A Mystery Solved

I bought L-852 in 1981 from my ex-wife’s uncle, Joe Fleming.  According to the old registration book which I still have, Joe owned the Allard from at least 1960. But as this was a continuation book, it could have been earlier. At the time it didn’t seem that important to ask.

In 1966, an engine problem took the car off the road and Joe never got around to having it repaired so it never moved again.  Until, that is, I was able to persuade Joe to let me buy the car from him. This was circa 1978, but it was another 3 years before he reluctantly let me trailer the car away.  With the promise that I would get the car roadworthy so that he could have one more ride in it, I took it back to my farm in North Wales.  Sadly some 12 months later Joe passed away without seeing the car again and I didn’t have the heart to continue the Allard rebuild. So, I decided to put the car into storage with a view to doing a full restoration at a later date.

Much later, circa 1988, with free time on my hands my thoughts turned to the Allard.  I had purchased a cottage in the Snowdonia National Park in Wales, which came with a large stone outbuilding suitable for my passion of restoring classic cars.  The Allard was rescued from storage and work began to strip the car down to the bare chassis.  It became apparent that the car had suffered damage to the near side front of the chassis and the wing support arm, but it had not affected the integrity of the chassis so the repaired area was left as was.  Later this damage would be instrumental in forming part of the car’s early history and provenance.  

The engine proved to be beyond economical repair, and was replaced with one that had seen life in a fire engine based at a paint manufacturing facility where it had covered just 7000 miles in its life trundling around the factory roads.  This would turn out to be the third engine the car had been fitted with.  The original paintwork had been a deep maroon but had been overpainted with a red oil-based paint and would have to be stripped back to bare metal.  In the early part of my ownership I had seen an L type at a local race circuit painted white. I had been impressed at how the lighter colour suited the size and shape of the car, so it was that Old English White was the chosen new colour for KLO 128.

With such an undertaking as a bare chassis restoration, I decided it might be worth tracing the car’s early history from the period from 1949 to the late 1950’s.  As we know of its life for the past 60 years, the first 10 years suddenly became very important to me.

I had been a member of the AOC for some years by now and knew that Tom Lush was the Club’s acting Historian and holder of company records, so with some trepidation I plucked up the courage and phoned him. It was 1996.  Of course, he didn’t know me from Adam, but like the gentleman he was he put me at ease and listened to my story and what I was doing to the car. After which he asked me for the details of the car, chassis number and registration number so that he could check it through his records.  

After what seemed like an eternity he came back and asked me to repeat the chassis and registration again, and after a short pause he simply said to me, “I think you should talk to the Allard family direct about this car”.  He said no more, wished me well with the restoration and put the phone down.  So, I was none the wiser in my quest in establishing some early history of the car, but there must have been something in its past that was of interest that I might find out by contacting the Allard family.  Sadly not, in fact. All my enquiries about the car went unheeded, so I just simply went about restoring the car, and put thoughts of tracing the early history on the backburner. But I never forgot Tom’s words.

Restoration of the chassis and bodywork complete, the car was trailered to a well-respected coach trimmer who would fit out the interior and make wet weather equipment, hood, and tonneau’s etc. When I collected the car from Joe Fleming there was no hood with the car. Not being a great fan of the original style, I got my trimmer friend to manufacture the new hood in the style of the M type hood. The result was a more pleasing appearance, at least to me.  

It was at this stage that I made a grave error having my 1937 MG TA to restore as well.  I suggested to my coach trimmer friend that there was no urgency to complete the Allard as I had the MG to restore.  Big mistake, it was to be 5 years before I got the car back, but the quality of work made the wait worthwhile. In the meantime, I had moved onto other cars and projects and the Allard, once retrieved, was once again consigned to storage - albeit in my new home on the Wirral in a nice centrally heated garage.

In 2003 my stepdaughter’s then boyfriend became fascinated with the Allard story and would send emails.  I didn’t even have a computer then, so he was well ahead of the game.  Posing as the son whose father had an Allard, he sent an email to the AOC requesting any information they had of a car with the chassis number 852.  A flurry of emails later we received a sheet of information taken from the warranty book and service records from the new AOC historian. Tom Lush had of course passed away in 1998 and all his records had been passed on.  So now we had the details to pursue the lost former years of the car’s history, or had we?

