The car in the photo is the famous (at the time) Morris Special owned PreWar by C S L Burleigh and PostWar by Ashley Cleave. Burleigh seems to have used the car primarily for the MCC Land’s End Trials of 1937 to 1939, but Ashley Cleave was a regular competitor in many of the major trials of the late 1940s. The car is, essentially, a Morris Eight with a Morris Ten engine, and was surprisingly competitive in Cleave’s hands often beating the Ford-engined specials of the day, whether powered by the Flathead V8 or the 1172cc four cylinder.
The photo above comes from the current owner of CCV 952 who has acquired a copious collection of photos and other records relating to the car, including seven photos which were uncaptioned. I have positively identified the event and location for four of them, have a pretty good idea of the location of two more, leaving just the photo above which has me stumped. At present we don’t even know if it’s PreWar (Burleigh driving) or PostWar (Cleave driving) – I thought the trials number holder might give a clue, but even this is identical in photos taken PreWar and PostWar. I have a few wild ideas about where it might have been taken, but I’ll keep them to myself so as not to bias the thoughts of others.
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