When I was a sprog 70+ years ago we lived in Bellbarn Road our dad worked in some of the small engineering companies within in the Area of the Middleway, and Broad St, there used to be a lot of small engineering business around that area in those days. Our dad was a toolmaker by profession, He worked at one of these engineering companies within this area, I recall him walking to work as it was so near. He played in this company’s football team, in fact I recently saw a photo of a team and he was in that photo, his name, Vic Drumm. I do recall some of you guys who knew him as his name popped up in several of the comments.
I then read with dismay that some evil Cretin had somehow deleted these photos, I did intend to make a copy and send it to my older brother in OZ as he too had been looking into our dad’s life from his work aspect. He did go on to work for many of the bigger companies, Wilmot Breedon was one of the first big companies he worked at. From there he went into the aircraft industry as we had by then moved into our first new house built by Dare’s, this was in Briddsland Rd Tile Cross. The Aircraft manufacturer was originally called Armstrong Whitworth at Baggington just outside of Coventry, It then became Armstrong Siddeley. After that the name seemed to change every year and so on until the last name change which I think was to Hawker Siddeley Argosy. That closed in the late 50s.
After this he went straight into the Standard-Triumph Motor Company, then after several years he got me a job there in the early 60s working on the 2000cc-2500 PI and the Dolomite range. I recall going for a spin with a roller tester called John Harvey who I found out later he was a rally driver. I had ten minutes to spare so I got into this Police Dolomite Sprint, He took it up to 70mph and by then it was bouncing all over the place, then he said hang on and put his foot down, he got it up to 125mph and it was jumping about something terrible and was scaring the hell out of me. Needless to say I never sat in a car with him again although we ended up being good mates.
What a place that was, I must have met a lot of guys from all branches of motorcycle sports, Ex Sidecar Motor Crossers, Sidecar Grass track racers and two international Motorcycle Road Racers one was an Endurance Racer Gary Green who rode for Japauto the French Endurance team while the other was Ron Hackett a 125 & 250cc GP Road Racer. His brother John was the only person within the UK who was allowed to touch a Works Ducati Road Racing engine.
Then there was me, I was a sidecar passenger and also a solo racer with a Royal Enfield GP5 rolling chassis with a Les William’s 500cc Suzuki tuned engine grafted into the Enfield GP5 chassis solo racer. The power to weight ratio was stunning as I could beat many on BSAs, Triumphs & Norton’s.
Wonderful memories. By the way Mike the area code was B26!!