The information sheet we received stated that the first owner was one PAMELA MAY who lived at DELL COTTAGE near Pulborough in the county of West Sussex, and entries in the service log referred to her and a COUNTESS TROY.  As Sydney Allard had married a member of the May family, Eleanor, we thought perhaps this was what Tom Lush was hinting at back in 1996, and that Pamela was in fact a relation.  I have a very good friend, John Pierce (JP to his friends) who is just brilliant at tracing family history and ancestry, so he was set about tracing Pamela May or indeed Countess Troy. We knew that after the end of WWII in the UK, you had to be ‘a somebody’ or know somebody to be able to buy a new car.  The only Pamela May of note was the renowned ballerina of that name but in time we were able to disregard this lady.  No amount of research in to the history of the Allard or May families produced a Pamela so we had not solved the mystery.  There was a faint hope however, because of ‘difficult handwriting’ in the company warranty book, had the AOC historian possibly misread the writing?

It would be another 10 years before anything happened on the Allard front, and this was to come from a surprising source, namely the Allard Register.  It was October 2013 and I was alerted to an article which had appeared on the Allard Register website regarding KLO 128.  It came about that somebody here in the UK had found photographs of my car and wanted to know if it still existed (http://www.allardregister.org/blog/2013/10/24/found-fotos-l-852.html). As I was computer competent by then, I emailed Colin Warnes right away, and he in turn was able to inform his UK contact that the car was very much alive and that I would very much like to make contact.

In due course I received an email from one Patrick Ayling with whom I began to correspond. We exchanged the original photographs which he had, and in return I sent him pictures of the Allard.  Although one of the original pics from Patrick had been taken in the South of France under a palm tree showed someone sitting in the car, it was not clear who this person could be. However, on the reverse of this photo was the inscription “September 1950 Pardigon Var South of France” so at least we could date it.  The photos that Patrick had sent to me, although important, were the originals of those that had appeared on the Allard Register website.  However, it was not until sometime later that Patrick found yet more photos of the Allard and posted them on to me.  

These new photos were to prove more helpful in tracing the first owner of KLO 128.  Two of these photographs clearly show a lady with the car and on the back of one was the inscription “PM and the Allard in the S. Of France on the way home”.  “PM?”  Surely this was the mysterious Pamela May we had been seeking all these years and now we know what she looked like, maybe someone would recognise her.  My good friend JP set about trying to match this lady to members of the Allard / May family. I passed on a copy of this photo to another Allard owner I met at Silverstone race circuit who was very much involved with the Allard Owners Club, and was in close contact with members of the Allard family. But nothing positive came back and the trail went cold again.

Five years on from this, in 2018, my wife Gina and I decided to spend a few days in the West Sussex area where KLO 128 would have spent its first few years. We were most fortunate to stay in a Bed and Breakfast with a lovely couple who had lived in the area all their lives.  Being close to Goodwood race circuit, they were quite used to having motor enthusiasts staying with them. When I explained the reason we were visiting the area to try and trace a Pamela May who had lived in Dell Cottage in nearby Bury-Gate - and who we believed had been the first owner of our Allard - they quite enthusiastically set about making enquiries. This saved us a lot of leg work even before we arrived. Sadly, nobody had heard of a Pamela May or indeed of Dell Cottage in that area. But the general consensus of opinion with the locals was that it must be Bell House in Bury-Gate that we needed to visit.  Unfortunately, in the short time we stayed in the area there was never anybody at home - so we came away with just a photograph of the place, which would later prove to be an unlikely positive.  Having covered most of our options without any luck, we thanked our hosts and returned home.

Following the disappointment of our trip to West Sussex in 2018 I had decided that it seemed likely that after so much time and effort on research and travel that the early history of KLO 128 was never going to be unearthed so I reluctantly put the whole matter to bed.

However, this was all to change most dramatically just 12 months later in March 2019 when an excited JP, my Ancestry and family history researcher, called at my home brandishing the latest Vintage Sports Car Club’s magazine.  Inside was an article reviewing a book published by Roger Farmer of the life of Betty Haig, the racing and rally driver printed in 2018 and titled “BETTY HAIG, A LIFE BEHIND THE WHEEL”. It was not Betty Haig who had caught the eye of my friend, but a picture of her close friend and fellow rally driver seen outside a cottage standing alongside Betty’s MG TB.  It was a eureka moment because there was our Pamela May. Except that it was not Pamela MAY, but Pamela MOY. Or to be more precise as we were to discover, Countess Pamela Moy!!!

