ENTER THE SILURIAN
Some motor cars simply make a chap stop still, stand and stare. And this is certainly one of them. It squats on the road before you like a defiant survivor from those pre-war days of gloriously flared wings, gleaming grilles and thunderous engines. And when it’s fired up, the smooth persistence of an unmistakable straight-six clearing its throat is oddly evocative. Presence – the Silurian certainly has that. A pre-war sportster, then? Not so. This is something much more modern, much more uncommon, too.
Every car with a presence as loud as this one must have a tale to tell. And so, after a day spent storming through the Herefordshire country aboard it, finally convinced that it wasn’t in fact a tribute to a succession of Doctor Who made-up monsters (look up ‘Silurian’ online), the time had come to ask Chris Spaett, the real monster’s current keeper, how he’d found it. At an auction, remarkably. Over to Chris:
“We had a quiet day and decided to go to a local classic car auction for something to do. We had no real intention of buying anything.” I smiled. Of course not. Auctions are so often that place where a fool and his money are easily parted… and Chris is no fool.
“When we arrived, my wife immediately spotted the car in the entrance and proclaimed how beautiful it was. I agreed,
