|
|
Post by joe on Jun 14, 2014 8:27:50 GMT
Hello all. I've been flicking through the Moon's Motors pages of the latest club magazine on and off ever since it arrived. It's a fantastic little bit of nostalgia for a time that many of us will never have had the chance to see. It's been near enough 40 years since you could walk into a Daf Dealership! Absolutely brilliant pictures. One of the best things in the magazine ever! By chance as I was wasting time I found this the other day on the wonderful Siteje ( www.siteje.com ), a scan from a page of an issue of the company Daf Automagazine March - April 1972. This is part of a longer article on Dafs operations in the UK. But another chance to see Moon's in their heyday.  I've walked past this building loads of times and never even thought about it (I love the original 1930's petrol station on the corner of the building! Probably one of the last of these left in London) The part that was a Daf dealership is a Ladbrookes bookies now, but the doors and the windows are still exactly the same as they were in 1972!  |
|
|
|
Post by joe on Jun 14, 2014 8:42:22 GMT
....which got me thinking as to what happened to all the other Daf Dealers in the UK. I've got plenty of old brochures and many of them have a dealer stamp stuck on them. Which brings me back to these old Company magazines lovingly scanned for us all on Siteje. In September - October 1971 there is a short news item detailing the move of Daf Motors GB Ltd moving their headquarters from Feltham to High Wycombe.  I happened to have a later brochure to hand to get the address from. Lancaster Road, Cressex Industrial Estate, High Wycombe. And lo and behold, it still exists!! Albeit minus the Daf tower.  The building is now split up between and few different companies, I imagine nobody who works there has any clue as to it's previous use. As alluded too by dafdaffer in this topic dafcars.proboards.com/thread/2864/daf-44?page=1&scrollTo=30634 and on a few other topics on here there is at least one original Daf Dealer still going! Which I'm going to have to visit at some point as it's amazing that all these years on there is still at least one original Daf dealership still flying the flag. I've got an old Daf Service Directory somewhere that I shall have to dust off which has a list of all the Daf Garages in Europe in. I shall have to have a look and see what others I can find. Has anyone else got any old photos or memories of Daf Dealerships? According to the previously mentioned article in 1972 there were 196 dealers in the UK! How true that was, and whether they counted all the truck dealers and service outlets is anyone's guess. |
|
|
|
Post by Richard DAF Webmeister on Jun 15, 2014 16:03:49 GMT
Brilliant! I might just "borrow" those...
|
|
|
|
Post by joe on Jun 17, 2014 20:06:44 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by joe on Jun 17, 2014 20:34:17 GMT
I've found it!  I'll pour over it in detail later, needless to say the Garage in Crosby is in it! And I never knew Mansfield had not one but two dealers! It does however give the address of Moon's as 51 Horseferry Road SW1. Did they move? That address is smack bang in the middle of Westminster, within a stones through of the Houses of Parliament. |
|
|
|
Post by Richard DAF Webmeister on Jun 17, 2014 21:01:26 GMT
Stunning. I love the building design from that era. Sadly, not many people share that and the buildings are disappearing.
Pleased and intrigued re the current use as a Ford dealer, but a shame about the office/tower block gone.
I might be "borrowing" these pics too!
Joe, have you ever seen that old Little Chef on the A1 at Markham Moor? It has the same roof arrangement as that DAF/Ford showroom. If I win the lotto, I'd plan to buy it (it has been for sale for a while) and convert it into a museum of sorts. But I'm not going to win the lotto, sadly.
And re Mansfield, I assume one of them was Nicholsons of Langwith? That's where Steve spent much of his youth learning about DAFs from close friends who ran the business back in the day.
|
|
|
|
Post by joe on Jun 18, 2014 19:41:01 GMT
Yep that is one of them. That again is another Daf Garage still standing. I've passed that place loads of times before and never knew!  I will scan the list at the weekend and put it up. The Markham Moor Little Chef is amazing and its listed, but the state it's in at the moment I doubt it will be with us for much longer. Unless it follows the path of most disused Little Chef's on the A1 and becomes a Sex Shop. |
|
|
|
Post by joe on Jun 21, 2014 9:12:32 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by joe on Aug 7, 2014 9:53:33 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by andrejuan on Aug 7, 2014 12:39:26 GMT
Glad to see Law Brothers in there, I drive past it often.
|
|
|
|
Post by mtjm on Aug 7, 2014 15:00:48 GMT
Glad to see Law Brothers in there, I drive past it often. I was thinking the same thing. I lived around the corner from Law Bros for the past year, never knew it was a Daf dealer. |
|
|
|
Post by Patrick on Aug 7, 2014 22:25:23 GMT
I see Martin's Garage in Gravesend - and there is still (albeit empty) a garage along there of the old style service station of the sort that a few DAF ones were. My Grandparents house (all three in the area) was just a stone's throw away. A mystery still is Forge Garage in Seal, Kent. Now I was at Primary School from '73 onwards and both my Grandparents (living in the area then before the Gravesend move and my (relatively younger) Headmaster both used Forge for their DAFs around that time. In the late seventies Forge became a Motorcycle Dealers - well frequented by my Dad when whatever went wrong that week on the Jawa defeated him!  Used to pass a Volvo Garage in Polegate in the early eighties - always convinced myself that that used to be a DAF garage too. Maybe not. Interesting to see too, the lack of Dealers - aside from Penrith, Barrow and Southport for North Lancashire where I am now. Ha! DAF must have had a captive audience on the Isle of Man! The Garage on that site now looks like it's "Of the period" too! goo.gl/maps/i4IrD |
|
|
|
Post by starider on Aug 7, 2014 22:59:38 GMT
Hi,
I still have the same UK Dealer list and it's good to be reminded of my old firm Benstead and Pidcock of Peterborough.I still have photographs of the building, workshop and showroom. The buildings etc. still exist and is still a working garage and showroom. I spoke quite recently to the ex dealer in Bude Cornwall who still has a large quantity of old/new spares but seems reluctant to catalogue them. I did offer to go and sort them for him but he is still "getting back" to me!! Great! starider
|
|
andrew
Likes DAFs
Posts: 1,126
|
Post by andrew on Aug 8, 2014 9:24:04 GMT
Happy memories seeing Yeo Garage of Barnstaple, north Devon again! seller of numerous Dafs to our family! I well remember the owner & chief mechanic, Alf Berry, who was always in overalls whenever I was there-I reckon he must have been buried in them!
