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FIRST OVERLAND NEWSLETTER 32The latest news of the 'First Overland' DVD, based on Antony Barrington-Brown's original film footage of the 1955 Oxford & Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition from London to Singapore. |
So what was the ultimate fate of the original 'Cambridge' car? At last, Peter Galilee has some news for us.
We meet a Series 1 still looking good in the South Atlantic...
...and Tim Slessor gets to drive off road again.
[This Newsletter was originally due to be published at the end of January, but before it could be uploaded we heard the tragic news of the death of BB and Althea. The Newsletter of tributes was published instead. That Newsletter is still available, and as it was considerably updated as more tributes came in, you may wish to visit it again.]
Whenever I give my 'First Overland Roadshow' talks, I leave room for questions at the end. So many people have asked over the years "What happened to the cars afterwards?" that now I've put that bit into the script — but always it's been only half an answer.
The ultimate fate of the 'Oxford' car has been known for some while, and I covered it in Newsletters 20, 21 and 22. But (very briefly) it was returned, along with 'Cambridge', to the Rover Company, who used the vehicles for a short while for publicity purposes.
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Then they were approached by the British Ornithologists' Union, who needed a vehicle to use on Ascension Island in the South Atlantic to support their 1957-59 Centenary Expedition. 'Oxford' was provided for them, and shipped to Ascension, where she was painted a sort-of duck-egg-blue (along with the huts and most of the other things at their camp!) | |
When the Expedition ended, Rover were not particularly bothered about shipping 'Oxford' back, and so the Expedition were encouraged to sell the car locally. It was bought by a St.Helenian man working on Ascension... and when his tour of duty came to an end, he took the car back to St.Helena, where as late as 1993 it was still running. But by 1995 something catastrophic had happened — the car had failed in some major way, and had been cannibalised. All that was left was a pile of body bits in the bushes. |
The remains of 'Oxford', with her Ascension Island registration 'A268' |
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However, I've now been sent a picture (taken at the same time as the one above) which shows that the Station Wagon hardtop and rear door were saved, and transferred to another St.Helena Series 1, registered 867. For how long this vehicle continued I don't know — but I understand that it, too, is no longer a runner — from later pictures I've seen I can well believe that! Whether or not the hardtop still survives on St.Helena, I don't know either. |
But to celebrate Oxford's final home, I have these pics of the last owner and his family, and wife.
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Note that although there are no longer any jerry cans on the front wings, the extra side lights mounted on the wing tops certainly confirm that this is a Land-Rover which once carried 'Whisky & Soda' (or was it 'Gin & Tonic'?) from London to Singapore.
But what of 'Cambridge'? Well, I'll come clean and say that I've known for some time, but wasn't at liberty to say. A fellow Yorkshire-based Series 1 enthusiast, journalist and historian is Peter Galilee. He'd painstakingly followed up the trail of what happened to SNX761 after Rover had finished with her... and was finding a sorry tale that needed closer research. He found the probable answer and told me, but (quite rightly) asked me to keep quiet until he'd had the opportunity to write it up for 'Land Rover Owner' magazine, for which he is a regular contributor. This has now happened, and I can spill the beans.
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I'm not going to tell you every last detail of Peter's story — it's only fair that you get your own copy of the February 2012 issue of Land Rover Owner and read it for yourself — but briefly the car moved from Rover to a motor dealer in the Midlands, where it was bought by Terence Bendixson. Terence had been at Oxford University with Nigel Newbery, so he was already aware of the 'First Overland' Expedition, and the two cars. He didn't realise at first that it was 'Cambridge' he was buying, as the car was now painted "a kind of khaki green", but it was a deliberate purchase of an expedition-equipped vehicle for a journey to the Middle East with two colleagues.
Unfortunately the expedition wasn't a huge success, and Terence found himself on his own, trying to drive single-handed back from Syria to the UK. In the dark, on a rough mountain road somewhere on the Persia (Iran)/Turkey border, he ran off the road on a bend. As the car crashed into a ravine, he was thrown out and quite badly injured. Forunately a nearby border guard saw the headlights pointing up into the sky, and came out to see what had happened, otherwise he could have died alone in the cold and dark. He was taken to the American Mission Hospital in Tehran, and later flown home to England, where he made a full recovery.
