of 60-70 years to do it.

Paul owns two A35 utes, or “pups” as they call them over in the UK. Once came from Chile and one from Miami. Below are a few photos of them, from original to full restoration.