And so the first Straker Squire 6 arrived in Australia...

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Evan Kyffin Thomas of North Adelaide, South Australia, owned a 1913 15 horsepower Straker Squire, registered 1815. He also owned ‘The Register’ newspaper, which later became ‘The Advertiser’. He was still using the 1913 Straker in 1923 when his diary records on Monday, Feb 12, ‘drop in Straker 6 chassis price £1150 to £850’.

On Friday of that week he went to look at Vauxhalls, and then the diary tells us that on Sunday, March 18 he received a cable from ‘Townsend in the London office of the Register that a Straker 6 would cost £960 on the boat’. On Tuesday, March 28 Mr Kyffin Thomas ordered a new 6 cylinder Straker. After several delays a letter was received on Wednesday 11 July advising further delay because of engine castings, then another on 30 July, this time a delay in gear cutting. Clearly, the cars were made to order. Then there was a dock strike.

Finally, on September 10 a cable advised that the new car was delivered to the London office on The Strand and was tested at 75 mph, and then loaded the next day onto ‘SS Moreton Bay’. The ship arrived in Adelaide on Tuesday 16 October at 12.20 pm and the two days later the car was in ‘The Register’s’ garage. And so the first Straker 6 arrived in Australia.

The 1913 four cylinder Straker was sold locally, but not before the registration number was transferred to the new car. ‘The Register’ offices were on Grenfell Street Adelaide (Register Lane marks the spot), and opposite was the premises of Steve Delmont, a lithographer who serviced ‘The Register’. Delmont saw the Straker arrive daily and park opposite, and before long he ordered one. So in 1926 another arrived in Adelaide, as far as we know, the only two exported from England. That is the ‘George Brooks car’, now in the National Motor Museum, Birdwood.

The Kyffin Thomas Six did at least one trip to Melbourne, but by the condition of its pedals, brake linkage etc, it did not do a lot of hard work in their ownership. After Mr Kyffin Thomas’ demise, Mrs Kyffin Thomas sold the car to a Port Pirie builder named Norton, who was looking for a powerful chassis to make a light truck. This he did. By then George Brooks owned the Delmont Straker 6. Hearing that the Port Pirie utility was available, George negotiated to buy it, and on August 1, 1952, he did, for the sum of £120, a considerable price for an old car at the time.  It was towed back to Adelaide behind George’s Straker 6.

The Kyffin Thomas car remained with George until 10 January 1987 when it was sold to me after I rebuilt the engine of his Straker. I didn’t realise that I was being assessed as a future owner of the other car.

After replacing bearings in the cam drive I started the engine, but as the gearbox had been dismantled it was not driven. Having learned the lesson of not dismantling things until everything is in place for a continuous rebuild, the car was not touched until 2006, when the gearbox was rebuilt, fitted, and the car drove a short distance.

A new body frame of the Van den Plas type (one of the options) was built that year, and conveniently the chassis dimensions are identical to a 4 ½ litre Bentley. Bertie Kensington-Moir, W.O.’s nephew, raced the experimental Straker in 1918, and it is not surprising that there are similarities. During 2007 the chassis was stripped and rebuilt. The motor required only a .020” bore (it’s first) and the crank needed only a .010” grind. These things attest to the theory that the only hard work done by the car was for a brief time at Port Pirie, and the shackles showed evidence of that.

The rebuilt engine was first started in December 2007 and the car again driven a short distance. Then, over Christmas a hood frame was fabricated, again using a local VdP original as a reference. The rebuilt engine was fitted in November 2007, after the extensive job of drilling out most of the 120  ¼” BSF countersunk screws which fasten the water jacket side plates to the cylinder castings. These were helicoiled with Loctite and the new stainless screws inserted with a hydraulic sealant. New phosphor bronze valve guides were made and new valves and pistons fitted.

The Straker 6, designed by Sir Roy Fedden, has many interesting features.  The OHC engine with separate cylinders is taken from the Rolls aero engine made in numbers by Straker Squire through the war. In 1918, and in new well-equipped ordnance facilities taken over by Straker at war’s end, Fedden produced the engine. The first series have a worm and wheel top drive, like the Napier, and the factory monoposto racer ‘X2’ which now lives in Argentina, is so equipped. Before long the conventional bevel a ’la Bentley was adopted, and at about the same time, as their first was in 1919. The cast aluminium firewall, light disc clutch plate with linings on the driving members, torque tube drive and cantilever rear suspension are all a bit different. The dash panel is mounted to the firewall by a very aero-looking casting, keeping it independent from the body. The front floor panels are also cast alloy, recessed to take coir mats.

Of the 60 Straker 6 built, there are the two in Australia, one in Argentina and one in the U.K. The running gear of the Granville Grenfell special, built from new factory spares after it closed, was also brought to Australia by Brooks in 1952. They have returned to the UK and are being built into a replica racer.

1923 Straker Squire PA 

Words and photographs by Terry Parker.

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