The Special Correspondent took a run out to the Chiltern Hills Vintage Rally recently. It proved to be a charming occasion with much to admire……………<\/em>
\n<\/a>
\nMade in Biggleswade by Berkeley, Britain\u2019s biggest maker of caravans which had vast experience of glass-reinforced plastic fabrication, the Berkeley sports car, in 1956, was the world\u2019s first production car to use a fibreglass chassis\/body unit, pre-dating the Lotus Elite by some twelve months.
\nThis car is Chassis no. 10 with the Anzani 322c.c. twin cylinder two-stroke air-cooled engine. Only 163 Berkeleys were made.
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\nA real vintage car, a 1924 Humber 12\/25 saloon.<\/p>\n

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Humber was a well-respected make which, in the Twenties, fitted their cars with overhead inlet and side exhaust valve engines \u2013 this is the 1795 c.c. 4-cylinder unit in this car.
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\nThis is one of the first production Morgan 4\/4s, dating from October 1937.<\/p>\n

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Here is its Coventry-Climax overhead inlet and side exhaust valve engine.
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\nIn 1957 came this rather charming Wolseley 1500, based on a modified Morris Minor 1000 floorplan and given a BMC B-series engine. This is a Series 3 version, produced from 1961 until 1965. The cars were made at Longbridge.
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\nA 1935 6-cylinder Riley Kestrel 15\/6. The Kestrel was not a separate model but a body style built by Riley in their Coventry factory and available on a variety of their chassis. Riley \u2013 like Triumph and Singer \u2013 made far too many different models, a policy which hastened their demise.
\n<\/a>
\nThe Austin 16 was the company\u2019s first new post-war model. It used the chassis of the Austin 12 which was introduced only a few days before the outbreak of war in 1939 but had a completely new 4-cylinder 2.2-litre o.h.v. engine developed for military purposes. It was a good car, comfortable, reasonably priced and with a good performance. It was the first production Austin car to have overhead valves.
\n<\/a>
\nA 1935 Wolseley Hornet Special with the 6-cylinder single overhead camshaft engine. Wolseley only supplied Hornet Specials in chassis form, leaving buyers to select their own choice of body builder. This car has a one-off body by an unknown maker.
\nTAILPIECE<\/strong>
\n<\/a>
\nLast of the legendary 1172 c.c. Ford side-valve engines. This one is in a 1960 Popular De Luxe. These Ford engines were the last side-valve units to be in production in Britain.<\/p>\n

David Blumlein, July 2016<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Special Correspondent took a run out to the Chiltern Hills Vintage Rally recently. It proved to be a charming occasion with much to admire…………… Made in Biggleswade by Berkeley, Britain\u2019s biggest maker of caravans which had vast experience of glass-reinforced plastic fabrication, the Berkeley sports car, in 1956, was the world\u2019s first production car […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,36],"tags":[1185,1180,1184,1183,1179,1181,388,1182],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doubledeclutch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13387"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doubledeclutch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doubledeclutch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubledeclutch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubledeclutch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13387"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubledeclutch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13398,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubledeclutch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13387\/revisions\/13398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doubledeclutch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubledeclutch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubledeclutch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}