Charlie Williams' and Len Pritchard's paths initially crossed when they both worked for small subcontracting body shops in the mid 1930's for various classic London coachbuilders, like Youngs and Hooper, working on Rolls and Bentleys. During WW2 as part of the war effort they worked together rolling Supermarine Spitfire bodies in fine gauge aluminium, and after the war was over, with little demand for their aero skills (although Len claimed to be able to roll a Spitfire body in his sleep) they went back to what they knew best. This was auto repairs and bodywork, setting up together in a small workshop in Enfield, North London (subsequently moving to Hornsea in 1953, Cheshunt in 1958, and finally in the mid sixties to First Avenue, Edmonton).
The first complete body that they designed and built was an open spider for a 1935 Frazer Nash BMW 315, currently co-owned by Richard and Oliver Penney.
Richard relates:
"According to AFN records (AFN being the latter-day company name of Frazer Nash Cars, standing for Archie Frazer Nash), when new the car was bodied as a pillarless saloon by Abbots of Farnham. Apart from this fact, its early history is obscure. It is not known when the car lost its original body – perhaps it languished bodyless for some years before being receiving the ministrations of Williams & Pritchard. Nor is it known what became of the original Abbot body, though it is highly likely that it was scrapped.
What led to the current body's design? The answer to this was recounted by Len Pritchard some years ago to me, my son Oliver (the car's custodian today) and his brother Laurence. This occasion was Len's first sight of the car for 40 years, and it was excellent to hear him pronounce the body to be in very good condition. As explained by Len, the then owner (a chemist, name not recalled) approached the fledging Williams & Pritchard company with a requirement to body the car, very much according to his own personal preferences. He brought with him a bundle of car magazines, sat down with Len (and Charlie Williams, presumably) and pointed out various photographs, stipulating “a rear end like this”, “a front like that”, “a curve here” and so on. In this way, the design acquired the delightfully cohesive form, initially pencil-and-paper and in due course aluminium, that thankfully survives. Len also gave an extremely interesting and entertaining account on this occasion of how in WW2 he and many other panel-workers had their skills switched from bodying Bentleys to forming Spitfire fuselages."
 |
 |
 |
top:at the rear of the Enfield premises; middle:inner view; lower:Len at the wheel
all images above © 1948 the Pritchard family archives – all rights reserved
|
"The body's aluminium panelwork is of thin easily-dented 18 gauge (possibly old wartime stock – perhaps it would have been turned into a Spitfire had WW2 not ended when it did...), wrapped onto a light and strong welded tubular steel frame, and the construction displays the very high standard of workmanship for which Williams and Pritchard became well known. The whole body is very light – it can fairly easily be lifted by two people. It is also very rigid, as is the tubular steel BMW chassis, and unlike many modern open cars displays no trace of scuttle shake. Len confirmed that this one-off body was indeed the very first to be built by Williams and Pritchard, in 1948."
"Many people, on first seeing the body, comment on certain similarities in its design to some other roughly contemporary sportscars, such as Tojeiro, AC Ace and Ferrari 166MM Barchetta – and assume that some aspects are cribs of those cars. This is quite untrue, as those designs all appeared post-1948 (the Ferrari dates from 1949, and the Tojeiro Bristol and AC Ace were not introduced until 1952 and 1953 respectively). To this day no-one has credibly nominated any car whose design was copied by Len and Charlie – it is instead pleasant to speculate on whether the designers of any of those other cars were influenced by catching a glimpse of 'W&P No.1'.
