AFTER THE CON-ROD BROKE 100 miles north of Kalinin, the Alvis was hitched on to the back of a 10-ton Skoda by a tow-bar, and the nightmare started. For three hours I was immobilised freezing behind the wheel of the Alvis, staring at the Skoda's tailboard and wincing with each shower of stones. We reached Kalinin about 11 p.m., found the repair depot shut and were taken to the Intourist hotel. Our driver argued for half-an-hour before we were given rooms, and he felt free to leave. He had to get to Moscow that night.
In the morning went to the repair station with an Intourist girl and a dictionary. As soon as she told them what was wrong they shook their heads the way mechanics do. It was obviously going to be a long and expensive job. I produced my spare con-rod. It was different if they didn't have to make a con-rod from scratch. We pushed the car over a pit and they started to take the sump off. I hung about anxiously for a bit, trying to make suggestions, pointing out the bolts they'd missed, but they didn't want to know. I waited until I'd seen the broken rod, and they'd discovered the piston was jammed so the cylinder head would have to come off. I'd been there for three hours and the little interpreter girl was tired and hungry. We gave up at 2 p.m., went back to the hotel, and spent the afternoon listening to music on the Intourist radiogram. At 5.30 1 was amazed when the repair station telephoned to say the car was ready. We were told we could get to Moscow that night— 100 miles away.
So the car was collected and the bill of 35s., including oil, paid. I felt we'd done very well, still on schedule and no great expense. The Russian engineers said the bore wasn't scored, but the liners had moved. This turned out to be quite untrue. However, there was a nasty clanking noise - it seemed necessary to take it easy for the rest of the trip.
We did arrive in Moscow that night, and were piloted across Moscow by a friendly taxi-driver. The next few days are memorable mainly for the amount of time spent in ministerial offices. There was no boat for the booking we had made to cross the Black Sea to Istanbul, and Intourist wanted us to change our route and drive out through the Crimea to Rumania or Bulgaria. We wanted to drive straight into Turkey, and eventually compromised on our original plan to go by rail into Iran (Persia).
It was at the Persian Embassy that we wcre met and dealt with in the most civilised way. We were ushered straight into the Consul's office where we were offered tea before our business was discussed. Although we had to fill out one form in triplicate we soon had splendid visas in our passports and were away.
In Moscow we visited a film studio, discovered that champagne and cognac mixed makes-Russian food taste much better, nearly got arrested for black market dealings, arrived at the British Embassy Club just after the beer ran out, were embarrassed by the clattering of a tailpipe falling off as we drove across Red Square, went to the Bolshoi, the Circus, the Puppet Theatre, and the Metro stations, saw Lenin's Rolls-Royce in the museum, and drew crowds everywhere we went. One day I came out of the National Hotel. There were only seven or eight people round the car. Time to move on.
Tbilisi, in Georgia, was the next stop. It is a thousand miles away and the first 900 crosses the great plain of the Ukraine. Driving is dull along dead straight roads. The first day we covered 237 miles, the second, 229. On the third day we left Kharkov for the 300 or so miles to Rostov-on-Don. Some 15 or 20 miles outside the town a militiaman on the inevitable motorcycle combination stops us. For the Crimea. he say this is the wrong road. But for Georgia, we say, this is the right road. No, he says, tourists go to Crimea. For Crimea this is the wrong road. That was the gist of a half-hour conversation which ended with turning back and being escorted some 10 miles to a radio post. Here he called his boss and discovers it is all right to let us go. Cursing, we drive on. It was Saturday, 23 September, and about 9 p.m. when we hit Rostov. The streets were crowded with Saturday night revellers and there isn't much revelling they can do, mainly walk up and down. Soon we were jammed in the thick of the largest crowd of all—a fingering, jeering inquisitive crowd with many drunks. The police had to clear a way for us, and this involved them in several fights. We got out of the crowd to discover bent mirrors, bent badges, the hare unscrewed and the indicators shorted. Later I took the car to a lock-up, and as I drove in a raised block of wood at the entrance caught the silencer and broke the flange of the manifold.
