Lot 034: Napier 30/35 Model T44 Tourer

Scottish engineer David Napier founded D Napier & Son in Soho, London, in 1808 and made a wide variety of products including beautifully crafted precision machinery for making coins and printing stamps and banknotes. His grandson Montague Napier inherited the business in 1895 and took on the job of improving the Panhard car of his friend S F Edge. Edge was sufficiently impressed to encourage Napier to make his own car and by 1907 production had risen to 100 cars a year. Prized by the rich and famous, Napier became synonymous with quality and performance, sales being spurred on by a sporting reputation that came from winning many races including the 1902 Gordon Bennett race in France. Famously, in the following year's Gordon Bennett Cup held in Ireland, a Napier was the first car to be described as wearing 'British Racing Green'. Napier acquired the Cunard Carriage Company to be their in-house coachbuilder, a relationship which lasted until 1924. During the war production switched to aero engines, including the magnificent 12-cylinder Lion, a version of which went on to be used in the 1920s to win the World Land Speed Record in Malcolm Campbell's Bluebird and Henry Segrave's Golden Arrow. In 1919 civilian car production re-commenced with a six-litre six-cylinder car, the mighty T75, which cost as much as a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost. The last cars were made in 1924. This particular Cunard-bodied Napier 30/35 Model T44 Tourer is said to have left the Acton factory on 6th December 1913 and is certified as a model from that year by a Veteran Car Club Dating Certificate in the history file. The car is powered by a 4,740cc six-cylinder engine mated to a 3-speed gearbox and a worm drive rear axle. Suspension is by three-quarter elliptic rear springs with Hartford friction shock absorbers at the front. As other documents in the substantial history file attest, the car was chauffeur driven for the first 17 years of its life before being laid up at Bobbetts Garage, Teignmouth, in 1930 with some 30,000 miles on the clock. It was rescued from here by Plymouth-based garage proprietor Richard Barton in 1947 and, after some light recommissioning, was used by him as his daily transport for the next several years. Barton also entered it into several VCC rallies and hill climbs where it regularly humbled rival cars from makers as august as Bugatti, Bentley and Allard. "This is a very fast car," he states in a letter of 1965. "It will do somewhere in the region of 80 miles an hour and seems to climb everything in sight in top gear." As photographs in the history file show, Barton also loaned the car to Randolph Churchill during his campaign to be elected MP of Devonport in 1950-51. Barton clocked up some 20,000 miles in EL844 before selling it to London stock broker, Henry O'Rorke, in 1954. He mainly used the car for continental touring, a role in which it apparently excelled, before selling it to Surrey estate agent Bryan Goodman in July 1965 for �1,400. During his 22-year ownership of the car Goodman used it for many long distance VCC rallies, both here and on the Continent. Significant work carried out in this period included new wings and a full interior retrim in 1966; rebuilt back axle in 1970; new stub axles in 1980; full engine rebuild including new pistons in 1986. In 1987 Goodman sold the car to John Brown of Newbury who fitted a Dynastart unit and had the rear axle rebuilt once more in 1989. Richard Sanders of Bicester then acquired the car in 1991 before selling it to Peter Wilson of Leamington Spa in 1998 from whom the current vendor bought it in 2003.Still said to be in excellent running order today, the car has recently been treated to a rebuilt magneto and a full stainless steel exhaust and successfully completed an 800-mile round trip on the Gordon Bennett Rally of 2005. It certainly fired up readily on the occasion of our visit (despite having been laid up for the previous three months) and ran very smoothly on our brief test drive. Complete with a full set of wet weather gear including hood and original brass-framed side-screens, this is a thoroughly practical car that is eligible for a host of veteran events. Due to have a fresh MOT before the sale and to be driven 40 miles to the saleroom, this magnificently original and well documented machine would make a fascinating addition to any collection.