Maybe so, but not to devotees of “The Saint,” aka Simon Templar. “He was an Englishman, and a gentleman,” explained AQ editor Don Vorderman—”though one must admit a pretty rakish one. Of impeccable manners and dress, he was nonetheless superbly skilled in the dark arts of detection and self-defense. He was the James Bond of the 1930s.”

An AQ classic

I’m glad my friend appreciates this stuff—few are left who do—and am happy that he found a copy. It was one of our classic issues, if only for its Englishness.

After the Hirondel, we published a panel discussion on what was wrong with the British motor industry. It caused a furore in England. Bill Boddy, veddy traditional editor of MotorSport (an AQ contributor and accomplished historian of Brooklands) denounced us as Yank barbarians and mocked “a magazine featuring a car that never existed, a slapstick motor race, and an auto engine powered by soap bubbles.”

(The issue included a spread on a car engine with wind-driven vanes, stirring a bucket of soapy water, generating bubbles which, pricked by piston heads, drove the crankshaft. I dunno! It seemed like a fun idea at the time. And it was a British idea—from The Autocar.)

UK motor industry

The panel discussion was entitled, “What’s the Matter with England? Fine engineers muzzled by incompetent executives and a dismal labor force, among some other things.” It caused such an uproar that British Leyland Motors organized a press tour of all its factories to prove to us ignorant Americans that they really knew what they were doing.

… It was my  first trip out of the country, and Barbara and I fell in love with England (as it then was), particularly driving there—long before speed cameras. The quality of motoring was almost universally high. You could drive almost as fast as common sense suggested. You could pass on curves, for heaven’s sake! (“Reason is, we don’t have anything else,” said a British friend.) The car being overtaken would politely inch over, while oncoming drivers calmly moved likewise, giving you a lane. Provided  you seemed to look like you knew what you were doing (and not drunk), you were rarely arrested. (I do know Brits who are exceptional drivers even under the influence, such as…oh, never mind.)

Incidentally, and sadly, it turned out that our panel discussion was exactly right. As far as homegrown products went, the UK motor industry was almost kaput by the 1990s.

From AC to Mercer

There was a history of AC (Autocarriers) in Thames Ditton, Surrey, from the Sociable to the Cobra. The author, Pennsylvanian Bill Jackson, is the spitting image of Benjamin Franklin, with a literary wit to match. We wound up with the Cobra 427, although somehow Vorderman didn’t get pictured behind the wheel, as he usually arranged to do.

I contributed (edited) the memoirs of Dutch Darrin, including several tall tales by Dutch. But they were so gaudy and wonderful, everyone  forgave him. Don photographed Darrin’s DiFrasso Rolls-Royce town car—which he thought one of the most beautiful cars he’d ever seen.

There was a road test of a “Living Legend: T-head Mercer Raceabout.” Don did the serious photography; I snapped him driving this amazing car at speed. Despite several dozen bad shots more of trees than car, I  managed one so sharp you can read the name on the hubs. (With 35mm Kodachrome, even.) For a larger image of this incredibly lucky photo, and more on Don, see my tribute to him here.

The Bol d’Or: All Come All Ye Faithful

The motor race that so incensed Bill Boddy was the Bol d’Or, crafted by a colorful charlatan rather incongruously named Eugene Mauve. The hilarious history of this ersatz road race near Paris was recounted by the inimitable English writer Dennis May. To Dennis’ pen we added irreverent cartoons by Russ Brockbank. Bill Boddy hated it passionately, because Mauve wasn’t really a gentleman, dontcha know. As Dennis wrote:

Mauve’s total disregard for competitors’ qualifying experience and the race-worthiness of their cars constituted a local hazard. By his philosophy, a man had to start somewhere, so why not in the Bol? As long as the completed entry blank was accompanied by the appropriate fee, Mauve’s attitude was O Come All Ye Faithful. He once exercised this engaging complaisance in favor of a team of horrendous three-wheelers, built in a Paris backyard:

Dennis May

I’m sad to observe that Dennis May cannot even be tracked by search engines. His writing blended a superlative grasp of English literature with precise automotive knowledge. He was capable of  an exquisite turn of words. Describing a car’s independent rear suspension he quipped: “All independent of the leafy spring, in Keats’s phrase.” He was a charming, gentle man, died too young, and Don Vorderman lamented his loss: “Everyone who knew Dennis loved him. And that’s one crowd I’m proud to be a member of.”

Back to AQ and the Hirondel

Still, what made this issue was Simon Templar and his fabled Hirondel. Each artist was fed a passage from Charteris’ descriptions of the car. AQ asked them to illustrate the words. John Hanna and Dale Weaver Totten started  in London. Dale’s painting eerily captured The Saint rushing past Hyde Park:

Ted Lodigensky drew the suburbs, as you see at the top. Bob Andrews, a talented designer who had helped style the Avanti for Raymond Loewy, drew The Saint outside London, blasting up the open road. The climactic passage, of course, was reserved for Walter Gotschke:

Again and again in the dark, the Hirondel swooped up behind ridiculous, creeping glowworms, sniffed at their red tails, snorted derisively, swept past with a deep-throated blare. No car in England could have held the lead of the Hirondel that night.

It seems like yesterday…

If I have written anything worthwhile over 50 years it’s thanks to my five years as a minor player at AQ. Between Don Vorderman and Beverly Rae Kimes, I learned things that couldn’t be acquired in a school of journalism. The foregoing began with an email to a friend who acquired this old issue. I just wanted him to know the treat he was in for.

Forgive the ramble. RML

Further reading: the artists

Dean’s Garage, “Stan Mott’s Autobiography,” 2022.

D.D. Degg, “Stan Mott RIP,” 2022.

