I bought a bundle of ephemera at an auction a few months back and amongst the pieces of paper and family photos and maps were a few nice photos of interest to us petrolheads. Here’s the first one. Of course I know quite a bit about this lady as she features in many other photos that are of no interest to us petrolheads at all and I know that she liked camping, not always with a caravan. We’ll see her motorhome, or should I say camper van, in a later post.

So what do we have here? Quite a rare car as it happens. A 1938 Vauxhall 14/6 Salmons Tickford Jubilee. Well I think that’s what it is! The coming together of two very old companies named after their locations.

Scottish marine engineer Alexander Wilson set up his engineering company at 90–92 Wandsworth Road, Vauxhall in London in 1857 making pumps and marine engines. The company made its first motor car in 1903 and in the thirties the Vauxhall 14/6 we see here. 14/6 referring to 14 horsepower (RAC rated for tax purposes) and 6 cylinders. Vauxhall is now the oldest automotive brand still building cars.

Joseph Salmons started his coachbuilding company in 1829 in Tickford near Newport Pagnell. In 1898 they built their first body for a horseless carriage and by the thirties were building thirty car bodies a week to fit to the chassis of many popular cars like the Vauxhall in our picture.

The Tickford name is now owned by a company called Intertek who bought Tickford from ProDrive the racing car company who had acquired the company in 2001. One of the last cars to wear a Tickford badge was Tickford’s Targa topped convertible based on the roofed XJS. This is quite fitting really since Tickford was once famed for its hood mechanisms, like the one in our photo, and for converting saloons into convertibles. They offered a Sunshine range for Austins and extolled the virtues of healthy top down motoring.

And the caravan?

I have absolutely no idea. Another coachbuilt special but probably homemade I would think. However, while poring over pictures of vintage caravans I came across this lovely old British Pathe video which closes with the words Absolutely Ideal! which I thought worth including just for that. But it does contain some bathing beauties too. Enjoy!

For more information about Tickford see Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History and Coachbuild and for more modern Tickfords, the Tickford Owners Club. For more information about Vauxhall’s heritage see Vauxpedia.