HWM Sports

[alwylie]

I'm trying to trace the New Zealand history of the HWM Cadillac sports car that spent most of its life in NZ. Richard Wright kindly provided the above photo of it racing wheel-to-wheel with Beowulf. It was imported by the Avery brothers of Hamilton in 1956 who eventually replaced the 5.4 litre Cadillac V8 with a 7.7 litre Continental flat 6 aircraft engine. One account has the Cadillac engine going into a speedboat. Does anyone know anything about that? The next owner is said to have been one Peter Haskett - perhaps the same Peter Haskett who raced single-seaters in the 70s. Does anyone know if Peter is still about and how I could contact him? The next known fact about the car is that John Donnelly bought it from John Riley in the early sixties. I've talked to John Donnelly and the next owner, Graham Hallen, who have both provided a lot of detail about their experiences with the car. Graham sold the car to the late John Monehan and the next known owner was Ron Roycroft, who rounded up some of the original parts that had been removed from the car over the years. Gavin Bain bought it from Ron and eventually sold it to Matthew Collings, a relative of George Abecassis, one of the principals of Hersham and Walton Motors. Matthew had Auto Restorations in Christchurch restore the car to the way it was when it arrived in NZ with a 331 Cadillac engine. It has recently been shipped to Matthew in England. I'd love to learn more about the car's history and would welcome any stories about it or leads to people who might know something.

Allan Wylie