Singer Owner May/June 2009

Roadster Repairs - Book Review

Ashley Crossland

I think that I was first alerted to a "new" photograph of a Roadster in action by a NASOC e-news piece by Phillip Avis who is editor for the North American Singer Owners Club. In May 2008 he showed a colour photograph of Katherine Hepburn in a Singer Roadster on the waterfront at Montego Bay, Jamaica, with Irene Mayer Selznick in the passenger seat. NASOC reports that the car might have been a hire car, popular in places like Jamaica and the Bahamas. The photo purports to date from 1953. Phillip saw the photo in the April 2008 edition of Classic and Sportscar as part of an article called "Celebrity Steeds", but I missed that.

Well, quite by chance I found the photo in a book called "Stars and Cars" by Tony Nourmand and published by Boxtree. The book does exactly what it says in the title and shows loads of photos of stars with their cars - anyone from Elvis Presley to Frank Sinatra, or Steve McQueen to Sean Connery. Some photos are in black and white, but there are plenty in colour of which fortunately for us the Roadster photo is one such photo. The bonus was that the book was marked down from £25 to £3.99 at "The Works" - worth it for just the one Roadster photo alone, and I would recommend it to all Roadster owners. The attached reproduction is how NASOC published the photograph. I assume the colour is "British Green" being the name of Singer's dark green of the time, with "Tan" upholstery and red piping. The car must obviously be a 1500cc 4AD but without more information at this stage it is not possible to tell if it was the twin carb version. Notice that the car is a right hand drive as Jamaica drives on the left hand side of the road. The car looks fairly standard, except for what I take to be two chrome-topped horns over the front bumper - these are at the very edge of the photo and difficult to make out.

However, it's a good book with an interesting selection of cars and stars. The Roadster photo is credited to Slim Aarons/ Getty Images. 192 pages. Hardback. First published 2007. Recommended! Incidentally, I've been in several of "The Works" shops, and you might need to search to find the shelf on which they have placed the book, but there have been ample supplies in all the shops that I've visited.

Now, have you ever noticed that there are a lot of similar principles in choosing the wood for a boat, and choosing the wood for a car like a Singer Roadster? At one time I did have an intention to build a boat, and a lot of my tips on looking after the wood in your Roadster - like using waterproof glue etc - do date from the days when I was contemplating boat building. After all, if a boat can survive in salt water, then the same fluid thrown up from a winter's road should present no trouble to a Roadster. My vision of owning a boat came closer in about 1974 when my Uncle Eric donated to me some plans and the start of a boat - he had built about a quarter of a 17'6" plywood two-berth cabin cruiser. Uncle Eric had been in the Navy, and later worked on the Manchester Ship Canal, and I suppose I can say that the sea was in his blood, but regrettable his health was beginning to fail and I think he realised that he would never complete his dream. Neither did I complete his dream, and to be honest the boat will never be finished now. The boat was partly dismantled to enable it to be transported to my home, and then it was safely stored in the loft of the garage, where it's been for a good while now. I recently took the view that if I wanted a cabin cruiser now, it would not be a plywood one anyway, good though my wood preserving skills are. In this day and age you would want a "plastic" boat, (which incidentally is the same conclusion that Singers came to when they produced the plastic bodied SMX Roadster). Therefore, I felt able to divert the mahogany keel of a boat to a more useful purpose in making frames for the Roadster project. I thought that mahogany having been in the garage loft for 35 years should be reasonably well seasoned by now. I did feel a bit guilty in sawing up Uncle Eric's long length of wood, but its value had gone, and it was more valuable to me in providing for a Roadster. If you've done any rebuilding yourself of rear bodywork you will know that it does consume relatively large amounts of wood. Not that 17'6" saws into many 3 ft pieces, so I'll need some more wood, but it is helping me to clear out the garage of superfluous items. So at least I'm now able to crack on with a few bits of the wooden frame.

Now on to some important information that may be needed when presenting your Roadster for an MoT test. Regular readers will know that in past years at the end of April, the 4AC Roadster becomes due for its annual MoT test, and of course, no surprises, it's happened again at the same time this year. Anyway, the MoT man who knows the Roadster fairly well had completed the test, went to fill in the computer check sheet in a different room, and then came to see me and said "where are the windscreen washers?" "It's never had any." I said in a quizzical manner as if to say why are you asking me now. "Well, it should have them - there's no "not fitted option" for me to fill in on the computer. The MoT rules keep changing, and it might not have needed them last year." So I said, "Well, what happens when the windscreen is folded down and the washers go off? You'll get squirted in the face." "Oh! If it's an opening windscreen, that might be the way round it. Has it got an opening windscreen?" "Yes" I said. He went off, and shortly afterwards came back with a pass certificate. So if your MoT man questions you about the lack of windscreen washers, prompt him about the opening windscreen.

Uncle Eric sadly passed away in 1987. His ashes were scattered from a boat in mid-channel of a particularly beautiful and very peaceful stretch of the Manchester Ship Canal.