Tracing a TV Rover’s history
Watching a repeat of All Creatures Great and Small from 1989 the other day, I couldn’t help wondering if Siegfried Farnon’s 1952 Rover 75 (GFC 529) still exists.
Well, it does! Bonhams sold it in 2019, the estimated selling price being £1000-1500 (the latter, ironically, was the price of the car when new); this was well short of the mark, though, because it actually sold for £6670, sporting a new number 483 LHY. This is interesting because that registration format wasn’t introduced until 1953, a year after the Rover was first registered.
The number prior to its appearance on television was RPJ 18, no doubt a ‘cherished’ number, by the look of it, and was probably retained by its original World War I flying ace owner; it’s now on a grey Volvo, according to the DVLA. Not sure why it was subsequently given a 1953 plate, though... GFC 529, on the other hand, is on a red Brough Superior. World War I flying ace (and Under Secretary of State for Air during the war), eh? What a provenance! I wish I knew my car’s – which is identical to the All Creatures one, except for being a year later. All I know is that the first owner, Mr Bernard George Griffett, was a senior executive at BP, Swansea (financial director, perhaps?), who bought the car shortly before he retired and used it until he died in about 1980. It then sat in his garage until his wife died about ten years later.
I bought the car in 1992 from a gentleman on the Gower peninsula, who stripped the engine down but then thought better of proceeding any further. He also didn’t bother registering it in his name, which technically makes me the second owner – in 75 years. Now, that’s got to be a record!