There followed a frantic few weeks trying to locate a copy of this limited-edition book. The designated outlets had run out of stock with no sign of restocking, but it was from the author Roger Farmer from whom I managed to obtain one of the 360 printed copies.  What a revelation! After all those years of searching, here was a book with a plethora of information and pictures of the original owner of KLO 128 and lots for my friend JP to get his teeth into and research.

Although we had convinced ourselves we had at last found the real Pamela, I emailed Roger Farmer and told him of our find and after sending him the pictures we had of our Pamela he was able to confirm beyond any doubt that it was indeed the Countess Pamela Moy.

Armed with all this new information JP was able to set to and research the life of Pamela Moy and what a revelation it has been.

She was born in Norfolk England in 1903, the eldest daughter of three to Sir Edgar and Lady Leonora Speyer.  Sir Edgar was a prominent philanthropist and banker to the Speyer banking dynasty, of Jewish German descent, with offices in Frankfurt, New York and London.  The story of the Speyer banking family is chronicled in publications elsewhere and is not something I would wish to go into in detail here - but only to mention that he was responsible in no small manner to funding the building of the London Underground in the early 1900’s, and to rescuing the London music festivity known as the Proms.

The Speyer family were well respected at this time and had a substantial property in Mayfair in London at Grosvenor Street where many celebrities of the period were entertained. Regular visitors were such notables as Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Herbert Henry Asquith. Sir Edgar had also built a “cottage” on the east coast of England at Overstrand in Norfolk called Sea Marge where he and his family could escape the bustle of Edwardian London and relax.  It was here that Pamela Moy was born.

The Speyer family led a very privileged life at this time in the early 1900’s, but all this was about to change with the outbreak of WW1 when anti German feelings ran high for any citizen with connections to that country.  It ultimately led to Sir Edgar, his wife Leonora, and their three daughters leaving behind their life in England to join the Speyer family, that had banking interests, in America.

Whilst living in America, Pamela met and married a German nobleman, one Count Hugo Moy, who had been living in New York and had been described in one newspaper, perhaps unkindly, as a struggling bond salesman.  After their marriage in 1926 the couple left the United States to start their new married life in Germany.  During their time in Germany, Pamela became a successful and well-respected rally driver campaigning her 1932 MG J3 in such rallies as the Paris-Saint-Raphael in which she at one time won in her class.  

Sadly in 1938 Count Hugo was killed in a riding accident having been thrown from his horse.  With WWII looming Countess Pamela Moy, being Jewish, made the decision to leave behind her life in Germany and return home.  Home to Pamela however, was not to America but to England where she had been born.  On the outbreak of war with Germany she was successful in being granted exemption from internment as a female enemy alien despite her German connection, but was to go on to do valuable service to the war effort - one occasion narrowly escaping with her life in a bombing raid on London where she had been based.

On her return to England Pamela had settled in West Sussex which is in southern England, and it was near to the town of Pulborough that she would remain for the rest of her life. At that time Pamela took the decision to no longer be referred to as Countess Pamela Moy, but simply as Mrs. Pamela Moy.

Pamela had been fortunate in being able to bring with her to England her Weinberger BMW 328 which was re-registered FYE 420, dropping the German registration it arrived with.  This car appeared on a German collector car auction site in 2019 with a guide price of 800,000 to 1.1 million Euros.   The Pamela Moy MG J3 is currently residing in California with its current owner John Brinkmann.  I was most fortunate to be introduced to John Brinkmann by author Roger Farmer last year and we have been exchanging information about Pamela Moy ever since.  

John had been a friend to Pamela as a result of owning her car, and had visited her here in the UK many times. He is one of just two people I have befriended still living who knew Pamela Moy when she was alive.  John’s collection of information on Pamela Moy is substantial and I have benefitted greatly from him for sharing a good deal of it with me.  On one visit to meet with her at her home in 1976 she agreed to a recorded interview to which John has shared just a part of with me and which refers to a trip in the Allard back to the family home Villa Leonora in Baden, Germany, to retrieve certain family artefacts on the instructions from her mother Lady Leonora Speyer who was now living in New York.  

