Vintage cars owned by Clive Unsworth of Ashton

Anyone who remembers Unsworths Music and Record shop in Ashtion in the 60s will recall he owned a number of classic cars over the years, a lot of them now very valuable - the Jaguar D Type comes to mind. But in later years I heard he also owned much older vehicles of a pre-war or vintage kind. Anyone know what model of vintage cars these were?. I was looking at a hone video from 1991 taken at the Haigh steam rally. Clive was there at this show with one or two of his vintage cars, and I noticed one of them looked very similar to a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost. Anyone know if he owned one?.

I recall he owned a Pierce-Arrow at one time, that was a large imposing saloon.
I never understood him riding about in a little veteran job, might have been a "curved dash" Oldsmobile about 1904, when he had a D type Jag and aLola T.70 coupe in his garage he could have been driving.

Looking at photos of a Pierce-Arrow, it does appear to look like the car that Clive is standing beside at Haigh Steam Rally in Aug 1991 on the home video I have. He also had another vintage motor with him at a fair held on the old Kwiksave depot car park (on Lockett Rd) around 1992..mayve been the Pierce Arrow.

I suppose the reason why Clive never used the D Type and Lola and decided to drive around in those vintage cars is probably because he realised they (especially the D Type) were worth more than his other collection of motors put together. I think he realised the D just wasn't worth putting on the road anymore because it was too valuable. I think, during the 1990s, the D Type was said to have been in a sorry state. I heard the D Type, after Clive died, was sold at Barons for around £700,000. Not exactly the kind of car you'd want to put on the road very often. I'd have loved to have been around in the 60s when my dad used to go for rides in the D Type, seeing the thing parked on that big drive, all those garages he had at the side (the envy of any car enthusiast) and the sight and
sound of it. He knew what to do with his money. Most people who are minted drive around in a boring BMW or Merc.

Clives D Type is the one second from the left in This Picture.
His collection of cars brought over £600,000 at auction after he died. The D Type brought £2.5 million at last auction!

I assumed it was the D Type alone that brought around £600,000, that's what my dads mate who worked for Unsworths heard, but he probably thought it was that one car. Still, this was likely a huge sum of money then (and obviously still is to many, unless you live in a £400,000 house in Liverpool Rd).

Shame there's no one like Clive around today who owns cars like that, not locally anyway. The nice thing about the D Type was that it was never raced but used solely as a road car. Clive and my dad would often go for rides in it, stopping off at a coffee bar in Hindley. That would never happen today. These days those cars are mostly owned by collectors who just shove them into a garage as a museum piece, occasionally used for historic racing events.

Think the D-type was raced quite a lot by Ecurie ecosse, IIRC it's best result was a fourth at the Nuremburgring 500. I was told Clive had cine film of it competing.
I recall sitting on the footboard of the Pierce-Arrow and Clive telling me he would never go to Oulton Park as they would'nt allow his little dog in.

Bonham's Car Auction, December 2013!

When Clive died, his D Type was bought by the heart specialist who invented 'stents' !

Ive never heard about the cinefilm he took of it racing. As far as I know it was never used on the racetrack during the time Clive owned it. I do know Clive used to visit Snetterton and other tracks to watch races, travelling in his regular work van.

Speaking of Cinefilms, my dad once had cinefilm of the D Type: footage of it on the driveway and film of it driving down the road filmed from the passenger seat. I really wished he still it had, but it got destroyed when a shed my dad had at the back of an old house got burned down and the film with it.

That's a very comprehensive history, I did'nt realise that I saw it race at Aintree, and that it had been crashed.
Now I need to solve the mystery of a Mercedes "Racing Car" that had been crashed at Aintree, it's remains under a tarpaulin at a woodyard in Bryn road.

A woodyard in Bryn Rd? as far as I know there's no woodyard in Bryn Rd.

I heard there's a classic car auction place in INce called Woodlands Classic Car Auctions. Apparently there's an auction next Saturday. Wonder what they've got auctioning there. Didn't there used to be a Morris Minor auction place near Frith St in Wigan (near where the old Grayways place used to be)?. I wonder what became of it.

This was back in the fifties, being a little lad the owner of the yard used to take the P=== out of me(what's changed!) and used to tell me it was Fangio's and he had got it in a top secret deal. ha ha. The only info" i ever got was that it was a 300sl Gullwing that was wrote of at Aintree and was just the body,no engine.

I can't imagine it being a 300sl Gullwing, they are a very valuable classic Mercedes sports car, maybe not so much back then but certainly now. I don't think there were that many Gullwings made, and the ones that were made have likely been accounted for and are in someones possession.

The Bryn Road Woodyard may have been Sherman's on Whithill Street.

I remember they had a big Black Labrador.

I was once told that the pre-war Bentley driven by John Steed in the Avengers series that used to be on TV was sold to them by Clive Unsworth. Does anyone know if this is true or false?

I haven't heard of the pre-war Bentley used in The Avengers being sold to Clive; he may well have as his later cars were vintage. I came across this site which mentions the Manchester to Blackpool vintage car run in the early 90s, and it mentions Clive Unsworth.

Apparently one of his vintage cars was a 1914 Crossley 20/25hp, and another was a 1912 Michigan Tourer.

http://hyde1841.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/crossley-rfc-staff-car.html

http://hyde1841.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/C%20R%20Unsworth

Was talking to Roy Sherman, owner of the woodyard, today. He told me the Merc' was a 300sl gulwing owned by the son of a director of Leyland Motors and, he thought, it was crashed while racing.
The space frame and one door was virtually undamaged, but the body was crushed flat, there was no running gear. His plan was to repair the body but decided it was too badly damaged and sold it on.