A Welshman, living in Canada, lost in England.

The title sounds quite bizzare I guess, but some of you know of Tom Wysom. Tom is a keen modeller and comes up with some real beauties now and again. One of his most recent finds was a HRG Aerodynamic from the late forties. The car that is, not the model. The model is based on an old SMEC kit which up until recently i'd never heard of. These kits were fairly prehistoric from what I hear, having very few components. The "body" was actually a lump of wood, that you needed to carve yourself. Ok if you can carve I suppose. A set of wheels which included plastic inserts of sorts and two lengths of piano wire for axles. i'm not sure if Tom actually carved his copy or he found it as is. Anyway, whoever did do the shaping made a very nice job of it.
Tom did a resin cast of the model and then sent the master and the mould to me giving me pretty much free licence to do what I want with it. Well i'm quite smitten with it as it's such an unusual subject. The full size car is quite a rare beast as only thirty five were produced and like all hand built cars of the day, they all seem a little different in one way or another. The two photographs show two different fronts. The one above with a rounded shape to the front wings and valance. The one below is very square. The "squaring up" was done by me thinking that's how it should be, but research has proved that both fronts were actually produced by the factory.

I think there's a long way to go on this one. The louvre detail is becoming a little vague and the seams that run along the tops of the wings from front to back appear to have got lost in the casting. I'm not surprised, as they're so fine! Variations include spats to the rear wheels and a quaint old soft top that I doubt would keep the rain off. The wheels on the car in the top and bottom pictures are Peter Seager-Thomas's and for this model are a little undersize. The wheels on the primered car above are my own and in all honesty are totally unsuitable.

An interesting shape I think and a worthy subject which I look forward to developing over the dark winter nights. Tom really isn't lost in England, but just over here on holiday and sampling the delights of Devon cider at the moment. I hope he survives to tell the tale!

Graham

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