[Jeroen]

Let's be honest; nobody is going to fly across two oceans to see a small classic car collection. I did though! But there is a story to it. This particular museum holds the Wolsely that belonged to my wife's granny!!

You would be forgiven not to know where Barbados is. It is a tiny little island in the Caribbean. It is the most eastern island of the Caribean, on one side Caribean Sea, and on the other side Atlantic Ocean.

In 1982 I was sailing as the second engineer on the Motor Vessel Hector. We were on our way to New York, but due to a nearby hurricane, we made a stopover in Barbados. I was lucky as the Chief Engineer took my watch that night and I was free to go onto the island. It is where I met the future Mrs.D It took a year before we met again, that time in Edinburgh, Scotland. Four days later we decided to get married and the rest is history as they say.

My wife grew up in Barbados, both her parents are true Bajans, born and raised. When I met her she was just graduating from Edinburgh University and had come back to the island to visit her parents, family and friends. So a lot of random factors brought us together.

We were married in 1983, in Barbados. Ever since we have been going back on a very regular basis. When the kids were small we went every year for at least 3-to 4 weeks. My wife's mother was taken ill some time ago. This meant my wife, her brother and sister went about three times a year, alternating so there was nearly always one of the children present. Unfortunately, she passed away last year.

We had arranged this visit with my wife's brother and sister and their respective partners so we could all meet up, and start cleaning up the house and the various financial affairs that needed sorting. It was a very good and pleasant visit. All of us stayed in their mum's home. A bit strange with her not being there anymore. Plenty of memories though.

Back to the Mallalieu museum, http://www.mallalieu.com/motor-museum

I have met Bill, the owner on previous occasions of course. The museum is open from 08-11. Most of the time Bill will take you on a guided tour. He has managed to build quite an eclectic collection. This being a tiny island in the middle of the sea/ocean means that rust is always a real problem, always. Bill has shown my panels he had stripped to the bare metal, rust-proofed and resprayed only to have rust bubbles popping up within a couple of years.

My wife's granny lived for quite a while in the same pavilion where Bill had his office and his museum. This is a tiny island and everybody knows everybody of course. I remember having worked on Granny's car during my early years coming to the island. Granny was quite the driver, not to say quite the road hog! Until of course, due to her age, she could not drive any longer. She told the family she had donated the car to Bill's collection. Bill has a somewhat different story. He told me, she did not donate it, she wanted money! And as Bill put it she haggled quite a bit!! In all honesty, the haggling sounded much more like Granny.

So here it is The only car, as far as I am aware, of our family that ended up in a museum. It is a 1969 Wolseley Hornet MK111. When Granny had it, it was painted silver, but Bill restored it to its original colours.

According to the sign Bill put up on the car, this car is the classic "little old lady" car! 28456 were built.



Next up is the 1937 Chevrolet, Master Deluxe Sedan. It was imported into the island in 1937 for the sum of $1000! It was last used in 2011 for a wedding and has been in the same family for all that time.



A London taxi, but quite an unusual one. This is a Beardmore, 1960. Most London taxis were Austin, BMC or British Leyland-made.

Fenders are made of rubber and you will notice the typical no-left door, instead of a platform for luggage.





Next an Opel Kapitan, 1955. Whereas Opel in those days was sort of the epitome of German car manufacturing, this one was aimed at the US market. More than 92000 were built, but only 7983 were the top-of-the-line spec'ed. And out of those about 3000 were right hand drive. Most of these ended up in South Africa.

It comes with a 2473cc, six-cylinder engine, 3-speed column shift and a 6 Volts ignition.

Attachment 2565269

A couple of overview images, so you get an idea of the museum and its collection.







A 1930 American Austin Roadster.



Another very rare car. A 1953 Daimler Roadster. 6 cylinder, 2433CC. Only 44 of these cars were produced. They turned out to be too expensive and did not sell. This is one of only 35 now known to exist!!





Another very nice Wolseley 14/60, 1948
This particular model was a carryover from the prewar models starting in 1936. It was particularly popular with the English police and the war dept.



This one has the original Police Bell fitted (no sirens in those days). Bill demonstrated it, still rings!



As one would expect, Bill has some special car models too. These nicely detailed Fiats were only given to Fiat employees. I showed them to my friend Berndt who runs the Minidome car model museum. Berndt had never seen these models. That must be the first time ever, I showed Berdnt a model car that he could not identify!





Some special Porsche model cars, signed by various Porsche executives.





