College Motors Ltd Wiltshire Special - Triumph Car dealers 11 part2

The building of the Wiltshire Special for a director of College Motors Ltd of Bristol was described in the Standard Triumph Review November1964

Ingenuity, skill and the quality of Triumph workmanship and design have produced a vehicle the likes of which can be seen at only one place in the British Isles - at Timsbury, near Bath. Here, at Kingwell Hall, the beautiful home of Mr A V T Wiltshire, is the Wiltshire Special, but a useful "special" built to
earn its keep and perhaps more accurately described as a refinement
of the go-kart design.

The story of the Wiltshire Special is one of reincarnation, for its "life" began after two crashed Triumph Heralds had been written-off by the assessors.

Mr. Wiltshire is Managing Director of Standard-Triumph distributors, College Motors Limited, Bristol, and following a spell of particularly bad weather - fog, ice and snow conditions he and his service manager and co-director, were faced with the problem of finding more space at their Bristol premises.

Much of it seemed to be monopolised by, as Mr Wiltshire described them, "a couple of dozen assorted makes of badly battered cars in the process of being written off".

However, it was obvious that the Heralds had fared much better than other vehicles without a chassis. 

This gave me an idea", says Mr. Wiltshire. "Why not an estate 'special'? Although I keep a Ferguson 35 at home it has to have working tyres and not lawn tyres to do the rough work, and although used with a set of gang mowers on the lawn, in damp conditions the tyres badly marked the grass surfaces".

During the winter the best parts of the two smashed Heralds were sorted out, and, adds Mr. Wiltshire, "the components were so good that they were in a suitable condition to be used again". 

 

End product was the Wiltshire Special, a most useful run-about which now adequately copes with a 10 foot lawn roller, a trailer or a set of gang mowers, in spite of the gradients it has often to negotiate.

Cutting the 3t acres of lawns takes roughly an hour with the gang mowers in tow, and the Special has carried heavy loads of soil around the 19 acre estate as well as doing yeoman service in carting away heaps of autumn leaves deposited on the 550 yard drive to the house. 

It was found necessary to get the front lyres skimmed as though ready for re-treading, following which the outstanding steering lock of the Herald has proved invaluable in making it possible to negotiate various corners without marking the lawns. 

There is no springing at the rear end of the Special, but it is equipped with a set of over-sized van tyres and wheels. The hydraulic brakes and handbrake are retained, and the only modification which has been made is the scrapping of the ordinary push-and-pull ignition switch and the provision of a key. The
reason? The ability to hide the key to prevent joy-riding around the lawns and up and down the drive by visitors of every age group. 

So it is that two Heralds, which seemed destined to end their days on the scrap heap, have found a new purpose in the midst of the beautiful Somerset countryside.

Further information and sources

Link to the other articles in this series.

Read more about College Motors Ltd in my earlier blog post.

Link to face book page: Triumph Car Dealers.

Link to my Triumph Car Dealers Flickr group which includes many photos of Standard Triumph garages etc from my collection and many other contributors .

I have a collection of Standard Triumph car dealer directories: http://vitessesteve.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/triumph-car-dealer-directories.html

Picture credits: