"Speed Six Saloon by Freestone & Webb, chassis SB2762, owned by Joseph Wellesley Colley, Sybil Lupp’s father. His name would imply some link to the Duke of Wellington’s family."

(John McDonald is a photographer and MG historian based in Christchurch. He has sent these images to the NZ Rolls Royce & Bentley Club. Photos taken by an MG enthusiast in the early 1950s.)

"Active During the 1940s
This was a Speed Six, chassis SB2762, with a Freestone & Webb saloon body, first registered in June 1930 to S.B. Peek."

"This Speed Six arrived in NZ in 1935 and was here until 1986, when someone in Melbourne bought it. According to David Berthon there, and the new book on Bentleys in Australia, it went in 2015 to a large collection in Britain of someone anonymous.

I am gathering information on the car from owners 1942 and 1956 but of course I’m short of images. A fascinating story anyway, and I’ll keep you informed. The owner 1950s to 1986 had financial trouble and was trying to hide the car, and keep it in New Zealand. It allegedly had a burned valve which kept it immobile from 1986, but my informant, who drove it to its hiding place, says that it ran beautifully, as always.

Freestone & Webb Weymann saloon with Le Mans camshaft we hear. There was an article in the New Zealand Sports Car Club Bulletin in September 1946 along the lines of “What is our fastest car?” and the Speed Six was held as the most probable; almost as fast as a Suzuki Swift, but, hey, who’s counting?

The car was bought, allegedly through Malcolm Campbell, by Group Captain Keith Caldwell RAF in 1935, at the time of his being awarded the Silver Jubilee Medal by King George V and brought back to his native New Zealand. It was here until 1986, when it went to Australia. Allegedly immobile with a burned valve at that time, but certainly running sweetly when last used in 1972. It seems to have gone to Britain in 2015.

Further information would be welcome. There is a good record of the car in the 1940s and 50s available in New Zealand."

"Russell Browne has come up with this, the best image by far, of SB2762. I am putting together as much information as I can find, from 1939 to 1972, of the car."