[ROVERNET - UK] Autos

Hank and Sally Manwell hdmanwell at alumni.bates.edu
Sun Oct 22 02:34:01 BST 2006


My Father, Steve's grandfather, may be a good example of the sort of person 
who bought Rovers new and used.  He was a college professor and researcher 
who had been to England a number of times before and after WWII.  He liked 
"fine", but not ostentatious, things - bicycles, watches and clocks, rugs, 
and cars.  He brought back a Raleigh bicycle in 1937 when they were almost 
unknown here.  I'd grown up on Iver Johnson tricycles and bicycles made 
here; they were heavy, but quality.

After WWII, well aware that England needed an economic boost, he bought an 
Austin A4 Devon sedan, then a Somerset, then added a Morris Minor.  He'd 
been subscribing to Autocar since owning the first Austin and made up his 
mind that a Rover was the ultimate.  He found a used 1951 Cyclops in 
Springfield, Mass, in 1954, then a new 1957 90, then a new 1964 110 when it 
appeared there would be no more of the P4s built.  Then it was one 2000 TC 
after another until he died at age 89 in 1987. We still have the 110. 
Nothing but a Rover would do for the last 35 years of his life.  And he 
liked the personal relationship with the factory through the P4 era and we 
have a thick file of correspondence he carried on with them.  And of course 
there were factory tours on visits to England.  He drove both the Austins 
and Rovers coast to coast through every state and much of Canada and logged 
several hundred thousand miles.  Even had an article published in Autocar in 
1949 called "10,000 miles in an Austin A40 Coast to Coast" or something 
pretty close to it.   Both Austins and Rovers served his well during his 
summer research jaunts to the Rocky Mountains where he lived and worked at 
two mile high elevations north of Crested Butte, Colorado.

Somewhat typical, but probably more fully immersed in British culture than 
most..........

Hank






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