Beskrivning
THE SYDNEY TO BOURKE RECORD HOLDING 1930 FORD MODEL A BOAT-TAIL
Engine No: CA5803
Auction Estimate: AU$45, 000 - $60, 000 (£28, 000 - £37, 000 approx.)
- details above
In November 1929 Aubin in this Model A and accompanied as navigator by Ted Poole who had acted as navigator for ‘Wizard’ Smith on so many of his record runs, broke Smith’s record from Sydney to Bourke by eight minutes. They covered the 512 miles at an average speed of 47. 7 mph, an astonishing time when one remembers that the sealed road finished after just 80 miles. Elation was short lived however as just before Christmas on December 23rd of that year Perry Donnelly, driving a Whippet Six, smashed the record by 52 minutes!
The New Year brought a renewed attempt on the record by Aubin, described thus by an advertisement for the Ford Motor Company of Australia which was run on January 26th 1930,
“SYDNEY-BOURKE RECORD AGAIN BROKEN BY THE NEW FORD!
512 MILES IN 9 HOURS 47 MINUTES
AVERAGING 52. 32 MILES PER HOUR
At 4am on Tuesday January 14th, a New Ford Sports Model left the GPO Sydney in an attempt to lower the existing record for the run to Bourke. At 1. 47pm it arrived at the Bourke Post Office with a new record emphatically established. No other car has ever traversed the route in such amazingly fast time – 512 miles in 9 hours 47 minutes.
Driven by Mr Norman Aubin and Mr A. E (Ted) Tunbridge, the New Ford clipped 11 minutes off the old record and created two new intermediate records in addition. It averaged 52. 32 miles per hour over the total distance and its actual travelling time was 9 hours 22 minutes. This New Ford was a stock model with the exception that a 3. 1 gear was used in lieu of a 3. 7. No oil was added on the run. The radiator gave no suggestion of boiling. The engine never missed a beat. The bonnet was not lifted. The too-roll was not touched.
A sensational feature of the journey was a crash into the fence at a well-known “bad” corner near Wellington, when travelling at 60 miles per hour. A damaged front wheel was replaced, and the Ford romped on to Bourke and victory, making up lost time; proving New Ford stamina”.
The Model A was quickly returned to its starting point to be feted at the 1930 Sydney Motor Show, much to the chagrin of the Whippet agents. The record set on January 14th still stands, as soon after this the road record attempts such as this were banned by the NSW Govt due to safety concerns.
The Model A was then sold to a new owner in Wagga, NSW and by the 1950s the car was in the Tumut region of the Snowy Mountains. In 1964 Martin McCarthy of Canberra, a former President of the Model A Restorers’ Club (Aust) discovered the car in Tumut where due to its colour scheme it was affectionately known as the ‘Silver Bullet’. In 1976 McCarthy began a long and thorough restoration with the record breaking car returned to its former glory towards the end of 1978.
In recent years, the Model A boat-tail racer has been resident in a collection of Vintage cars near Bowral, NSW. The owner tells us the car runs very well indeed and is still a fast car. In 2013 the car appeared in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby filmed in Sydney.
The offer of this car at auction presents a significant opportunity to acquire an historically important pre-war Ford race car with outstanding provenance.
