Obituary: Sir Len Southward

By PHOEBE FALCONER

Vintage car collector and speedboat racer. Died aged 98.

During a trip to Britain in 1956, Len Southward and his wife, Vera, watched the finish of a veteran car run in Birmingham. On their return to New Zealand, he bought his first vintage car, a Model T Ford, for which he paid £40. The collection had begun.

Sir Leonard Bingley Southward died on February 19, aged 98. His funeral was held on Tuesday in the theatre at the Southward Car Museum, close to State Highway 1 near Paraparaumu on the Kapiti Coast. The Model T, still in the condition in which it was bought, has pride of place in one of the largest privately owned collections of veteran and vintage cars in the Southern Hemisphere.

Sir Len had been associated with the motor industry since 1919, when he started his first job as a messenger boy with a firm of motor importers in Wellington. He branched out on his own, repairing motorcycles, and by 1935 Southward Motors in Kent Terrace was specialising in repairs to the then very popular Austin Seven.

Parts became difficult to get after the introduction of import controls in the late 1930s, so Southwards began manufacturing their own. Steel tubing was also hard to obtain, so they made that too, having first made their own tube welding gear.

After the war, Sir Len took up speedboat racing in the Redhead, an 8m boat with an Allison V12 motor. He won the Masport Cup in the 1948 New Zealand open speedboat championship, and - apart from one year - held the title until 1958.

In 1953 Sir Len became the first person in Australasia to exceed 100mph (161 km/h) on water. He set another record at Pt England in Auckland in 1956 by reaching 176.8 km/h.

In 1962 the Southwards took part in the London-to-Brighton rally, driving a 1904 red and gold Wolseley. "That's the car you have to drive with your legs crossed - it has the clutch on the right-hand side".

By the 1970s the car collection had outgrown the spare room at Southwards factory. Land was rented at Paraparaumu and the Southward Museum Trust opened on December 22, 1979.

One of the most impressive cars in the collection is a 1950 Cadillac Fleetwood, which had belonged to American gangster Mickey Cohen. Cohen had had the car bullet-proofed, and a bomb-proof floor installed. The car weighs four tonnes, has 40mm glass in the windows - and is scarred by bullets.

The Southward Museum Trust will continue to run the museum and theatre.

Sir Len's work in the motor industry was officially recognised when he received his knighthood from the Queen during her visit to New Zealand in 1986.

Sir Len is survived by his wife, Vera, sons Roy and John, five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.