This is Peter Watts’ 1934 1.5 litre Sports Saloon.
In the summer of 2017, a lady in Canterbury put a notice on our club website to say that she was disposing of her father’s collection of old cars, one of which was a 1934 1.5 litre Singer Sports Saloon, was anybody interested in buying it? There were probably less than 200 1.5 litre 6-cylinder Singers produced about 92 of which were Sports Saloons and about 75 were open cars. However, although a reasonable number of the open cars have survived, we only know of two Sports Saloons still in existence. One of these is a 1933 model, which is different in several respects from this 1934 model, making this car the only one of its kind that we know of. Peter lost no time in agreeing to buy it, and collected it in September of that year, with the help of SImon Bishop, who was then our Chairman. As the pictures show, it is currently painted black and red, but the first owner, a lady who lived on The Wirral, ordered it with Carnation Red roof, wings and bonnet top, Ivory body sides and Ivory wheels. Interestingly, in the 1960s it had been owned by John Horne who, until his recent sad demise, was our Honorary President. In his ownership it was grey. He had sold it to another of our members, Bob Andrew, but, after he passed it on, it disappeared off the radar, until resurfacing in Canterbury.There is a lot of work to do in refurbishing the body frame, which has suffered from rot and woodworm, but the work has been on hold for a couple of years while Peter finishes the restoration of his 1949 Austin Sheerline. At the beginning of 2021, work on the car was about to start again.