Early next morning, into the garage with Gun-Gum, copper wire and asbestos tape to effect a temporary repair. And another 300 miles drive. By now mechanical defects included the broken exhaust, several oil leaks that added up to a high consumption, a weak rear spring—bowed the wrong way. The brakes and steering needed continual adjustment and tightening, but that was to be expected. After a couple of hours the engine tended to get too hot and lose some power, so a routine was establish to give the engine a ten-minute rest every 1 or 2 hours.
On the fifth day we hoped to reach Tbilisi which meant crossing the Caucasus by a pass rising to 8,300 feet. Another drive across a plain during the morning brought us in early afternoon to Ordjonikhidze. And here at last the dreary Russian landscape began to give way to charming Georgia. Hills break the monotonous horizon, olive groves and vineyards appear. And here, too, a welcome from a lovely, lively Georgian girl at the Intourist office. This was the sort of country I'd come to see.
We set off up the pass at 3.30 p.m. At the Georgian border we had to show our passports and put on the clock an hour. About half-way up the pass, after some two hours driving, and much first and second gear work, we arrived in the village of Kasbek. It was getting dark, the engine was too hot and losing power, they said there was rain and mist further up. They offered to put us up. So we slept half way up the mountainside, out of the reach of Intourist. We cheated next morning with an early start while the air temperature was still below freezing, and were nearly at the top before the engine got too hot. The road was rough, mostly loose gravel with mud in places, and without the crafty banking that Norwegians know about. Some of the corners were so steep that, with the ailing engine of the Alvis, we only just made it in first gear.
Down the other side was simple, although the noise from the exhaust as the engine was used for braking was frightening.
In Tbilisi the manifold was repaired, a new down pipe made and fastened to the silencer now raised six inches to give a proper ground clearance. Some of the oil leaks were dealt with, but they couldn't do the spring. Cost £2. Now we had to leave the car to the tender mercies of the railway.
It was mounted on a flat-car and sent off to the Persian border at a railway junction called Djulfa.
We travelled by luxurious sleeper to Yerevan, the capital of new Armenia, spent a night there and travelled on to Djulfa. The railway runs alongside the River Arak with two barbed-wire barriers separating them. For the river is the border. Armed guards patrol the corridors of the train, and patrol the platform at every stop. At Djulfa we were told to spend the night in the Intourist waiting room, where there are two beds, and we can cross the border in the morning. But in the morning there was no car. We refused to cross the border without the car, although they assured us it would be quite all right. The commandant—who would have been in the Gestapo in any British war film—was angered by our refusal to leave and confined us to the railway station. The first time we went out a soldier with a rifle brought us back, so we didn't try again.
There were two trains every day, one up, one down. There were two dishes in the retaurant, Borsch and shashlik. It took five days for that car to arrive, and all we could do was read and sleep, and vary the menu.
When the car did arrive, its original Smith's clock had gone, so had the mirrors, some of the bulbs, and a miscellaneous collection of bits and pieces, from brief-case and scissors to the old stockings to be used as carburettor filters. It took a day to get across the border, and another day on the Persian side, because it was Sunday, a public holiday. The road away from Djulfa is narrow, potholed and dusty, winding in and out of the foothills. Great care must be taken driving in Persia, because local law is that everyone involved in an accident on the roads is put in prison immediately—and they stay there until proved innocent. We passed the scene of a nasty accident where a bus had run off the road and overturned. Several passengers had been killed ---and the driver had been hanged the same day.
We soon got on to the main road through Asia-—the E5 that runs from Western Europe to Colombo. A customary sight on this road is the convoy of Land-Rovers or coaches on the London to India run, packed with Australians.
Just before we left Persia, in a town called Khoi, one of the front wheels locked solid. I had to strip it down on the spot, and discovered that the hooks for the brake withdrawal springs had broken off. The bits were removed, the wheel replaced, and the car driven to one of many little forges that lined the street. A mechanic welded the bits on, relined the shoes, made new springs, and refitted the lot for 50s.