Dale Weaver Totten’s Facebook page (maintained by his daughter Tabitha)

”Don Vorderman: The Best Editor I Ever Had” (including more on Grendel, the Allard from Hell)

We are bowled over by the sheer volume of color, beauty and depth of photographs in the latest and greatest edition of Triumph Cars: The Complete Story. Largely this was the effort of my co-author Graham Robson, but I never expected such a high quality treatment by the publishers. A big, square format, 10×10 inches, it’s chock-a-block with lavish illustrations from the first spindly Triumph 10/20 of 1923 to the last, badge-engineered Triumph Acclaim of 1984. There are even appendices on Triumph-derived cars like the Bond Equipe, Amphicar, Peerless and Swallow Doretti. There is a full account of Triumph’s remarkable racing and rally performances. It’s the most luxurious production anyone could ask for. Order your copy here.

Triumph Cars is one of the best car books Graham and I wrote. It’s as thorough as it is because when we began work, in the mid-1970s, we could still find and interview so many old Triumph hands. They began with Walter Belgrove, who skillfully designed many of the best pre-World War II models, and the famous TR3. Not widely known, Donald Healey was also associated with Triumph, and accounted for one of its most legendary cars, the straight-eight Dolomite (see below). We spent many hours with Alick Dick, whose management saved the company in the early Sixties. We benefitted from interviews with Harry Webster, and many other Triumph engineers.

Triumph Cars: from the Publisher

“Relating the story of Triumph is complex enough. To include all the earlier events which persuaded Siegfried Bettmann to begin car manufacture in 1923 is even more so. The authors, however, are experts in all things Triumph: the cars, and the political events surrounding them. They have assembled and presented an enthralling story of the way the car-making business came to prosper. Triumph was then afflicted by financial problems. In 1940 its factory was bombed flat in the Coventry Blitz. It was rescued from oblivion by Standard in 1944. Thereafter, Triumph again became a prominent marque, eventually dominated Standard, and (from the 1960s onwards) became an important cast member in the melodramatic events which involved British Leyland.

“Triumph Cars: The Complete Story is not merely a turbulent trawl through the historical record. The authors were also successful in locating the important characters whose efforts made it possible for Triumph to excite the world. Along the way, the career of cars as famous as the Glorias and Dolomites of the 1930s, the Heralds, Spitfires and TRs of the postwar years, and the headline-grabbing exploits in racing and rallying build up a story which no fictional writer could have created.”

“Graham Robson

…possesses a worldwide reputation as a motoring historian, and has been close to the sport of rallying for many years as a competitor, team manager, organizer, reporter, commentator and observer. In more than forty years he has never lost touch with the sport. Not only has Graham competed in many British and European events. He’s also reported on marathons in South America, and acted as a traveling controller in the legendary London-Mexico World Cup Rally. As a recognized authority on many aspects of classic cars and motoring of that period, he is the most prolific of all authors, with more than 130 published books to his credit. Over the years Graham has owned, driven, described and competed in many of the cars featured in the Rally Giants Series, and his insight to their merits is unmatched. Graham Robson lives and works in Dorset, England.

“Graham’s tenacious efforts to see Triumph Cars back into print is the reason this handsome new edition exists. Almost singlehandedly, he rounded up dozens of new color photographs, updated the text with new information. I wrote the prewar chapters of the book. But Graham updated the story of the fabulous 1934 Dolomite Straight Eight, since discovered and fully restored: ‘The Big One that Got Away.’

“Richard Langworth

…has been an automotive writer since 1969, when he sent a freelance article to Automobile Quarterly. He joined AQ as associate and later senior editor in 1970-75. He has since written or co-authored more than fifty books and 2000 articles on automotive history. Richard and Barbara Langworth have owned ten Triumphs from a 1938 Dolomite to an assortment of Mayflowers, Renowns and TRs. In 1975, he and several friends founded the Vintage Triumph Register, thinking the time had come for a club devoted to every model motorcar Triumph ever built.

“Langworth’s other interest is Winston Churchill. In 1968 he founded what became The International Churchill Society, serving as president or chairman for ten years and editor of its journal, Finest Hour, for 35 years. In 2014 he joined Hillsdale College as senior fellow for The Churchill Project. The project sponsors educational programs and online courses, and is completing Churchill’s official biography. Richard has written or edited nine books on Churchill. In 2016 he melded his two interests in an article, “Blood Sweat and Gears,” on Churchill’s cars for The Automobile. Richard and Barbara Langworth have hosted eighteen automotive or Churchill tours of England, Scotland, France and Australia, including the 1978 Triumph tour of Britain.”

 This is a book…

…for nuts who like quirky English cars. Hard to admit, but Ferraris bore me. Just unaffordable excellence. My fun derives from funky Britishers that ride hard and smell of oil. They just don’t make cars like that anymore. This abnormality is not uncommon. My old friend Rich Taylor captured it perfectly in his 1978 book, Modern Classics: 

To understand British cars, you have to realize that all the stereotypes fit. I know, for example, that rated on an absolute scale, a Triumph or MG or Healey is not a great car, the way a Mercedes or Ferrari or Maserati is a great car. But I don’t care. There is something about the very Britishness of their going that makes the way other people look at you, the way the rain beads on the hood, the elegant way you feel when you’re sitting in one, considerably more important than how fast it will go.

British cars are for the sort who get out and tinker on Sunday mornings, not those with legions of mechanics. While you can have a short, passionate affair with a Lancia, or a successful marriage with a Lamborghini, it’s hard actually to love them. But a Triumph has the kind of looks, the teasing kind of humor, that keeps you on your toes; the wonderful unpredictability that is something to anticipate.

See also: “Memories of The Vintage Triumph.“