MARLBOROUGH-CARLTON

This story is about a near-legendary car that I have known about and searched for, for about 20 years. It was so lost in time that I couldn’t even find a picture of it. I knew of it only as the ‘Marlborough’ and that it was built in New Zealand during the 1920s.

I was researching my book New Zealand Manufactured Cars: A Cottage Industry, and I desperately wanted to feature the Marlborough in the first chapter, as it was almost certainly New Zealand’s first locally produced car. In TVNZ’s video archives, I discovered a 1978 TV programme called Sunday’s World, which featured a car called the ‘Carlton’, also manufactured here in the 1920s. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, it was the key to unlocking the mystery of the Marlborough.

The revelation began last year when I wrote a story on the JC Midge belonging to Graeme Crimp of Blenheim. Looking for a nice spot to take photographs, Graeme suggested we go to the Marlborough Vintage Car Club Museum at Brayshaw Park in Blenheim. The curator offered us a free tour of the closed museum. And lo, there on display was the Marlborough engine, albeit without the car. It turns out that the Marlborough was originally built by John North Birch, who was known then as William Birch. Later moving to Gisborne, he preferred to be called George and then ‘Old Bill’. The