Lot Ended
Description
1938 Earls Court Motor Show car; extremely rare Corsica-bodied Sports
model, one of only three made; four owners, the current for 47 years; never
restored; always well-maintained and in regular use; vast history file; an
absolute gem
Like many car
companies, the Coventry firm of Lea-Francis started life making bicycles,
building their first motorcar in 1904. Throughout the
1920s they concentrated on building fine small sports cars such as the highly
successful P- and S-Type Hyper models fitted with the excellent 1.5-litre
Meadows engine. At their peak they were turning out 1,000 cars per year but
trouble was never far below the surface.
Despite
considerable competition success and a reliable and robust product range, a
desire to produce their own engine caused a financial downward spiral from which
the company could never quite recover.
Production
in the early 1930s had dwindled to barely double-figures, with no cars at all
leaving the factory in 1936. The bones of the company were then purchased by two
former Riley employees, George Leek and Hugh Rose, who rejuvenated Lea-Francis
and moved production to a new factory in Much Park Street (recently vacated by
Triumph) and announced a fresh range of models for 1938.
The all-new engine was initially available as a 12- or 14-hp
four-cylinder unit with high camshafts and short pushrods in similar vein to the
well-proven Riley design. These new cars were warmly received by press and
public alike and continued in production until 1939 when the factory was
converted to support the war effort, production resuming once the hostilities
were over.
Inspired by a one-off built for London
Lea-Francis agent Charles Follett, with a Carlton body and a tuned 13hp engine,
the 12.9hp Sports was unveiled at the Earls Court Motor Show in October 1938.
The sweeping coachwork was by Corsica of Cricklewood with two seats at the front
and room for two more on the 'mother-in-law' seat concealed in the tail.
It was powered by a four-cylinder twin high-camshaft 1,683cc engine
of the company’s own design (which in its post-war form was developed into a
Connaught Formula 2 engine). Producing around 90bhp and 120lb/ft, it was allied
to a 4-speed Standard gearbox with synchromesh on 2nd, 3rd
and top and could cruise comfortably at 70mph with more in hand when required.
The car you see here is the actual Earls Court
show car (chassis no. 115) and is the first of only three made although a single
Corsica-bodied Coupe was also built. While all three Corsica-bodied Sports still
survive (the other two are in America) the Coupe has long since disappeared.
Copies of the build sheets show that it left the
Much Park works on 22nd September 1938 destined for London. It
seems like they rushed to get it finished in time because it didn’t go undergo
the usual pre-delivery factory road testing regimen until the end of November,
well after the Motor Show.
Registered as FLX 191 in April 1939, it was first owned by the rather
splendidly named Mr HTL Loftus-Tottenham of London, who bought from Charles
Follett Ltd of Mayfair (their plaque is still on the dash). It then had two
further owners, Mr AG Saxty and Mr BC Walker, both motor traders in the Ascot
area, before our vendor acquired it in April 1979 and he has cherished it ever
since.
It comes with a vast file of history which
it will take the next owner many happy hours to digest and we won’t even scratch
the surface of its long history here. Suffice to say that it has never been
restored as such, just kept in tip-top running order, although it did have a £35
respray in 1963, followed by another rather more expensive one in 2002 when the
bodywork was also sympathetically repaired.
The
owner has largely maintained the car himself, with professional help from Barrie
Price of Lea-Francis Cars when required, with many dozens of invoices on file
for upkeep. Always in regular use, the owner reports that: “Despite the
aluminium alloy body panels it weighs 1 ton 4 cwt (1,240kg). Nevertheless, the
highly efficient engine makes it go quite well and it has been extensively
rallied in VSCC events with some success”.
The
engine has been rebuilt at least twice, including once in 1995 when it was
fitted with Blydenstein Racing camshafts and a lightened flywheel, the owner
soon tiring of this peaky set-up and reinstating some standard cams, although
the lightened flywheel has been retained.
It
originally had Andre Telecontrol friction shock absorbers but these proved too
harsh for a car like this so the owner long ago replaced them with a set of
hydro-mechanical dampers like those fitted to Lea-Francis saloons and DHCs of
the time. The Andre pressure gauges and adjusters on the dashboard to the right
of the steering wheel were left in place for cosmetic reasons, as were the
under-bonnet reservoirs.
As with so many
gentlemen of his generation, our vendor has kept a detailed log of every journey
made in the car and every drop of fuel put into it, from the day he bought it
until June 2022 when the book runs out of pages, shortly after which he gave up
driving.
He has also amassed a vast amount of
literature over the years and we could have spent all day photographing the
wonderful assortment of period brochures, engineering drawings, blueprints, dyno
sheets, press cuttings, correspondence and historic invoices that come with this
car – they are museum pieces in their own right and we have reproduced just a
fraction of them here.
There is even an old MOT
issued in July 1961, the year this test was first introduced on a compulsory
basis, something we have only ever seen a couple of times before in the 20 years
we have been hosting these sales.
Very little
used in the last few years due to our vendor’s advancing years (it would be rude
to say how old he is, but he was born before this car was made), this
exceedingly rare and handsome LeaF has been starting promptly and running well
as we have driven it around on site, with healthy 40psi oil pressure.
It seems
tawdry to put a monetary value on a car like this, but this is an auction after
all, so we have given it what we consider to be a sensible estimate. We have
sold half-a-dozen post-war Lea-Francis Sports (14hp and 2.5-litre) in
the last 10 years or so and they usually make £30k+ but this pre-war
Corsica is in a different league for rarity and provenance. .
We only hope that it goes to an appreciative new
owner who will continue to cherish and preserve it, as our vendor has these last
five decades.
Consigned by James Dennison –
07970 309907 – james.dennison@brightwells.com