Alun replaced his first 3L Volvo (CAA 12K) with a second 3L Volvo (WLJ 44J, 3V 5936) which itself was eventually sold to Valerie Vincetto in Italy. Bought sight unseen! Alun now has a very nice Lotus Elan and only very recently gave up his MOC membership. So, a Marcos is a pretty rare animal hereabouts but last year, when our regular postie was on holiday, his relief arrived one morning with the usual collection of junk mail and, on the front drive we got chatting. Presumably one or more cars were either on the drive, or visible through the garage doors and he seemed quite interested in classic cars. It turned out that his father had a 1940’s Triumph Roadster and he had inherited his father’s passion for old motors.

He instantly recognised the Marcos and said that he knew somebody on the island “who used to build Marcoses when he worked at TJ’s garage in Llangefni in the late 1960s”. I actually took this with a pinch of salt (it seemed a bit unlikely to me) but he gave me the person’s name (a Gareth Jones) and reeled off both his home and mobile telephone numbers which I kept. For eighteen months this piece of paper with the name and numbers on it resided behind a mains cable above one of the kitchen cabinets, ever mindful that I really must give the guy a ring. In October this year (2015) our postie had a week off and his relief (Ivor) turned up again. Once more I had to apologise to him and admit that I still had the phone numbers and would phone him that evening, which I did, and yes, the rumours were true, he did help to build up Marcoses, when he was an apprentice at TJ’s in 1969. A meeting was arranged for the following day and as the Marcos hadn’t been run since the rally at Prescott three months before, I needed to charge the battery. Sometimes I despair at the quality of the items we have to put up with these days! I put the battery in the car in 2002 so it had only lasted thirteen years before starting to need a charge. Terrible - because its red case nicely matched the car up to that point. It’s a normal 3-year Warranty Unipart battery which was provided as a replacement for its previous one - a blue-cased ‘Lifetime Guarantee’ battery that I had installed in 1982. In about 2000 Unipart discontinued selling their ‘Lifetime Guarantee’ batteries, but if you had one fail they would replace it with a 3  year Warranty one.

As far as his involvement with Marcos cars was concerned, he was an apprentice at TJ’s Garage in Llangefni on Anglesey, a Ford dealership (and still is, as TJ Ford) and until 2015 was still in the same premises and as a Ford dealership until moving around the corner to the inevitable industrial estate. On a Friday afternoon (not every Friday, but as there was a demand) one or two body/chassis units would arrive “from a garage near Liverpool” and the garage mechanics would stay on after 5.30pm and unload these units on their dollies and wheel them into the workshop where, that evening and over the weekend, it, or they, would be assembled. To an apprentice, the opportunity to earn some useful overtime pay was very attractive and this went on for some time.

Assembly in those days was really rather a doddle and has been written about at least twice to my knowledge. Motor magazine managed it in 1969 with one of the last wooden-chassised 1600s, admittedly with five people, in just over a day, a far cry from the kits supplied in the 1980s. These early cars arrived from the factory already painted and trimmed, just requiring the installation of the modified Ford rear axle and suspension, front suspension, steering wheel and engine/gearbox assembly. This latter was made easier if the fitted bonnet was removed and the seats taken out to enable seat belts to be later fitted. Then, off with the transmission tunnel top panel for access to the top of the gearbox for the speedodrive to be attached and the gearbox could then be filled with oil.

If the gearbox were to be filled with oil before installation it all tended to run out of the gearbox tail as the engine and gearbox were tilted whilst manoevring the units into position. Then the propshaft, radiator and exhaust system were fitted, services connected and away you went! The lack of these items being fitted was purely to avoid the purchaser from payment of Purchase Tax. It always amused me when owners, when selling their cars, thought that being a ‘factory-built’ car meant that it was superior in some way to any other, because they were all supplied virtually complete. No assembly instructions were provided (to again avoid Purchase Tax) but no specialist Marcos knowledge was really required, everything that had to be done was pretty much common sense.

Monday morning would arrive and the completed cars would be trailered off back to be sold as complete cars by the garage “near Liverpool”. I’d never heard of a ‘dealer’ in Liverpool, but in the dim and distant past I seemed to recall a dealer in what is now known as the ‘Merseyside’ area and started hunting through my back magazines. I came across an advert for Stavordale Garage in the Wirral (shown on previous page) which looked promising as Gareth had mentioned the name Ivor Jones in his reminiscences. I then began Google-mapping up and down Hoylake Road but could find neither a suitable garage nor No 21. Over quick response came from a Mike Kemble who had worked in the garage next to Stavordale in the mid-’sixties and provided the photographs in this article. It turned out that I’d been looking at the wrong end of quite a long main road and he had attached several photographs of the garages (I believe there were up to five in total). Mike had worked in the black and white building with red roof in the photographs which was also known as the ‘Super Garage’. On the photographs on the previous page it is shown as the ‘3 Counties Garage’, and sold Shell petrol. Mike lived over the road from the garages and his sister Jan, who worked at Stavordale, is the tall girl on the right of the picture.

Next to ‘3 Counties’ is Stavordale Garage, the square-shaped grey building beyond ‘3 Counties’, shown on the previous page, which sold Jet petrol. Mike remembers well both Ivor Jones and Roy Humpage, Ivor also had the car salesroom next to Birkenhead Central station. (image below). Despite Mike’s moving away from here in 1971 he had managed to obtain photographs of the garages being demolished.

(c) Nick Welch. 2015