The Society of Automotive Historians

The SAHB Spring Seminar held a highly successful spring seminar at the Bentley Memorial Foundation in Oxfordshire on 24 March 2024.

There were six excellent presentations:

• Bill Munro:  “Carbodies – The story of a survivor” – Bill is an ex-London taxi driver and coachbuilding expert, and gave a fascinating talk that delved deeply into the history of that important company.
• Paul Nieuwenhuis:   “Using scale models to capture motoring history” – Paul called upon his extensive collection to demonstrate with captivating effect the importance of models in recording sometimes completely forgotten details of vehicles both surviving and lost.
• Anders Ditlev Clausager:  “BMC Farina cars, the forgotten family favourites” – many of us remember these cars from our youth, so Anders’s excellent presentation revived some wonderful memories and told us much that we never knew.
• Michael Barton: “Fast Lady – The extraordinary adventures of Miss Dorothy Levitt” – Michael presented the history of one of the most important early female motorists and her (mostly successful) struggles to survive and prosper in a man’s world.
• Pál Négyesi: “Robert Schwenke, automotive pioneer” and “Starting an automotive magazine, a personal experience” – Pál is a distinguished motoring historian with enormous experience across Europe, and told us about a now largely forgotten man from the early history of motoring, and about Pál’s own quarterly publication, “Rare & Unique Vehicles”, which brings together the knowledge of motoring historians across the world to tell of vehicles that we would never otherwise have known about.

The day ended with something new for our seminars: a conversation piece in which three acknowledged experts on coachbuilding who had spoken earlier – Bill Munro, Paul Nieuwenhuis and Anders Clausager – were hosted by Peter Moss to discuss the effect on coachbuilding of the necessary move to pressed-steel manufacture. This piece was a great success, and we intend to include a similar element in future seminars.

Our thanks are due to all the speakers, and the organisers and staff from the SAHB and the Bentley Memorial Foundation.