PART THREE
Another great British product we would never have expected to see in France was a Humber FV1601A, one-ton, military truck in commercial guise. This 1952 ex-British Army truck was one of a group bought from the Ruddington defence sales and exported to Switzerland. We think that this example was converted into a light breakdown recovery truck after export with a Harvey Frost crane. It worked for a General Motors dealership in Martigny and was still displaying the old four-digit region codes and six-digit telephone numbers.
This had been transported up from Italy in the care of ex-pat trucker Nicky Armstrong, now resident in Aoli in Italy. It appears to be chassis number 43457 which should make the old British Army registration 34 BK 57.
You start to feel your age when trucks that you remember as ‘new and innovative’, appear at shows as examples of ‘veterans’. Here was a pair of Volvos which were now considered eligible. While we could remember their arrival in Europe and had watched the shift of the UK truck market towards these European ‘newbies’, none of us saw the total demise of our own commercial vehicle century rally field.
