Grandfather Rights: Meeting Genevieve's Cadillac Co-Star

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In the Veteran era, the notion of a luxury car had scarcely been conceived. The car itself was a luxury, and if it rained while you proceeded into town at 20mph, you’d be grateful that you were moving faster than a horse. A few very fortunate people were able to afford weather protection, though, and closed cars were growing in number as the Edwardian age dawned.

Many early closed cars were convertibles of a sort, comprising a separate limousine section which was completely removable from the existing tonneau body. This 1905 Cadillac Model F is typical of that early approach and is believed to be a unique survivor.

An Oily Rag survivor

Sold new from Cadillac’s London concessionaire, the detachable top was almost certainly English-made. Other details of the car’s early life are not known, except that it ended up in Hampshire and was discovered in 1948, dismantled and spread across three separate locations. Its saviour was erstwhile cyclecar pioneer H F Welham who, by then, was running a Renault garage from which he indulged a passion for restoring Veteran cars.

Unusually for the time, Welham’s restoration sympathetically preserved much of the original paint and upholstery and, after a starring rôle in Genevieve, it became a regular sight on the Brighton Run, which it reliably undertakes to this day under grandfather rights, wearing its beautifully preserved 1940s restoration.

Seventy years after Genevieve, it’s still a delight to drive, says Zack Stiling in the October issue of The Automobile, available now.

Words and photographs by Zack Stiling

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