In 1959 we had another transporter, a Commer Avenger Luxury Coach. This vehicle was equipped with a 6 cylinder petrol engine and was built in 1947 for the two English airlines, British Overseas Airways Corporation and British European Airways. They were used for taking passengers from the terminal in Knightsbridge, London to Northolt Airport. I don’t know which of the airlines previously owned our coach but they were identical except for the colours and logos. Mine had been converted into a racing transporter by Max Trimble who is a BRDC member. He had a very serious accident at Spa driving either a C or a D type jaguar ( fill this in but i think the former and in any case ex Ecurie Ecosse) and almost lost both legs but is able to walk again albeit with a stick. After his accident the bus was left lying in some yard and the local children smashed every piece of glass in it. I knew Max from school as a boy, so I bought it from him for £25 and drove it back to our garage and fitted all new glass. Then I took it it to a carpenter, an old man in Oldbury, West Midlands, who had a little workshop where I had him take the front seats out and build me a complete caravan, which was great since Yvonne and I then had a folding double bed that was a seat during the day. There was a sink but no running water, although we did have a proper cooking stove, and many times Yvonne cooked a full meal in a lay by on our way to some race, since we could only start off after I had closed the garage at 8pm. The body of the bus was built to suit the airlines’ needs and just about half way along, the roof was raised to allow for a large luggage area with the passengers sitting up on the raised deck with its own windscreen. I altered this so that it could carry two cars one above the other or one with enough room for 4 people to sleep. Yvonne made curtains for all the top windows. it was a great vehicle but had already covered about a million miles and the engine being a side valve job had a tendency of blowing its head gasket which i learned to change in a matter of minutes if needed. When Martin Pfunder of the Austrian Motor Club asked me to come to Zeltweg and Innsbruck I thought i’d better fit a big rack on the lower roof to carry petrol cans. My dad never gave me any money unless I had earned it and being newly married in 1957 I did not have much money with a mortgage to pay and a wife who wanted 3 meals a day. So i could not afford a new radio to put into the bus and went to a breakers yard and paid £5 for a HMV push button set from a smashed car. I never really got it work and resigned to simply switching it on and sing or whistle myself pretending that it did work. The day we left i stood around talking to a friend who was coming along to drive Yvonne and the bus back in case the worst happened, when my dad drove up in his Bentley with a mean look on his face. Getting out he stretched out his hand and said ‘give me back the 15 pounds I loaned you’ knowing perfectly well we were going on a 1000 mile plus continental trip in an old vehicle. I only had £20 and my Midland Bank cheque book which the manager said I could only use if there was enough money in the bank which of course there wasn’t so after giving my father back his money I had a fiver left. I was so upset by his behaviour that i stopped filling up the cans and told every one we would leave immediately. Off we went to meet Jim Twixt at his place near London because he and his mechanic would follow us to Austria. After we had met up we passed a Chicken Inn restaurant near Leicester Square and Yvonne said ‘I’m hungry let’s eat’, so I ordered 3 half chickens while Yvonne went to the lavatory. As we were about to drive off again Yvonne said ‘ need to go to the toilet again’ so I accompanied her and found a fiver on the floor, which meant we had eaten and I still had £7-15 shillings. So off to Dover! We arrived at the port and I drove into a petrol station right there at the entrance. The office was a wooden shack with an old man in it who was fast asleep. I woke him up and told him to fill up the coach and then the Cooper after which we filled all the cans. Petrol was 2/6 per gallon and the old man made marks on the front of the pump for every 10 gallons as the pump switched off at every 10 gallons. He added up the marks and produced a bill and I pulled out my cheque book knowing it wasn’t covered but thinking to sort it out once we got back. At first he did not want to accept a cheque, so I said he could milk the petrol back out or write down our names written on the side of the bus and to trust us since we also were in the garage business. The next problem was paying for the ferry, so I parked the bus in the darkest corner and walked in. In those days vehicles had to have a triptique so I walked up to a fellow and said: ‘hello mate, remember me from a few months back?’ looking at me he said he thought so, so I said ‘I’m here with same coach and 3 people and need two temporary export licences return to and from Dunkirk.’ So he asked me the length of the coach and I say ‘same as last time 27 feet’, whereas in actual fact it was 30 feet, landing it in the next category up and almost doubling the cost. I thought i got away with it but he said he needed to measure it, so he walks to the end of the bus with a tape measure and me holding the other end. As he reaches the end in the dark I pass my end from one hand to another stretching my arms making it a good 3 feet shorter and he calls yes it’s 27 feet. So I write another cheque and he says I can’t take that and I say but you did last time and it didn’t bounce right? ‘No’ he says so off we go onto the ferry. We made good time until we got to the mountains and by the time we reached the top we had used almost all the fuel including what we had drained out of the Cooper, so I was wondering if there was anything I could sell to buy petrol. Then I saw a British Sunbeam Talbot towing a trailer. I said to Chris to hang out the window and stop him which he did. It was John Campbell-Jones who also drove a Cooper and I had driven against him at Dunboyne, Ireland, I told him if he would loan me some money I would pay him back from my starting money, so he gave me a 100 Krone note having just come down from Scandinavia. Off to the next petrol station where the attendant goes ballistic after filling us up and had to call his boss to figure out exchange rates. Closer to Salzburg I switch on the non functioning radio and ‘Blow me’ it says ‘Ja der Englaender Gerry Ashmore und sein Cooper Climax’ saying I would be at Zeltweg and Innsbruck, then the radio crackled and after that never ever woke up again. So near Zeltweg we pass the village of Knittelfeld and there is a motel with a lot of transporters parked, and then we get to Zeltweg circuit realising it is an airforce base as a soldier with a submachine gun at the ready turns us away telling us to come back in the morning. So we roll into the motel lot behind the mcLaren truck on the very last drop of petrol. The next morning we are woken up by loud banging and we tell the McLaren chap we are out of petrol so he lets me have 2 gallons and off we go to the circuit. At scrutineering I take the Lotus to the BP pump I was assigned to and fill up. I take the car back and empty it and go back again filling it. After a few times the man at the pump says: ‘Vat are you doing, Herr Ashmore? I say ‘trying out different gear ratios’ . ‘Ah, I see’ he says and fills it up again. The race was good and I now had a nice amount of schillings and we had a week to wait until Innsbruck so I thought we could have a few beers in a cafe. We had made friends with a local Porsche dealer who offered us to stay in his parking lot and use the toilets etc. We had taken along food for the three of us, a cwt sack of potatoes and loads of tins but Jim Twixt had fallen out with his mechanic who came to ask us if we could take his wife back with us and he would walk back to England. So we said we’d look after the both of them but with that the food went very quickly and on the night before heading off to Innsbruck Yvonne said ‘’I’m hungry let’s go and have some food’. Down the road was a small cafe with a one armed bandit so I said to all ‘empty your pockets’ which gave us a total of 2 schillings, and off we went to the little cafe where i knew he owner. I ordered 5 beers, kissed the schilling, covered the screen of the bandit with my left hand and pulled the handle and won. I ordered 5 wiener schnitzels and did it again, won again ordered ice cream for all and a packet of cigarettes, paid the owner and walked out still having my money in my pocket. So we arrive at Innsbruck airport and we stay in the car park and are allowed to use the hotel showers and toilets and get a space for the car in a hangar. And then we run into David Piper who some time before had also had Jason as a mechanic and had also sacked him. David joins us for dinner at the restaurant and the next we know is jason gets up and punches him full in the face. They get up and start fighting and run out and I run after them trying to stop it all. I never found out what that was all about.
