Ron Thorp’s life has had more than a few coincidences.
There’s the time he was browsing the Sydney Morning Herald from his Wollongong home in 1974, and saw there was a property for sale, next-door to an airfield in a town called Inverell. An avid pilot, it was ripe for investigating.
Ron flew up, and discovered by chance the air service with the runway next door was also for sale. So, Ron found he had a new home, and a brand-new business which successfully served the regional community for many years and where he still lives today.
Then there was the time he bought a vintage Bentley Mark VI at an auction because it reminded him of the grand car his Uncle Herman owned when Ron was a child.
A car aficionado, and passionate race driver, Ron took the car back to add to his Inverell collection. After investigation, and receiving the chassis record of the car from Rolls Royce in the UK, Ron was astonished to learn it was in fact his uncle’s own Bentley. Not the original black, but with a grey and green paint job, and all the original attributes that caught Ron’s passion years ago.
It was another addition to a stable of British and European automobiles Ron had steadily built since his early days as businessman who plied his trade in cars and parts.
Now Ron is in the process of fully restoring a 1934 Triumph Gloria with his long-time friend, Harry McNaughton, who’s a car collector and handy with engines and bodywork in his own right.
But the Triumph isn’t just any car Ron found paging through the classifieds. They have a history that stretches back over 60 years.
“Being interested in Triumphs, I used to look at the for-sale columns in the Sydney Morning Herald, and when I saw a Triumph, I looked closely at it. So, on this particular occasion, we went up to Sydney to Hunters Hill, and here’s this flash-looking car, standing on the side of the road, looking a bit forlorn,” Ron remembered.
The car’s elderly owner was selling it for £50, and Ron bought it and started the trip back to Wollongong until the car packed it in and needed a tow the rest of the way.
“After that, I worked on it, got it going and had it for a couple of years and had a lot of fun driving it in different events as you do. When you’re young, you drive these things pretty enthusiastically,” he said.
After a couple of years, Ron sold the car to one of his best mates, and as these things do, the car was sold on, and sold on again.
In the meantime, he had his hands full with other cars to drive and race. Over the years he purchased cars that stole his heart, and many were sold along the way.
Some of the most memorable are a so-rare-as-to-be ridiculous 1955 Aston Martin DB3S Ron bought from Australian racing grandfather Tom Sulman, and remarkably, Ron ordered and imported the first AC Shelby Cobra to hit the Australian shores, a sensation in 1964.
But Triumphs hold a special place in Ron’s heart. His first car was a Triumph, and there’s just something about that first car.
“The Triumph being the first car I ever owned always has a significance, and I had some of my early experiences in that, learning to drive, like rolling it over and back onto its wheels again,” Ron said with amusement.
“And leaving myself and my navigator sitting in the middle of the road. Yes, those sorts of experiences, if you survive them, and in a sense, well, you learn,” he chuckled.
“After we started the car club here in Inverell about 45 years ago, I didn’t have an old car in those days. I was busy flying. But I thought, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t mind being in that car club,’ and I wondered what sort of car I should get. So, I was looking in some car magazines and here’s a Triumph advertised.”
“One day when I was flying down around Dubbo I called in and was looking at this Triumph Super 8 sedan, ended up buying it, and bringing it home. Then we used that in the car club events for a number of years. The only one I had had. Great little car. But very underpowered. Twice the thrill at half the speed,” he grinned.
Having some spare parts around is always a benefit when you own old cars, and in the early 1980s, somebody tipped Ron off about a fellow with Triumph parts down in Canberra. When Ron was next in the area, he called in.
“And here on the front lawn of his house was something covered in a tarp. And I lifted up the tarp – it was just a chassis – it wasn’t a full car – and I thought, ‘Oh gee, that looks a bit familiar.’ And I looked closer, and said, ‘Gee, that looks like the Triumph Gloria I used to own.’”
Ron asked the owner where the body was for the car, and the man said he’d bought the chassis as is, but acquired a body from elsewhere, and thought it could fit the car. Ron asked to see the body.
“And in his shed is this black and ivory Triumph Gloria body. And I said to him, ‘That body belongs to that chassis.’
“Somewhere along the line they got separated. Someone’s probably going to make a sports car out of it and thought, ‘Pull the body off and sell it,’ and of course they never did anything about it, and they ended at this chap’s place, and he bought the chassis parts from one person and the body parts from someone else,” Ron said.
They man said he had a plan to restore the car, and Ron shrugged, farewelled the Gloria and headed back to Inverell. But a couple years later, he had a phone call from the Canberra man.
“He said, ‘Ron, I’ve got to move house. Would you be interested in the Gloria?’” Ron remembered.
“Anyway, I’ll never let an opportunity like this pass. So, I drove all the way down, and we put the chassis on the trailer and then we got the body and set the body on it, strapped it down and dragged it home, and the comment when I got home was, ‘Look like you’re taking it to the tip,’”
But he stored it in the back of the airplane hangar until he had the time to dedicate to the restoration project.
“Because I was very busy flying in those days. And 39 years later, we decided to get it out. The time is come to do something about the Gloria, and that’s Harry’s and my project for the last 18 months or so,” Ron said.
There’s a lot to do. Harry drives over from Delungra on a Wednesday, and the two are slowly bringing the Gloria back to life with no pressure on completion.
“Pottering around is about right,” Harry said.
“I only come here one day a week, and usually spend about four hours a day here. Before we started this, I used to help Ron maintain all the others.”
The engine starts, and the raw essentials are in place, but the body has deteriorated over the decades. Along with Harry’s handmade parts, larger pieces will be restored by a local panel beater.
“There’s a lot of rust in the back of this car, and no frame. All wooden frame, and I’ve been measuring things up and going home and spending several hours extra at home making things,” Harry said.
He held up an arched piece, carefully glued, clamped, and planed into shape to sit in a rear wheel well.
Up on blocks, the Gloria looks a little like a maiden in disarray against the stable of well-tended classic and vintage vehicles lined up in Ron’s hangar. Complete with display signs, all the cars are regularly exercised, because Ron believes in driving his collection.
The Gloria will someday be added to that fleet, with Ron at the wheel, perhaps driving as enthusiastically as he did over 60 years ago.
It’s another coincidence to add to the Ron Thorp collection, and his very rich life story.
“It’s a rare coincidence actually,” he said.
“And well, these opportunities come by, you’ve got to grab them.”
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