1912Staver

I expect the " Flying " is just Standards sales Dept.'s attempt to link their somewhat sporting car with the glamour that aircraft had in the 1930's in the U.K. Anything aircraft or flying lifestyle related in this period was extremely fashionable.

With transmissions it's as much about metallurgy as sheer size. How many post war { I know you shudder at the word Ed } British transmissions have I rebuilt over the decades ? A lot. These days now that O.E.M. parts have dried up the only real long term fix is to swap in a Japanese 5 speed to your MG, TR, TVR etc. The 5 speed aspect is just a bonus, lighter and simpler than the usual British overdrive. The big attraction is they are really no bigger or heavier than the British 4 speed, but in comparison are absolutely bulletproof. Greatly improved metallurgy is to thank. Too bad the needed Toyota W58 and similar gearboxes are becoming quite rare and pricy as most Japanese cars went FWD years ago. Just Z's and Miata's left and prices are going up on those as well. Pre war metallurgy developed very slowly . esp during the depression when R&D money was very tight. The only easy solution to an under engineered part was to make things bigger. Wartime , post war cold war plus the space race brought metallurgy into the spotlight and rapid advance was made in the state of the art. Road vehicles eventually benefitted from the advances.

I think your math is pretty close AJ. Great cars , but way out of my league. Years ago I worked on Jags a fair bit. I liked them and for a time thought I might take the plunge if the right one came along. When I was a school boy in the late 1960's / early 1970's there were several in my general area in various stages of decay , some still being driven, but even more lurking in garages and car ports. At that point they were going very cheap. But 10 years later I was a young British car mechanic. Then I started seeing the sort of repair / restoration bills our customers were paying. I decided I was better off staying with MG's and similar.

I am curious why this one is in the " great " category ? Was this their top of the line tail lamp in this time frame ? I have a couple of Solar tail lamps ,of the same approx. age set aside for my 1912 Staver Chicago project. { Staver badged Solar head lamps and side lights } . The Solar lamps I have are all packed up and stored away at the moment so I can't pull them out and compare to your lamp. My headlights and side lights are partially painted over nickel plate bodies similar to this one . But I can't remember if my tail lights are nickel plate or plain brass.

I would take a good but disassembled car over a rough but assembled car any day. Particularly when talking about 1950's British sports cars. Any thing as rust free as this Jag is in my mind worth a serious premium over a rusty car. { and people restore lots of rusty Jag's } Spent way too much of my younger years re creating rusty Mustangs and British cars. They always turned out good in the end, but very labor intensive and painstaking to get all the fit and alignment of the body structure correct. Also, this one is far from fully dis- assembled. If you were going to do a frame up the dis-assembly is barely started. I would just Very fine steel wool the remaining red off , polish up what is left of the factory paint. Stick it back together after a mechanical freshening and drive it. Someone with very deep pockets could to a frame up on it 20 years from now once I was finished using it.

I don't usually get very interested in the one and two Cyl. cars. But the F/G Buicks do seem like very good tour cars. The REO in question also looks like a decent car, just not quite up to the standard set by these Buicks. But still better than average in this class.

At least my wife is somewhat tolerant. When we moved last year { I finished up just before Christmas 2023 }, it became apparent the new place was short on garage / storage space. But there is a reasonably big paved parking area at the front of the house. Two good project cars just could not be squeezed in to the garage, 1968 TR 250 and 1974 TVR 2500. So from about last November when I moved them from storage at my old place till now they have been sitting under plastic in front of the house. I don't have the $ or time to build a storage building this year . $ especially . So as soon as possible I am going to get a few 20 Ft shipping containers set up in my back field. I just can't let reasonably valuable cars sit out under plastic for another British Columbia , wet winter. Containers are not ideal either, but until my bank account re- charges and a basic building is built they are going to have to do. I am also looking into a small 4 post hoist . The celling is reasonably high in the new places smallish garage. If I can find a reasonably small one { footprint } I could put the MGA that is in the garage on the hoist and park the TVR under it. My wife's Mustang takes up most of the other side. Unfortunately there is a overhead storage area taking up the extra headroom over the Mustang so I would not be able to put a second 4 post in and store the 1968 Triumph over the Mustang without a lot of work to demo the storage area. Too many cars . way too little roof area.

Much better ! Thanks for the clarification.

