FUA's Story

1938 May - when the car was less than one year old, being first registered on 19th November 1937 to a Mr. J F Heaton of Leeds. Mr. Heaton took part in the May 1938 RAC Rally, with his wife as the co-drive. John's parents are seen standing on the right of the car at the start position in Harrigate.

 He did really well, coming 7th in his class.  A Morgan driven by G. H. Goodall won the 10 HP group. 

The 10 HP was calculate from

RAC h.p. = (2xDxDxn)/5

where

D is the diameter of the cylinder in inches

n is the number of cylinders

and was used to ascribe a tax on the car.  Since the tax levied was decide on the square of diameter,  to keep the tax in a given bracket the cylinders had long strokes for a given cc capacity.  FUA's engine at 1,120 cc has a 63 mm dia by 90 mm stroke giving and RAC HP of 9.84.  Today, engines have equal cylinder diameters and strokes making them much more efficient and far less heavy. Designers back then knew about the inefficiency, but marketing and sales took precedence.

On the Midlands section of the rally, he and Mrs Heaton had a rather interesting experience, here reported in the 'Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligence'

Another reference to Mr. Heaton, this time in the May 1938 issue of the 'Motor sport Magazine'.

July 1938 - another photograph of FUA taken on the Scottish Rally. 

Info thanks to the research done by David Jackson, FUA's keeper since 2018.

1963 - Dad bought FUA in 1963 having been on the road until the end of 1961.  FUA was one of two cars being stored in an old abattoir, just outside Darwen.  The other car was sold to some young guys who intended to go racing with it.  That car must have been in a much better state than FUA.  But if FUA was rallying from birth, it wasn't surprising that she was in a bit of a state. We towed her home behind Dad's 1947 Wolsey using a knotted rope, chassis to chassis.  Not until a few days later did we realize that the steering rods weren't screwed onto the ball joints!!!!

The licence on the car indicated that she was  then living in Surrey. (Info from tax disc found in the manual by David J, Dec 2019)