Does anyone remember where Wickford Service Station was located?
The top photograph is of a Model 51 V8 Service Car (break down truck). These were not manufactured in the UK, they were imported from the USA. The service cars were supplied without a crane, the American service cars were supplied to dealers in America with a Weaver Crane fitted.
The right hand drive service cars imported into the UK were fitted with a UK manufactured Harvey Frost crane at the Ford manufacturing Plant at Dagenham, Essex.
If anyone has any further information about the company or the Ford Model 51 Service Car and maybe its current location, it would be of interest to me.
Comments about this page
Add your own comment
Hello. I wonder if they could have done the Gigney van which l have enquired about before, but as the reg plate is not visible it seems unlikely.
The only hope is that the receipt books for the jobs done by any car repairers in Wickford in years gone by are in present action somewhere.
I think this was the garage run by the Woods family in the Woolshots area of London Road. This is an area which had its own football team in the 1950s/60s and was east of Castledon Road/Belmont Avenue. As I have not lived in Wickford for many years I have no idea whether the name has been lost with the passage of time. I note what was the ‘Woods Garage’ was and is still called ‘Wickford Service Station’.
In the early sixties the garage was very basic and the family also had at some stage had a second garage on the left, part way up Brock Hill. It was run by Dad and three sons, Cliff and two older brothers, Cyril and Gordon. The family were very good motor engineers. This photo I think was taken in the early 1950s. Wickford had only three digit telephone numbers in the early 1950s but as the population grew more telephone numbers were needed, so numbers had to became four digit. My opinion is that this vehicle was from the Woods Garage around 1956.
The picture above is for location purposes.
In the 1960s Cliff, aged about 19, built a Rochdale Olympic kit car which appeared slightly to copy the styling of an E-Type Jaguar. The car looked like the one in the photo above. If my memory is correct Clifford bought a fibre glass shell from Rochdale and used mainly reconditioned donated parts from scrap cars. Although the car was small Cliff managed to cram five lads into it on occasions. In the 1960s this was the only way youngsters could get a flash looking car!
Add a comment about this page