Agreed Mat. But what about my example of a pre 1972 New York State car ? Or one from one of the other States which don't issue Titles for cars older than a certain year. Has to be thousands of collector cars in that situation. Just pretend cars from those States don't exist ? I am not asking this question from a vintage car dealers point of view, just the average guy buying a vintage car. You are in a position to be choosey , you can I presume ship a car from anywhere as a legit business expense, the rest of us pay for things like that straight out of our pockets. So it only makes sense to deal with cars that a profit can be made on.

From what I have seen here on other Title related posts there is also the question of what State is involved. And I suppose even the State of the buyer if not the same as the seller. Mat's approach makes perfect sense for someone like himself . A vintage car dealer. It makes no business sense at all to get involved with a car that might take months or years or possibly even never to get to the point where it can be sold through his business. I am not sure where he would stand on something like a desirable 1930's car from a place like New York State , because as I have been told by several sources New York State does not issue Titles for cars older than 1972. And I believe there are still one or two States that don't issue Titles at all. Cars from those States would be totally off limits as defined by the " No Title, no buy " rule ? Like I said above there has to be perfectly legitimate very early cars, in very long term storage that have simply never been issued a Title. Stored before Titles existed and missed out on the Title process when the practice of a particular State changed. I expect as States one by one started using titles the cars then currently on the road were then issued Titles. But I rather doubt anyone would have gone through the trouble of getting a Title for the old curved dash Olds sitting in a shed since 1917 on someone's farm circa 1940 or whenever the particular State first introduced Titles. Feel free to flame me to your hearts content. I am just a ignorant Canadian early car fan who for decades have been trying to get my head around the twisted and extraordinarily inconsistent topic of the United States vehicle Title system . Even more so when vintage cars are involved.

It does look like a decent example. These Reo's are pretty desirable. One thing to keep in mind is that as far as I know { but please correct me if I am wrong } , no 1908 vehicle was issued a Title when new regardless of State. As far as I know vehicle titles just were not a thing in 1908, again please correct me if I am wrong. Over the years , State by State , most States went to a Title system. But if this Reo was last used when it was say a 8 - 10 year old car and stuffed away in a shed , then pulled out by a collector in the 1950's - 1960's and renovated, but never road driven, at what point might it have been Titled ? Perhaps never ? So when dealing with something as old as a 1908 vehicle there is a distinct possibility that you are not looking at a vehicle with a lost Title. But rather a vehicle that has never had a Title period. Surly there is a way to bring cars like this into the modern age and get it it's first Title .

Hi Ed, I completely agree regarding the high H.P. brass cars. Relatively few in number. Perhaps less than 1000 cars worldwide ? There is always going to be enough deep pocket buyers to keep prices up for our lifetime. 45 H.P and down , still great cars . But some of us average means guys might get a chance to own them yet. Please don't say pre 1925 project and crusher in the same sentence. It makes a couple of my projects nervous.

Hi Mark, Have you seen the prices just North of you here in B.C. ? I am 1/2 hour or so North of Bellingham. Prices are truly insane. Even in Washington State I could have bought a place way better than what I just spent on the new place. No real option on this side of the border unless you feel like taking your chances in wildfire country.

I am reinventing my finances backwards. My mortgage was paid off , and I was steadily building up a shop construction fund. More or less ready to break ground. But the house was a true disaster, every problem possible. So with more than a bit of concern for the money that would be involved { I live in a part of the world that set the example of crazy house prices for Australia to follow } wife and I sold the old dump to a developer just over a year ago. The new house is quite a bit better than the old, and the property is also larger. A few acres farm zoned that we don't farm, and a really big , deep creek gully taking up quite a bit of the square footage. The whole place is anywhere from somewhat sloped to very sloped, so I doubt it could even be farmed. But the zoning kept the price somewhat affordable . You can't subdivide farmland around here unless it is a very big parcel and even then say a 60 acre plot into two 30 acre places. It just means we pay property taxes at the residential rate instead of the much lower farm status rate. But no decent shop and now the shop fund is spent on the new place with a not huge but still not tiny mortgage to keep me poor for quite some time to come. At least my wife really likes living in the new place. Shop and storage will be make do for the foreseeable future.

That's the Buick ? If so it's really looking good ! Modern race cars on paved tracks usually feature negative camber. But a lot faster , on wider , grippier tires and road surface.