Our final meeting for the year was very well attended with over 60 people sharing an early Christmas dinner with decorated tables together with turkey and plum pudding on the menu. We thank Ray and the crew at Daizies for another great year supporting the Sporting Register through our dinner meetings each month.
Our display car this month was Bill Aitken?s beautifully restored 1949 Austin A70 Utility.
In 1949 Bill Aitken?s parents purchased an Austin A70. Young Bill was very impressed with this car, it had a 2.2 litre engine, a 4-speed gearbox and 12 volt electric windscreen wipers, so when Bill was able, he decided that he wouldn?t mind an A70 Ute. Fellow Sporting Register member Ros Fankhauser, put him on to this particular car which was advertised in Unique Cars in 1997. The only trouble was ? it was inHobart, and freighting it overBass Straitadded more than another 50% to the price. Bill?s original idea was use it as a daily driver, but after pulling bits and pieces off the ute to repair them, he eventually pulled it right down and began a complete restoration from the bare chassis. It took Bill 2 years to restore the A70, finally getting it registered in 2000. Since then it?s collected a few impressive trophies and covered about 20,000 miles, which included a trip back to Tassie to trace the previous two owners.
In the timber-decked rear of Bill?s ute was anotherAustin. Called the J40 (J for junior), these were built in theAustinfactory employing out-of-work miners. These scaled down pedal cars were also used on merry-go-rounds without the pedal mechanism. They were very expensive at the time ? costing about 3 weeks of average wages. They are now a very much sought after piece of automobilia.
Thankyou to all our members who brought their cars along for showing at Daizies this past year, if you?d like to have your car on display and tell us a? little bit about it at one of our 2013 meetings, please contact a member of the Committee. Unfortunately anything wider than 72? won?t fit through the doors.
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