Lone driver with low, coffin-shaped projectile

There is still further detail in Bill Boddy's 'Fragments on forgotten makes' article ...Motor Sport , Feb 1960.... evidently reporting on the same event as mentioned by the Surrey Comment, Oct '59.
WB meets a Mr Harry Severn, who had been with AV since the start in 1919, and the photo shows very neat weather equipment.

By coincidence The Automobile this month have an article on the owner of the AV`s sister car registered XB 6469

Thank you for filling in much of the detail David and Robin! Now, wouldn't it be nice to hear from the car's current owner..?

In the mid 1970s I taught a friend to fly hot air balloons and his wife Georgie used to follow us with a trailer to take us back to the launch site. Evidently Georgie came from a good motoring family because that is her, in 1960, standing beside a friend of her father in his AV Monocar XB6468.
Adrian says..."Georgina's father had a passion for vintage cars and was an active member of Cannon Hall Vintage & Veteran Club at Cawthorne near Barnsley. This is a press photo from their Concourse Rally around 1960."
The picture below is from Motor Sport magazine.

The AV is still registered with the DVLA although not taxed or SORNED. The latest V5C logbook was issued in 1984 so it is probably still around in some collection.
Mike

This B&W picture is probably late 1950s or early 1960s, as a 1920 A.V. Monocar registered XB 646?, with the same head and tail lamps, owned by a dark-haired but slightly bald-pated Mr. Harris (perhaps this man?) was photographed in shiny concours condition at the Gringley Traction Engine and Vintage Car Rally in July 1964 where it won top prize in the Vintage Car Class: “First, Mr. Arthur Harris of West Stockwith for his AV Monocar Cycle Car, 1920, 7.2-h.p., which was previously owned by the late A. G. Rose of Gainsborough. It has wire-bobbin steering, swivelling front axle and rear-mounted engine.”

The 1913, £59 10s. Carden Mono-car was the direct ancestor of the A.V., which was reportedly the first “new monocar” (and “new duocar” in two-seater form) to appear post-WWI. This is how the new A.V. range was reported in April 1919: “It is a quite smart and distinctive machine, selling at about £l20, with its twin J.A.P. engine of 5-h.p. neatly tucked away in the tail, long pointed bonnet or nose, dome wings, and disc wheels. The driver's seat strongly resembles the cockpit of an aeroplane, and is as nicely fitted up as anything of the kind could be. A second A.V. model has two seats and two speeds, with a water-cooled engine. Motor-cycle enthusiasts will welcome the A.V. in its present form as a vehicle which has been improved greatly in design and finish.”

Yet, during 1919-20, “the £100 Carden Monocar… built down to a price… without making a mess of the job” and the “racy little A.V. Monocar… likely to enjoy popularity among sporting types” were both reported on sale at the same time. A “Carden Monocar, A.V. type, 7-h.p. J.A.P.” was also sold then. There was an identical sounding rear-engined “5-6-h.p. J.A.P. Aviette… with a long, pointed body forward” reportedly on sale in 1919 and a 9-h.p. 2-seater version of that was also sold. An odd car name “Aviette”, as it had been a pre-war term used to describe cheap, even man-powered, attempts at making low-cost single-seat aircraft but it does suggest they were A.V.’s Anyone know?

The English descriptive terms “Monocar” and “Duocar” appeared c.1910-11 and seem to reflect acknowledgement by side-slipping motorcyclists of the comparative safety of French one- and two-seater tandem cyclecars, e.g., the Bedelia, “a four-wheeled car on motor-bicycle lines”. Motoring writers then often referred to monocars as being the latest form of motorcycle, hence the single rear wheel, single seat Morgan runabout was also considered to be one - the very narrow track on a cyclecar similarly avoided the cost of a differential. The 1909 racing Lagonda was also called a monocar.

The A.C.U. banned such from its competitions initially, then agreed with the R.A.C. that monocars, duocars, light 3- or 4-wheelers and motorised quadricycles were all just cyclecars, after all they were all akin to earlier light voiturettes, so not worthy of the name motor car. Nevertheless, at the September 1920 Brooklands junior car club meeting, a Monocar Handicap Race was run and all nine entries were A.V.’s; the winner was W. F. Davenport who cranked his up to 49.5 mph.

A.V.’s did travel abroad; Capt. Walton of the 4th Gurkhas had his for sale in Bakloh, India in 1921. There were heaps of A.V. and Carden Monocars for sale initially new, then second-hand, all over the UK right through the 1920s.

As the Sunday Mirror foresaw it in 1919: “A road enthusiast assures me that monocars at £40 apiece will be the popular vehicle of the future. We shall all, he says, run about seated in torpedoes, as it were, with an engine and a suitcase astern. The railways will be left to the wealthy, because they alone will be able to pay the fares.” Mostly wrong of course, the sensible public made better choices, like the 1922 Austin 7, so there were no new monocars on sale in the UK by 1928 but that bit about rail fares, well maybe not...

are there any out there yet? And, as far as crashes, most are probably due to over exhuberant driving!

Does this "vehicle" still exist?

The Morgan 3 wheeler was only 34" wide with side by side seating.

An interesting picture for me as the car in front of the Monocar is a 1926 Bullnose Morris Oxford reg DK 3548, which I bought as my first car for £30 in 1954. The Bullnose still exists, four or five owners later. The picture must be recent rather than period.
Mike

Both vehicles bear Lancashire registrations, KB Liverpool and DK Rochdale.

Mike.

The twin rear lights and reflectors on the rear wings suggests this is a relatively modern photo, certainly post-1953.