1965 Mystery Car

[HughH]

I am looking for help trying to track down information on a mystery (at least to me and a few others) very early Australian 911

Last weekend at the TYP901 Christmas breakfast Greg Gaylor from NZ showed me a picture and article out of the February 1966 Christophorus magazine. It in turn was quoting a front page article in "The Australian" from 30 September 1965.

It showed a brand new 911 being delivered in Canberra to the then Governor General, Lord Casey, by Norman Hamilton.

The car was described as a "rich yellow" German sports car with a price tag of £4875 and capable of 140 MPH.
This was about two months after the car Stewart Kay now has (the first RHD customer delivered car) was delivered to Ron Angus. That car was finished in May 1965 and delivered on 1 August 1965 and had an original purchase price £4881.10 according to Stewart's records.

I have no record of this yellow "Casey" car in the list of cars I have and neither did Stewart Kay when I asked him last week.

I have seen claims (but not original documents) that there was an delivery of about 6 cars for 1965 although of these only 4 (probably) were true Model Year 65's and the balance were model year 66 cars delivered in 1965. It is also not clear if the tourist delivery cars were counted or, indeed if the number includes cars that were sold in New Zealand (as occurred in some later years).

I understand that apart from the "Angus" car (301503) in Australia there was:

• 300475, a "slate grey" car used as a demonstrator in Melbourne and then sold in 1966
• 300882, a signal red car completed on 20 April 1965, but tourist delivered - Edit) now discovered that it is a Left Hand drive car converted in Europe before coming here
• 30150x (504?) a silver car used as a demonstrator in NSW
• 302146, an Aga blue car delivered on 14 September (?) 1965 at Hamiltons Melbourne
• 302658, a light Ivory car apparently delivered to Australia on 28 October 1965 and delivered to first owner on31 December 1965

I am not sure what date the Aga Blue car was completed but cars with similar numbers were completed in August 1965. Given it was delivered to the client in mid September, and 302658 did not arrive in Australia until the end of October, that puts a rough upper limit on the chassis number for this mystery "Casey" car. Other records show that cars with numbers in the 3022xx range were finished in September 1965 which would not have given enough time to get it delivered to Canberra. Also 302631, in New Zealand seems to also have a build date of October 1965.

It is also not clear whether the "Casey" car would be early enough to be a Model year 65 car or a very early Model year 66 car given its delivery date.

This car exists / or existed. I also asked in the UK in case it was a UK car diverted over here for the Governor General. They had no record of a yellow RHD car coming there before 1966. Indeed the response was the first 65 Rhd UK yellow car was a Bahama yellow in October 66.

attached are the articles Greg showed me

I am going to post this on early S as well to widen the search scope and see if anything turns up

[David 68T]

Hugh,

I recall many years ago Duttons (when they were in Chapel street ) had an orange coloured 911 for sale they noted was previously owned by GG Casey.

They may be able to help.

[HughH]

Thanks David
I was going to ask Jeff dutton if he had any memories.
This respone has reinforced the need to

[David 68T]

Hopefully he will. I remember being very tempted by it at the time even at the asking price. It seemed perfect in every way.

I am sure Jeff would remember the car in view of its past ownership and its condition at the time despite it being more than 25 years ago.

[MrUpwey]

I remember the car being at George Cairns' (previous) workshop on the late 1980's. I think it was for sale then, or maybe just sold, and I do remember it having small Australian flag stickers on the front guards or doors...it also had a few minor dents etc.

[HughH]

Peter
stretching your memory but do you have a memory of the color? would it have been the soft yellow of the early / mid sixties, "champagne yellow" as shown below or something brighter / deeper

I remember the car being at George Cairns' (previous) workshop on the late 1980's. I think it was for sale then, or maybe just sold, and I do remember it having small Australian flag stickers on the front guards or doors...it also had a few minor dents etc.

[Merv]

I can't imagine the GG driving too aggressively. Although reportedly he never recovered from a car accident in 1974.

[HughH]

thanks to a suggestion from Nick James i found these in a photo archive. no further in identifying it yet though

[MrUpwey]

Peter
stretching your memory but do you have a memory of the color? would it have been the soft yellow of the early / mid sixties, "champagne yellow" as shown below or something brighter / deeper

From memory, a very pale yellow/grey? hue Hugh and the stickers may have been Union Jacks rather than Aus. flags...would make sense for a GG.