The Villa had been requisitioned by the military after the war ended but they understood the need for Pamela to retrieve family possessions.  This journey, accompanied by her friend Joanna Evers, probably accounts for the mileage of 991 miles covered between the Allard being delivered to Pamela on the 17 March 1949 and its return to Adlards for its 1000-mile service on the 27 April 1949.  Unable to fit all she had been asked to collect, a list that included carpets!!  The car was returned to Adlards on 4 July 1949 to have amongst other work a luggage rack fitted for a return trip back to Villa Leonora later that year.   It is from this second trip that I believe we see the carpets strapped to the luggage rack on what we think is Dieppe Harbour in France that featured on the Allard Register website back in October 2013.

None of these people are with us today, but with a bit of magic from my Ancestry friend JP, I was able to track down and befriend Jack and Joanna’s youngest daughter Juliet.  She remembered Pamela Moy very well, and was interested that the Allard had survived as she could recall, “wonderful fast runs in this car over the South Downs and the words”, “never brake on a corner - always before’’, from Pam.  

Juliet was also able to unravel the mystery of how Bell Cottage, Pamela’s home, came to be called Bell House, the property my wife Gina and I had visited in 2018.  Pamela had purchased Bell Cottage circa 1939 when her exemption from internment as a female enemy alien was granted.  Later, after the war had ended Pamela gifted an adjoining plot of land to the Evers on which to build a house for them.  On completion of this new house, it became known as Bell Cottage and Pam’s home was renamed Bell House.  It was in this new house that Juliet grew up with her parents and elder sister Valentine.  Juliet recalls, as a child, Pamela having frequent trips to America to visit her mother in New York and returning home with clothes and “goodies” the likes of which were not available in post war Britain. So it was that Pamela became a Fairy Godmother to two young girls in those post war ration book days.  Juliet lives in a village in close proximity to both Bell Cottage and Bell House. Both properties have been extensively enlarged, and which Juliet refers to now as Executive Houses.

John Brinkmann met Jack and Joanna Evers on his visits to see Pamela. He had not seen Juliet in over 40 years, so it was with great satisfaction that I was able to arrange a reunion for him with Juliet when he visited the UK in 2019.

It is difficult to know how long Pamela Moy owned my Allard.  We know she must have enjoyed driving it as newspaper articles report that on at least two occasions she was prosecuted for speeding and then in June 1953 she was summoned for careless driving when she was seen by a policeman to drive fast round a corner and collide with a stationary car.  This was most probably the accident that resulted in the damage to the nearside front of the chassis that I referred to earlier when we had the whole body off for the restoration.  In December 1957 Pamela was again caught for speeding, but this time it was in a red Mercedes - a car which I believe to have been a 190 SL.  This is not to say that she did not still have the Allard, and enquiries to DVLA here in the UK were not helpful, as the only owner registered on their new computerised system is me.

Pamela Moy continued with her rallying well in to the 1950’s so it is conceivable that she did come in to contact with both Sydney and Eleanor Allard at these gatherings.  There are numerous mentions of both Sydney and Eleanor during this period in Roger Farmer’s excellent book “BETTY HAIG, A LIFE BEHIND THE WHEEL” and perhaps it was the success of Allard cars that prompted Pamela to acquire one!!  I have no proof that Pamela rallied my car, although two trips to Germany and back - and at least one trip to the South of France in an L Type - might qualify!

To recap: this Allard reg KLO 128 has been in the one family since at least 1960 and possibly before, a period of at least 60 years and has not been used in any form since 1966.  The indicated mileage of 43,245 miles I believe to be correct, the engine has never run on its own accord although removing the plugs and turning the engine over vigorously with the starting handle regularly produces an indicated oil pressure of 40psi.  

I have enclosed many references and photographs of the car and of Countess Pamela Moy de Sons which I hope will make this article come to life.

I have never written anything like this before and it probably shows but I hope it finds interest amongst your members and I apologise if I have bored any of you to tears.

Kind regards,

Doug Brimage

There are people to thank, all those mentioned who were able to have given me their personal endorsement to print their names, to John Brinkmann for the myriad of personal information on Pamela Moy that he has passed on to me and for his continued friendship and I appreciate the meeting we had when he was in the UK last year to attend the gatherings of MG J3/4 owners.  To my good friend John Pierce who once armed with the right details trawled the internet to gather all the incredible information about not just Pamela Moy but the Speyer family in general.  Finally, to Roger Farmer who very kindly gave his permission for me to use any of the photographs in his book and to the book itself without which we would still be very much in the dark about the early days of one Allard L Type chassis number 852 and registration number KLO 128. Thank you all.