Similarly seeing Sherborne Motors of Southgate, north London, where I bought loads of bits when they closed down in the mid 1980's, was a bitter sweet moment, as it later became a Renault dealership, then a car wash..... Sad!
|
|
|
|
Post by joe on Aug 8, 2014 15:45:53 GMT
Hi, I still have the same UK Dealer list and it's good to be reminded of my old firm Benstead and Pidcock of Peterborough.I still have photographs of the building, workshop and showroom. The buildings etc. still exist and is still a working garage and showroom. I spoke quite recently to the ex dealer in Bude Cornwall who still has a large quantity of old/new spares but seems reluctant to catalogue them. I did offer to go and sort them for him but he is still "getting back" to me!! Great! starider Please share the photos with us! We would love to see them! Would the ex-dealer in Bude have worked at the Dealership in Newquay then? I have quite a few old brochures with their stamp on them. I'm glad this has brought back some memories for people anyway! |
|
|
|
Post by joe on Oct 18, 2014 11:32:30 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by Richard DAF Webmeister on Oct 18, 2014 20:20:35 GMT
Wow, what a find!
(More copying just been done)
|
|
andrew
Likes DAFs
Posts: 1,126
|
Post by andrew on Oct 18, 2014 23:40:22 GMT
I LOVE THAT 55 MARATHON IN THE MIDDLE!!!
|
|
|
|
Post by joe on Oct 20, 2014 8:49:49 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by Patrick on Oct 20, 2014 22:16:58 GMT
Check these out, some pictures I've found of Fuller's Garage of Southampton (don't bother looking for it on Google Streetview, it's a block of flats now sadly!)    Oh MY! That is just a shiny metal line up of gorgeousness! You just want to take them all home! |
|
andrew
Likes DAFs
Posts: 1,126
|
Post by andrew on Nov 2, 2014 16:30:37 GMT
Talking of Moons motors, I've just found a HUGE load of "The Autocar" magazines, from 1949 onwards. There are loads of adverts therein, which are beautifully "dated" & one mentions Moon's Motors of SW1, who were Jowett Javelin dealers then... The magazines were my late Father's, who collected every edition from 1949 to 1952; I've a huge amount of reading to do, now that the evenings are drawing in! Lovely!
Incidentally Jowett Javelins were built in Bradford & were considered pretty sporty in their day! I don't know what happened to the company or whether they were taken over by another firm.
|
|
|
|
Post by Richard DAF Webmeister on Nov 2, 2014 18:23:07 GMT
That's interesting re the Jowetts - pre DAF days.
We have some more Moons follow-up comments coming in the next mag!
|
|
|
|
Post by joe on Nov 8, 2014 10:36:19 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by hunter1927 on Jun 11, 2017 0:49:23 GMT
Talking of Moons motors, I've just found a HUGE load of "The Autocar" magazines, from 1949 onwards. There are loads of adverts therein, which are beautifully "dated" & one mentions Moon's Motors of SW1, who were Jowett Javelin dealers then... The magazines were my late Father's, who collected every edition from 1949 to 1952; I've a huge amount of reading to do, now that the evenings are drawing in! Lovely! Incidentally Jowett Javelins were built in Bradford & were considered pretty sporty in their day! I don't know what happened to the company or whether they were taken over by another firm. Double coincidence for me .... I worked at Moons in Gloucester Place NW1 - nowadays a Ladbrokes - in the DAF days selling. Big commission ... £7 per car! But earlier I was at school in Brentwood up 'til 1956 and the mother of one of the boy's called Tee used to arrive in the latest models. I remember a glamorous-for-those-days white Austin Atlantic with a soft-touch vinyl fixed-head roof, but particularly a beautiful red Jowett Jupiter. Such a pretty little car. Only years later did I know that Tee's father was the proprietor of Motor Sport. Hence the fancy cars! www.bing.com/search?q=Jowett+jupiter&FORM=EDGENNThe joys of nostalgia! |
|
|
|
Post by triumph66 on Jun 11, 2017 6:21:06 GMT
What a Fantastic post and threads relating to old dealerships. I originally came from Bexhill on Sea, East Sussex and vaguely recall the DAF garage in Middlesex Road (F. Dodson Ltd). There were a few dealerships along that road. As for the Volvo garage in Polegate, near Eastbourne, that was always a Volvo franchise and I used to drop off my Dad's 740 estate to be serviced and run back in a courtesy 340 car for the day.
I will be back in Sussex in August and I will make the point of taking a photo of the old DAF garage if it's still there.
My 66 was registered in Warwickshire but which Birmingham dealership I don't know as there were 4 listed.
A bygone era that I sadly didn't appreciate at the time, I was 6 when that DAF dealership list was published.....
|
|
