Jamie Robertson

Hello again, if you are reading this. Bad news and good news. The bad news is that I have found another picture of the car and even though you can only see a tiny part of the number plate it definitely starts DX, which is the Ipswich area number (unsurprisingly as he was the Ipswich MP) so it seems unlikely to be connected to yours. The slightly better news is that you can see the marque on the radiator grill and it is definitely an Armstrong Whitworth. A Torpedo? I would have thought almost definitely. I will attach the photo. It is taken a year or so earlier. Jack doesn't have a military moustache and at this stage is a (very wealthy) barrister. Sorry to get you hopes up. Whatever, you have a potentially amazing car on your hands. Best wishes Jamie

Hi, I am afraid you may no longer looking at this site or even have the car in question, but I have a photo that might interest you.https://photos.google.com/search/_tra_/photo/AF1QipPPsIed2PNsiJcHqOXsL9pUrO9YE_X6_sdPslcZ Is it a Amstrong-Whitworth Torpedo? The only difference I can find is that the wheel arches are flat when they ought to be rounded, and the windscreen is different from pictures I have seen, but otherwise it looks pretty similar. I am not expert on cars, particularly veteran (vintage?) ones. I don't have the registration plate, but I can date the picture at 1914, maybe 1915. I also know all about the driver - he is Francis John Childs Ganzoni, MP for Ipswich from 1914-37, and, he claimed, the first MP without war experience to go to the trenches. He served at the front and in Parliament for much of the war, first going there in November 1914. He used the car to campaign in during the 1914 election and celebrated his victory doing a grand tour of the town in it garlanded in flowers. I don't know absolutely whether he drove it to France, but I would think he did - he had to get quickly from France to Westminster for debates and I imagine getting rapidly to the Channel Ports from his base on the Western Front would have needed a car. He served with the British Expeditionary Force, in the 4th Suffolks at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. However, by February 1915 he was in hospital in Boulogne suffering from pneumonia and frostbite. He was promoted to Captain in 1915 and posted to the quartermaster-general's services in York in 1917, returning to the British expeditionary force in 1918 to be made an Aide de Camp of the Personal Staff. He was gassed twice, but was at home with frostbite when many of his relatives died at the Somme. He was not short of funds. His father was a millionaire having made a fortune in sugar broking. He married in the late twenties, was made the First Lord Belstead and had two children - both were unmarried and Jill the eldest died earlier this year. John, the second Lord Belstead died in 2005. So the real question is do you, or did you, have Jack Ganzoni's car? I am not sure how you will find out. Let me know your thoughts. Best wishes Jamie Robertson