W&P No.1's history from 1948 up to the mid-70s remains largely a mystery, nearly as obscure as the car's early Abbot-bodied usage from new (the present owners would be delighted to hear from anyone who can shed any light on this). The body was at some point fitted with a rather inappropriate windscreen – a rare picture shows the car at an airbase, fitted with an unattractive flat-paned screen which, as evidence shows, was very badly mounted, resulting in still-present localised fatigue cracks in the aluminium bodywork. A person in the RAF is believed to have been its owner at the time. No record of any competition outings has been found despite fairly extensive research, and nothing more is known of the car's ownership or usage before it surfaced in 1974 at an Alexandra Palace auction. Some months afterwards, in 1975, it was advertised in the classified columns of Motor Sport by a Mr. West who lived in Wimbledon, South London, and the car was bought from him by me, in whose family it remains."
 |
 |
front and rear views |
"The body's superficial similarities to certain other cars remains tantalising. Another model worth mentioning here is the Frazer Nash Targa Florio, introduced in 1952. The two bodies share, perhaps coincidentally, a certain visual design 'spirit'. The underpinnings definitely have common heritage, as post-war 'Nashes were to a significant extent based mechanically on the pre-war BMW 328, itself a development of the 315. On the day I bought the car I called in on AFN to show it to my old boss Nelson Ledger ('Nell'), in many ways the key technical figure there since the late 1920s, and at the time still the firm's works manager. The car was on tow, en route to its new home. Nell, never one to mince his words nor inclined to flattery, made the telling comment: “a nice bit of bodywork!”. That could not have come from anyone more appropriate, and is a treasured memory. He is sadly missed and, perhaps more than anyone, would have appreciated and understood the extensive work that Oliver has done on the car.
Since 1975 (since 1948 in fact) the bodywork has in most respects been left well alone, much to the approval of most people, who agree than the 'patina' is very appropriate – this opinion greatly outweighing occasional comments along the lines of “when are you going to paint it, then?” The only significant bodywork alterations in recent times, all carried out by Oliver, have been (a) jettisoning the original external door hinges, replacing them by properly engineered internal ones, (b) new internal panelwork to provide much-increased luggage space, (c) a new radiator grille (replacing chicken-wire, and modeled without guilt on a Maserati A6GCS) and a curved windscreen (much needed for occupant comfort), both of these stylistically in keeping with the period and overall design of the car, and (d) a greatly tidied underbonnet layout, the battery being relocated under the passenger seat, for example. There is no short-term intention to restore the body cosmetically. The original door hinges, incidentally, are perhaps the only Williams & Pritchard element which can really be faulted: the curvature of the body meant that the upper and lower hinge pivots were not in line, resulting inevitably in fatigue cracks in the aluminium skin to which they were mounted. This seems a surprising error.
before the curved screen was fitted
"Mechanical work on the car has been a very different matter, completely overshadowing work done on the body. When acquired in 1975 the car was in a very poor mechanical state. For example, the engine hardly ran, every suspension bush was worn oval, the braking system (a badly designed non-original hydraulic setup) basically didn't work at all and never could have done, and the electrics had disintegrated. Just about everything was shot and nastily begrimed. The car had clearly been extraordinarily deprived of maintenance for a considerable time, and was unusable. For a few years it simply sat in the family garage in this sad state, until Oliver, having now reached his teens, decided that something had to be done – whereupon he set about this in no uncertain fashion (first expelling the family of mice which had taken up residence in the unsalvageable seats).
A long and complex tale could be told of the mechanical work that he has done. Suffice it to say that following many years' meticulous restoration, improvement and development (still ongoing) – punctuated by a three year absence on his engineering degree course, not to mention full-time jobs, currently at Prodrive, previously at Reynard – the car is now in all respects at least as good as new mechanically, and in many cases performs better. "
 |
Oliver Penney at the wheel at Prescott in 2006 and 2008 |
 |
The car has been competed successfully at Prescott hillclimb, made three trips to the Le Mans 24 hours race (without weather gear and not trailored), and
in May 2008 Oliver and Richard drove it on a 2,000-mile commemorative rally to the BMW factory in Munich, where it created immense interest.
Many thanks to Richard Penney for his text and to Laurence Penney for his photos of Number One at Prescott and in France (images © 2004 - 2008 Laurence Penney – all rights reserved).
|