[HughH]

Update... after 7 years

Over the time since the last post on this I have had communications with various people with information, including the owner of the car after Lord Casey, “James”, who provided some great information and photos of the car while he was its custodian that I am posting below. However until now I have not had substantive progress on finding the cars identity.

However, in the last couple of days there has been a breakthrough driven by collaboration with Robert Barrie in the UK and Dave Pateman in Canada.
The “Lord Casey car” has now been identified as vin 301504 produced in the middle of June 1965 and a true 1965 MY car. Somewhat unusually though it has a MY66 color and code: 6607 Sand Beige.

It appears to be a part of a small run of RHD cars from the middle of June 1965 all of which came to Australia:

• 301501 Hamilton Aus. Silver Metallic. The Sydney based “Alec Mildren” Demonstrator car and cover car for the Australian Sports Car World magazine in February 1966

• 301503 Hamilton Aus. Stone Grey The Ron Angus car and the first 911 delivered to a customer

• 301504 Hamilton, Aus. Beige. The “Lord Casey” car delivered on 29 September 1965 as documented on the front page of "The Australian" newspaper shown in a post above

This means, according to Robert Barrie and Dave, FOUR out of the first 5 RHD cars came to Australia; the other two cars being:

• 300474 the Bali Blue AFN demonstrator MMU 911C , being the first one produced which went to the UK, and

• 300475 the Slate Grey car that Alan Hamilton picked up at the factory and later was a demonstrator for Hamilton’s in Melbourne before being eventually sold in 1966

In addition, there is 300882, owned now in the UK but which has spent most of its life so far in Australia. It was delivered to an Australian serving in Germany, but within a month of it being completed was in the UK at AFN. It came to Australia in 1966 but the Kardex does not show that it was ordered from here. It has long been debated whether it was RHD or LHD originally, but the current owner believes he now has enough evidence to say it was always RHD. In any event it was not originally delivered to Australia but is obviously the third lowest Vin in this group.

There is no evidence so far that the “Casey car” has survived and there are various stories suggesting that it has not, although in these sorts of things you can never say never. I have yet to see concrete evidence that it has been destroyed or scrapped and am continuing to chase that up.

As a part of this journey however I was fortunate to make contact with the second owner of 301504 who has provided the following photos of it when he owned it. He sold it in the early 1970’s to upgrade to a newer car and, while I do know the identity of the next custodian, I have yet to be able to make contact to see where the trail goes from there. I believe the next owner is still alive though so I am hopeful of getting more information to continue this story.

these photos below are from the period that "James" was custodian and I thank him for the permission to post them here

1.png

2.jpg

3.jpg

4.jpg

The final photo is of one of the sister cars, the Silver "Alec Mildren" demonstrator 301501 which was completed on the same day as the "Casey" car and a couple of days after the "Angus" car. It is shown here as the cover photo of Australian "Sports Car World" in February 1966

mildren.png

we have of course seen many photos of the Angus car on this board - now in the custody of Stewart Kay

[alexwebster]

great follow up Hugh!

[klasikcis]

Well done Hugh. Great detective work. I once spent about 12 months going down a rabbit hole trying to research race history on the very first 1967.5 datsun 2000 Roadster imported off the Japanese RH production line by John Roxburgh, who ran the Datsun Racing Team. it was in fact the original press road test car. Turned out the car never was Cams log booked and only did some minor Club events by a later owner as John had simply slipped a 2000 motor and gearbox in his original Datsun 1600 race car. So I know the time and effort that goes into this level of research. Nev

[pocketscience]

Looks like “James” enjoyed his time as custodian! I approve!

[Greg Gaylor]

Fantastic progress Hugh, and very satisfying. Slowly the history of early 911s in our part of the world is coming into view. Well done.

[silbere]

I had a '65 Yellow appraised by Autohaus NSW back in the early 2000's.

Probably still got the report somewhere , cost me as I had every test done.

It had just had a charcoal colour change by owner Wayne Seabrook.

From memory Andrew Farmer had a look too.