SAHB member Bill Munro has sent us this appeal for information – to help him to make his update of his book on Carbodies the best it possibly can be. If you can help in any way, you can contact Bill through the link in his post. Now please read on…
More than twenty years after Crowood Press published the original edition of my first book, Carbodies – the Complete Story, I am producing a new, enlarged and updated edition. In the years since the book was published, car owners and other enthusiasts have contacted me, either with information, or asking questions, most if it relating to the prewar coachbuilding period. In updating what is definitive work, I want to include as much of that information as possible and also answer the questions, so can any of you, please, help me with my research?
I know where to access information on the major makes that Carbodies supplied, such as MG, Daimler and Alvis, but there are still some prewar makes and models from the 1930s, in respect of which I have no direct contact for sources of research; in some case my original sources are no longer valid. These makes include those for which Carbodies was a contract supplier, including Rover, Railton and Humber, those for which they supplied a short run of bodies, such as the Riley Stelvio and Lea Francis Ace of Spades and 12/40 and also individual and bespoke models, such as Bentley and Singer. If anyone who can help me by providing sources of research material or period photographs, as well as being willing to allow me to photograph surviving cars, or indeed those undergoing a rebuild, for the book, I would very much like to hear from them. They can contact me via my website, https://www.earlswoodpress.co.uk, where I’ve posted a list of vehicles for which Carbodies provided bodies of one sort or another. And of course if anyone has questions they think I may be able to answer, I’d be happy to try and help.
There are 5567 reports relating to Carbodies Ltd in the newspapers, mainly Coventry based ones. Industrial disputes are the subject of many of the first few that I have looked at.