We know roughly when this picture was taken because we know the two youngsters in it. They are brother and sister, at the ages of about 3 and 7, in 1956, in front of their home in Liverpool. What we don’t know exactly is the model of Talbot, but we’re almost sure it’s a 14/45 (otherwise known as a 65), made to the designs of Georges Roesch and bodied by the Darracq Motor Engineering Company Limited at their Fulham factory near London. Only last week we asked the young lady from the picture (still young, of course) what she could remember. She knew little about cylinder dimensions, gearboxes and the like, but knew that it was known in the family as ‘Agnes’ – after its registration letters AGN (we don’t know the numbers, but the internet tells us that this is a London number from 1933 onwards).
We did ask whether, as we have seen in other pictures of these early Roesch Talbots, it had front seats with handrails at the top – for rear-seat passengers to hold on to. “Yes,” was the reply, “just like the local buses.” She also remembered that, as the family arrived back in the cul-de-sac where they lived, father let them get out of the car and stand on the running boards, gripping onto the door pillars for the final few yards to the house.
Their father had very little money at the time, so almost certainly bought the car second-hand after the war for a few pounds, and did his own maintenance. He was a GPO (General Post Office) engineer, installing and looking after Liverpool’s telephones. But he had been a pilot during the war, flying all sorts of planes for the Fleet Air Arm, and thus continued to fly in the Auxiliary Air Force until he finally achieved his ambition to be an Air Traffic Controller, rising to a senior level in the years that followed.
Nevertheless, he always considered this car to be one of his favorites. Not surprising – these small, six-cylinder Talbots were of the highest quality, the forerunners of the hugely successful Talbot 90 and 105 models that had so much racing success at Brooklands and in the TT, the Mille Miglia, Le Mans, the Irish GP and the Alpine Trials.
We apologize for the poor quality of the picture, which comes from a tiny print in the family album – but we hope the story makes up for it.
Words and picture by Peter Moss