Bill showed me this old car horn. It used to fit underneath the floor board and you operated it be stepping on the pedal. Still works!!



Another overview



A Studebaker



The next car is pretty special too, A Bentley MK VI. Drophead Coupe Vanden Plas. It is one of only three dropheads built by Vanden Plas on the MKVI chassis.
It was ordered by Prince Bernard of the Netherlands. At the time, the Dutch queen Juliana's husband.

It has a 4257cc six-cylinder engine and manual transmission. Hydraulic front and mechanical rear brakes assisted by a gearbox-driven servo.

Prince Bernard took delivery of this car in 1947 and sold it in June 1948. He sold it because the hood over the windscreen leaked! One does not want raindrops on one's Royal head! This coming from a guy who, later in life, took several million guilders in bribes from the Lockheed Corporation.





I had visited Bill a number of years ago. At the time I was very active in the Dutch Alfa Romeo Spider Register. I wrote an article about Bill's collection for the Spiderama, our club magazine. I mailed Bill the issue. This was in 2005, but Bill still knew and he had the Spiderama still in his office. I took some images of the article.







I will mail Bill the link to this thread as it gets published as well of course!

[Jeroen]

A couple more cars from the collection; An Austin A90 Atlantic.

The most advanced and unusual car in its day. It was aimed specifically at the USA market but failed spectacularly. In the early 50s, Americans appreciated the traditional English cars and bought them too. However, they did not appreciate this "Americanized" English car at all! It also had a four-speed manual gearbox. In the fifties, nobody bought cars in the US with a manual box. As manual boxed went, this one was pretty awful too!

The engine was a powerful 2660cc four-cylinder, pretty efficient. It was also used in the original Austin Healey 100.





A 1959 Metropolitan. Produced by Austin exclusively for Nash in the USA and sold as Nash Metropolitan. When Nash and Hudson joined as AMC a few of these cars were badged as Hudsons.

Eventually, sales were promoted worldwide by Austin and briefly, the cars were known as Austin Metropolitans. The name Austin was soon discontinued.



A very nice Triumph TR4. One of my personal favourites!



Last few images






Many of the cars in Bill's collection are road-worthy and still get driven too! Many of these cars underwent a full restoration. The amount of work and attention to detail that went into these cars is staggering.

As I mentioned, rust is a real problem on a tropical island. Simply no way of stopping it permanently.


As I mentioned, it is a small collection. But it has some rare and unique cars. B
Most of the time Bill will be present to show you around personally. He has endless stories on each car. He will happily let you roam around his museum by yourself as well.

I don't think anybody would travel to Barbados to visit this museum though. But if you do find yourself in Barbados I would highly recommend visiting Bill's museum.

Make sure you take a good look at Granny's Wolsely and give Bill my regards,

Jeroen

[Aditya]

Thread moved out from the Assembly Line. Thanks for sharing!

[V.Narayan]

Thank you Jeroen for yet another delightful and insightful car museum thread. So much to learn. I never realized automatics were there in 1947 - looking at the photo of the Prince Bernard car. That horn may have been an ergonomic challenge, horn pedal or brake pedal? - but never both :-). I think in that era 1930s the ergonomics was still being experimented with. i recall my grandfather's Opel 6-cylinder 1936 model had a small button pedal sort of device which IIRC was the choke. Glad you located your grandmother-in-laws car. Her sister was my grandmother-in-law at least where personality went. Quite an honour to be in a museum. Restoring and maintaining these cars in a remote country like Barbados must be quite a herculean effort. It is amazing that till as late as 1973-1974 Wolseley was making and selling these Charlie Chaplin Mouche looking cars. My Observers Series book on automobiles of 1974 edition has these.

[shankar.balan]

Delightful read and lovely photos of these ‘senior’ automobiles of a different era. Thank you Jeroen!
That old Police Wolseley is straight out of those old British films set in the 1950’s.
Beardmore - thats an amazing find. I first read about Beardmore engines in the Biggles books set in the First World War period and where he began his career, flying the F.E.2 Aircraft which was powered by a Beardmore engine.
And it’s nice to see that Wolseley Hornet too, which was the posh version of the humble Mini. I liked watching this video to learn more about the Hornet.

https://youtu.be/DidnQ4ELJ78?si=vScmnvh-JqLh1Wn8

[Peet Stop]

Opened this post to look at a Car collection and left with a glimpse of a beautiful love story. If I may be so bold, I would love to hear more of your story.