But where was the car? In the circumstances, Terence can't be sure where he actually was on the road, and whether he'd even crossed into Turkey. Pete Galilee has tried, using Google Earth, to pinpoint the possible site from satellite pictures, but that still leaves quite a lot of miles that could be the location. Either way, the terrain is neither geographically or politically friendly to the chances of mounting a modern expedition to search for recognisable Land-Rover remains at the bottom of a gully. Indeed, we don't even know how deep the gully was — it may just be possible that it was shallow enough, and even a bent 4x4 would have been valuable enough, for local people to salvage the wreck.
As far as the UK authorities are concerned, the records show that SNX761 was "exported to Iran"... and that may be all that we'll ever know. But Peter ends his article with a call for any Series 1 owners in the Middle East to check the chassis and engine numbers of their vehicles. If they are 57107040 or 57117307 respectively, then 'Cambridge' didn't die after all.
But this is wierd — while Peter and I were waiting for LRO to appear in the shops, a letter was printed in the 'Daily Mail' of January 3rd.
 | Following on from a previous article about a couple who've completed a round-the-world trip in a 55-year-old classic Bristol 405, a Faith Hines wrote to describe the 'First Overland' expedition, and say "What happened to the Land-Rovers is unrecorded", so how pleased she was that the Bristol is being put on show at the Royal Automobile Club HQ in Pall Mall. |
It was hard not to think that this was a put-up job to draw attention to Peter's LRO article, but Pete assured me that it was nothing to do with him. It seemed that it was a complete coincidence, although Tim Slessor (who brought the item to my attention) said that Faith Hines was the professional name of the journalist wife of one of the Home Team of the First Overland Expedition, and so would be well aware of the vehicles' story, if not their ultimate fate.
Tim was just preparing for the launch of his latest book (of which more later), and didn't really have to time to respond to the letter — he suggested that I do it. I wrote, assuring the Editor that it wasn't all an elaborate plug for LRO and my DVD, and on January 10th my answer was printed (almost complete!), together with the famous pic of 'Oxford' being used on Ascension Island by the BOU Expedition. So within a few days, the fate of 'Cambridge' was known, not only to LRO readers, but also to the hundreds of thousands who take the Daily Mail. So I'm sorry if you're the last to hear!
| But before we get too depressed with news of decayed and damaged Land-Rovers in faraway places, I'm going to include a marvellous picture of a Series 1 still running in the South Atlantic.
In November I sent my first DVDs to the Falkland Islands, and got back a smashing pic from Karl (don't know your surname, Karl) showing him, his 11-year-old son Morgan, and his superb restored soft-top out in 'the camp' (as I believe they call the countryside out there). Knowing how tricky it can be at times to source parts for a 50+ year-old vehicle in the UK, to keep a vehicle in this condition in such a remote place is a great feat. Congratulations, Karl. [I've since had an email from Karl in which he says: Strange how the figure 8 has been common to all these pics from the South Atlantic islands. |
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In Newsletter 30, I featured the reunion last September, organised at the Solihull factory by Roger Crathorne of Land Rover, to honour the members of the three Oxford & Cambridge Expeditions of the fifties that did so much to promote Land-Rover around the world. I had to leave halfway through the afternoon to catch a train home from Birmingham New Street, so I missed out on a wonderful moment when Tim Slessor got to drive Steve Kerss' 'Cambridge' replica on the famous Land Rover Experience track alongside the factory in Billsmore Wood. Fortunately, Peter Galilee (yes, him again!) stayed to the bitter end, and took some marvellous pictures.
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Tim drives off road again | |
| Not as easy to reverse as a modern car! |  | |
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Pat Murphy examines some of the team's original luggage trunks in the back of 'Oxford' |
Finally, I mentioned earlier that Tim has just launched a new book. Called 'More Than Cowboys', it looks at the history of the American West, but focussing on the "more intriguing details that many books leave out". My copy has arrived from Signal Books, and I've thorough enjoyed reading it. More details in the next Newsletter, which hopefully will have room to feature some more of your exploration stories, including a London-to-Singapore trip... in an E-type Jaguar!
GRAEME ALDOUS
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