Vintage Thing No.94 - Hobbsie Special

At first sight, with those fat wire wheels, this special looked rather good but reversing the tendency of a true Vintage Thing, this device did not get better the more you looked at it.

The environmental disposal of this trials special appeared way back on this blog (End of a special) and I thought it had been featured as a Vintage Thing. Earlier today I stumbled across the Hobbsie (or Hobsy) Special again and realised that it had not been immortalised in this way. So here are some more images of it before the end-of-life directive was carried out on it by metal guru Adrian Booth.

In truth, it wasn't such a Vintage Thing and had very little to recommend it. Somebody had built it for trialling and they seem to have started off with some good components, like a Ford 1600 engine and MGB wire wheels, but along the way something happened and the Hobbsie (or Hobsy) Special never amounted to much. It got parked up and deteriorated for many years until 2007 when space considerations finally confirmed that it really had no future.

The Hobbsie's Kent powerplant deserved better. Carburettors got in the way of the structure and vice versa. That box like structure on the left of this shot is the driver's legroom. Anyone who fitted into this car must surely have been of a very distinctive shape and instantly memorable.

Gestalt is when the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Unfortunately, the reverse was true of the Hobbsie/Hobsy and it reverted to those parts, many of which have subsequently started new careers.

However, I'm glad this car got built. It was the realisation of somebody's idea - somebody's dream - even if the execution of the idea was flawed.

It had lights and a registration number

The fact that it had been road registered at some point was a source of shock and awe to both of us. Any documents for this car had disappeared long ago. Its condition, its design and its lack of provenance all counted against it in the end.

As somebody once wrote, "Long live the bloody-mindedness and perversity of the British special builder!"

However, as far as the Hobbsie/Hobsy was concerned, it was better that its constituents were allowed to shine in another form.

Maybe, there were other cars. Lesson might have been learnt. For all its faults, this odd device may have sired more successful progeny. And somewhere out there - like The X Files - lies the story behind this obscure remnant of our motoring heritage.