COVENTRY MESSAGE BOARD

But Arthur Thomas didn't snap up the bargain and later paid £6,000 for the 1915 Calcott



Retired Welsh farmer Arthur Thomas regrets the day he didn’t harvest a bargain when he was offered a rare Coventry car for just £12.

He later paid out £6,000 for the 1915 Calcott 10.5HP two seater - one of just 28 left in the world and in Arthur’s book a peach of a motor.

“It’s a little bit annoying because I turned down the chance to buy it 40 years ago for twelve quid,” says the vintage car nut from Cresselly, Pembrokeshire.

The car was made at the Calcott brothers’ factory in Gosford Street - later to become Astleys - and sold for about £185 new.

Arthur had to do a lot of detective work before he and his son were able to piece together the light tourer that had spent more than four decades in a barn as a collection of dismantled parts.

The car’s first owner was the War Office who requisitioned it for military use and painted it olive and khaki.

But when WWI ended the car was bought by a firm of timber merchants in Wales and was first registered in Pembrokeshire.

“Calcott Brothers built around 2,500 cars between 1913 and 1926 before being taken over by Singer,” Arthur says.

From that starting point he unearthed a mass of information including manuals and specification sheets.

“We rebuilt the engine and cranked it up and it goes like a bird,” he says.

“Nearly everything is original, even the engine and gearbox are 100 years old. A few bits and pieces were missing but generally this is the original car that was on the road in Pembrokeshire in 1919.

“We’ve even found some parts that are still painted in military khaki.

“So far we've only driven the car around the farmyard but we’ve got insurance to go on the open road and that will be our next step.”



The Calcott is one of many vintage cars Arthur has restored during his lifetime, many of them Coventry-built.

His barn also garages a 1934 Triumph Gloria and a 1932 Alvis, a 1914 Wolseley 1620 and an Austin 12.

Arthur’s favourite marque is the Alvis, a firm closely associated with Coventry but which in fact has its origins in Pembrokeshire.

Alvis founder Thomas George John was born at Pembroke Dock in 1880 and started his engineering career as an apprentice in the Royal Dockyard.

Although the Calcott will be 100 when Arthur drives it on the highway, it will still only be the second oldest the oldest car on the Pembrokeshire road.

Another Thomas, Jonny from Carmarthen who coincidentally once owned Arthur’s Calcott, has an even older car.