47 Tourer found in the USA

[Dirkco]

Hello All,
Luck has found me again (or is it bad luck I not sure) I got an email from a fellow Rover enthusiast last Friday near the end of the day saying that a 47 Tourer was for sale in the South. I made a call and sure enough an elderly gentleman answered the phone and told me he did in deed have a 47 Tourer he had found in a barn a few years earlier. He believes that it had been there for a number of years and perhaps as many as 30 years but was not sure. He claimed the car was untouched and original. HOWEVER he began to restore the car and had taken apart. Due to health reasons he could not finish the project and decided to sell the car on. He was not PC literate and had no pictures other then hard copies BUT did not want allot for it. I agreed on the phone to buy the car and to over night him a check.
What I know so far, the car was at some point in Mississippi and may have been owned by a gentleman named Frank Wilson. The Chassis number is 54 and it is an APA body

Today I received pictures from him in the Post so here they are

[roverdriver]

Good luck with the new find, Dirkco. It certainly looks like an interesting machine, just the sort of thing that I would like to happen upon.

I'll look forward to photos etc., when you retrieve the car.

[andrewmcg]

Hi Dirk
Congratulations on your new purchase we do not have a note of chassis no 7250054 on the archive database so it is new to the RSR.

As I think I have told you previously, with the help of Steve Manwell and his father we are aware of 3/4 of these tourers in the USA, and the only one of them without a chassis number was last heard of in Gulfport some years ago possibly owned by a Mr P Morland, it has the UK registration number HSM 570 issued in Dumfries Scotland in May 1947. It was previously owned in the States by a Mark Perlmutter of Boston Maine. We have no history prior to Marks ownership and don't have any dates for his or Morlands' ownership. I understand Steve actually saw this car when owned by Mark!!

Anyway as a long shot is this per chance your car??? if not would be interested to have any history or details you can find relating to its previous ownerships, meantime I have entered it on the database under you ownership.

Await your news with interest

Regards
Andrew McGovern
Pre 1950 RSR Archivist

[Paul Gregory]

Hi Dirk,
Well I really don't know how you manage to do it, but you seem to have stumbled onto another great find. Well done for taking it on. Look forward to hearing more once you manage to retrieve the car.
Regards
Paul

[SteveM2]

It's great to see a Tourer found in the US for a change -- lately the trend had been toward US Tourers lost. Dirk's find is not the Mark Perlmutter car, which I last saw in the Boston, Massachusetts area in the early 1990's. At the time this car was cream and red with original brown interior, though the body had been black when a previous owner Derek Durst owned it. We have lost contact with Mr. Perlmutter and don't know what happened to this car.

My father kept in touch with another Massachusetts Tourer owner, Sue Mix, for years, but he heard that her car was destroyed in a restoration shop fire a few years ago. He came to hear about this when he came across the hood and side screens for sale at Hershey. I don't have a record of the chassis number of this car, but the UK number plate was CXC 311G.

Dad's Tourer is alive and well following extensive restoration of the alloy body panels a few years ago and partial mechanical re-rebuild last year thanks to help from Dirk and many others.

I'm wondering whether Dirk's car could have been owned by a Capt. Joe Kirby of Ocean Springs, Mississippi in 1970. Dad's Tourer file turns out to include letters going back to 1970 when he bought our Tourer and had it shipped to the US. It appears that Dad somehow made contact with Capt. Kirby, and first learned of RSR from him. I gather that Kirby's car was for sale, so maybe Dad responded to an advertisement. The file includes a letter back from T. L. J. Bentley whom Dad contacted at Kirby's suggestion.

It's interesting to see what was known about Tourers at the time: Mr Bentley wrote, "Definite information on the '47 Twelve Tourer is unavailable, because the model was never catalogued, announced or reviewed: but the fact appears to be that the model was specially produced for an overseas market and a number were supplied to Rover agents in this country. It is believed that the total production was 200." He goes on to say that subscription to the Register was 1.00 gbp with option to have the magazine sent by airmail for 17s 6d!

--Steve Manwell

[Dirkco]

Hello All,

I managed to get from the seller of the tourer the plate number and as Andrew had guessed the number is HSM 570. However this is not the Perlmutter car as Steve mentioned. The current owner told me that car had been owned for many years by a Dr. Wilson. I will be going in the next few weeks to retrieve the car and will have a chance then to go over the paperwork that is with the car which should give more clues to its history.

Best to All,
Dirk in the states

[Dirkco]

Hello All,
Here are a few more photos of the Tourer from when the guy I purchased from found it. I only wish this is the way I found it!!!!

















All the Best
Dirk in the States

[marnol74]

Hi Dirk,

Good luck with your new find; looks like it will be super.

Have you collected the vehicle yet?

Looking forward to hearing more about it as you progress.



Best

Matthew

[Dirkco]

Hello All,

Well I posted photos that I had gotten from the previous owner of the car and now here are the photos from sorting out what I actually ended up with. It truly is a shame that the car was dissembled to such an extent. The previous owner clearly had never restored a car before and just rushed in a took it as far apart as possible with little or no organization. However it does appear that it is all here the only things I can find missing is a hubcap and the tool tray. Steve Manwell, Kurt Steel and my son spent the entire day sorting parts into 20 plastic bins. I guess the good news is that Steve and I have been working on and off on his fathers Tourer for last year so we have a good reference to go by when I get around to restoring this one.

Dirk in the States

[SteveM2]

It was a very interesting day of sorting through the Tourer puzzle pieces. The parts had been comprehensively disassembled and jumbled together, but as we got the parts sorted into groups, we found that the components specific to the Tourers were pretty much all present and accounted for. Many of these parts represent valuable information on the details of how Tourers were put together, and will be very helpful to the ongoing restoration of my father's Tourer.

Here is just one example -- the body number "54" was marked on the back of the original seat squab using dozens of impressions with a sharp pointed tool. https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/g ... directlink

Another is the piping similar to miniature wing beading finishing the opening of the tonneau panel over the hood storage area.
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/7 ... directlink
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/U ... directlink

I have put several photos of original Tourer details observed on Dirk's car with captions here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/1070274393 ... directlink

--Steve Manwell