Shropshire Magazine

Brian Yates at the wheel of his 1911 Minerva.

A Shropshire motoring enthusiast can regularly be seen on the county’s roads at the wheel of his very own time machine. Brian Yates tells Minnie’s fascinating tale to The Shropshire Magazine

Meet Minnie. She may be approaching her 100th birthday but there’s still life in the old girl. Though way past her heyday, she has kept classy looks and her charms have even landed her film and television roles.

Minnie is a Minerva, a glamorous reminder of the pioneering days of the motor car.

Her 45 mph top speed belongs to a more leisurely, genteel age of road travel. Her 16 horsepower engine compares to 150 hp of, say, a Ford Mondeo. It means she can’t compete with the 90mph bumper-to-bumper motorway madness of today, but why would she want to?

Not that Minnie is kept wrapped in cotton wool. Her enthusiastic owner Brian Yates still takes her out for the odd pootle – yes, that’s definitely the word, ‘pootle’ – and she is a real head-turner.

If riding in the front is too draughty (or socially infra dig), there’s a comfortable cabin to repair to . . .

Brian treated me to a drive from his rural home to the nearest town, Much Wenlock. It was four miles of bends and climbs along the main A458 Bridgnorth to Shrewsbury road. On the outward journey I sat alongside Brian in the front with an elevated, if draughty, vantage point. On the return I ‘lorded’ it in the back, sunk into the plush Bedford cord upholstery and chauffeured like aristocracy.

It is fair to say that the occupants of every vehicle that passed us on the journey had a good gawp, which is quite understandable. Turning a corner to see a 1911 car must be a trifle disorientating, akin to unexpectedly wandering into a time warp.

It’s fun to be the centre of attention. Such is the general affection for nostalgia that, though we caused tailbacks, there appeared to be little impatience and most who overtook us seemed to be nothing other than charmed by our presence.

We were a talking point at the fuel station in Much Wenlock, where several motorists filling their thoroughly modern Fords, Vauxhalls and Renaults stopped to chat and smile. 

Brian filled Minne’s tank with unleaded – no problem there, since she dates from before the time that lead began to be added to petrol in the 1920s. In fact, he can expect the 2.2-litre engine to give him around 20 miles for every gallon of fuel.

It takes a fair amount of skill and confidence to crank up and manoeuvre a seven-foot high, 27-cwt jalopy like Minnie about our modern roads. For a start, the absence of synchromesh requires the almost lost art of double de-clutching, which needs considerable pedal skill to avoid ‘crashing’ the four-speed gearbox. To change gear you depress the clutch, move into neutral, release the clutch, match the engine speed, depress the clutch again and engage the next gear.

Accomplished

Brian, though, is an accomplished driver, a member of the Institute of Advanced Motorists, and an observer for its local branch.

“I drive about 40,000 miles a year in the course of my business and I see an awful lot of bad driving,” he says. “In most cases it’s just a lack of appreciation of modern hazards and the techniques for avoiding them. Too many drivers seem to view having a licence and being able to drive on the roads as a right rather than a privilege. I would encourage every driver to enrol for the IAM Skill for Life programme which provides individual coaching to prepare to pass the advanced driving test. There are many advantages. You not only improve as a driver but qualify for all kinds of discounts on insurance and so on, so motoring becomes cheaper.”

If Brian is an evangelist for advanced motoring, he is no less enthusiastic when he talks lovingly about Minnie.

She has always been in his family, bought originally by his great-uncle, Mr Harry Paul, who ran a business in Ipswich with his brother Frank. Price new was £595 (equivalent today to nearly £50,000) – a fair fortune when you consider World World One was still three years away.

He used the car for around 15 years, though never drove it himself, employing a chauffeur called Sidney Hardisty who, when it came to speed, “apparently wasn’t the sort to hang around”, says Brian.

However, Mr Paul’s regular use of Minnie came to an abrupt end.

“I’m not sure whether this story is apocryphal but it’s certainly been passed down the family,” says Brian. 

“He went to play golf one day and when he had finished his round Sidney went to fetch the car. When he drove it to the front of the club someone is supposed to have said ‘Mr Paul, your taxi has arrived’. Apparently he was so angry that his car had been called a taxi that he never used it again.”

He bought another Minerva and put Minnie up on blocks in the stables of his house near Ipswich where she remained for the next 30 years. In 1956 the car came into the possession of Brian’s father and uncle.

“When my uncle died I inherited his share and my father has now passed the rest on to me. He is 92 and no longer drives although, in fact, he only gave up two years ago.”

Brian’s love affair with Minnie started as a boy when he heard tales about her on visits to his great-aunt. Many of Minnie’s original journeys were catalogued by her in what Brian describes modestly – and rather inaccurately, I feel – as “the world’s most boring diary”.

Authenticity

In the past 25 years Minnie’s vintage status has landed her a few ‘acting’ roles in period dramas. Features like her wheels, with their split cast-iron rims, oak spokes and pneumatic tyres, and her acetylene headlamps with paraffin sidelamps and tail lamp, add an on-screen authenticity. 

Actress Tara Fitzgerald during filming.

She featured in the 1995 film The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill And Came Down A Mountain, starring Hugh Grant and Tara Fitzgerald and shot, largely, at Llanrhaeadr, near Oswestry.

On television, she was used in the 1983 BBC drama The Weather in the Streets with Joanna Lumley and Michael York, which was filmed at Mawley Hall, Cleobury Mortimer, and The Monocled Mutineer, starring Paul McGann, in 1986, which was filmed by the BBC partly in Staffordshire.

“In fact, I played the chauffeur in The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill And Came Down A Mountain, so I got to drive my own car in the film, which was very enjoyable,” recalls Brian, whose wife Sarah and children, Caroline and Alastair, also sampled the atmosphere on location.

Brian at the wheel of Minnie during filming of The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill . . .

“It’s a real experience and you get to meet some interesting people. On The Weather In The Streets I met Joanna Lumley and she was a charming person.”

Minnie will be 100 in a couple of years and Brian is planning a party to celebrate. Her longer-term future is as yet undecided. Caroline, now 24, and Alastair, 22, have their own busy lives and, though both have driven Minnie in the past, they’ve not yet taken her on the road.

At the moment, though, she couldn’t be better cared for. Garaged for the winter, Brian will un-mothball her this spring, lovingly check her over and doubtless take her out for a spin to the delight and fascination of all who see her.