The drive through Turkey was characterised first by two splendid passes rising to 8,000 feet, and then by a fantastic drive along the Black Sea coast. For 100 miles a very narrow muddy road follows the twisting coastline. There is no straight stretch more than fifty yards long. And it was pouring with rain. Mud clogged the wheels, the car slithered and slipped continually. Hardly ever did I manage to get into top gear through the whole day it took to cover this stretch. For two hours in the morning we were held behind a lorry we had seen slide gently on to the edge of a 50 feet drop into the Black Sea.
The next 100 miles was bad in a different way. They had started constructing the coast road, and there were some fine fast streschs but in between where work was still going on were seas of mud, sometimes a hundred yards wide and three or four hundred yards in length. No road was marked, the whereabouts of potholes were impossible to define. There was no hope of starting again if we once stopped, there was every chance of breaking something if we pressed on. Behaving like a jeep, hanging on to the car to avoid being thrown out, we jolted and crashed through. The springs didn't break, the petrol tanks weren't punctured, only the battery was cracked, and the wings, once again, split.
The drive from the coast to Istanbul via Ankara was comparatively uneventful, the only incident worth reporting being a fire which was put out with our Eolopres fire extinguisher.
In Istanbul (a magnificent city I fell in love with at first sight) some repairs were necessary. The local equivalent of the AA sent mc to a man called Dogan (pronounced Do-an) Karosman who is the agent for CAV, Lucas, Girling and many others. He greeted mc with, "Ah, I wondered if I'd see you." He'd read about the trip in the motoring press.
What's more, he'd once owned an Alvis. He'd spent six years at Loughborough College which accounted for his Midlands accent, which I was surprised and pleased to hear from a Turk in Istanbul. The next five days were spent welding the wings properly, tracing oil leaks, mending the electrics, repairing the batters and its support, having the springs reset with an extra leaf. Dogan did what he could and organised the rest, spending all his time in the five days on the car, and making no charge. Thanks to him we left Istanbul feeling a lot happier about the state of the car. We'd also picked up a spare piston that the AA had sent out in case another con-rod broke. It should have been delivered to Thilisi but the Russians lost it.
Bulgaria was crossed in a day, and Yugoslavia was attacked.
We'd heard about the roads -—and they are bad.. Definitely the worst we'd come across. Maximum speed was 20 mph. and the springs were bottoming all the time. There's a 90 mile stretch that is unavoidable, we did the first 30 on the same day as we crossed Bulgaria and stopped for the night. In the morning, the right rear tyre was flat. I took it off, and discovered that the main spring leaf had broken. It hadn't collapsed because the broken piece had wedged under the housing for the brake operating lever. It took all day to get a new main leaf made and fitted, and it cost £6. Back to Western prices. While I was mending the spring, Fred was out taking photographs, and got arrested. Asked to hand over his film so they could develop it, he managed to expose it while removing it. They were angry, but could do nothing, and eventually released him in time for us to start as night fell. We got through the other 60 miles of that atrocious road during the evening.
Two days later we got to Belgrade and set off for the Hungarian border on our way to Budapest. At the frontier, the Yugoslav officials pointed out that our Hungarian visa was out of date. It must have been misdated at the office. We had to turn hack, and decided to drive up the Autoput to Vienna.
From here on, it was plain sailing. Vienna, Munich, Strasborg, and finally Paris for a couple of days to sort ourselves out. The car was losing more and more oil: the rear main bearing seemed to be the worst leak. The last lap via Le Touquet and Lydd by Silver City was well organised by the AA. They even gave us a route from the airport to the Lamb in Holborn, London, where we were welcomed by Michael Sedgwick, various television cameras and the gentlemen of the press. We had returned under our own steam.
When the engine was taken down, it was seen that the main bearings were in pretty bad shape, that there were two large grooves in the cylinder where the con-rod broke, and there was no pinch-bolt in the replacement con-rod. So much for the speed and efficiency of the Russian engineers.
The Score: We completed 9,506 miles in 77 days at an average petrol consumption of 24 9 m.p.g. The oil consumption does not bear thinking about. In 11 weeks we passed through 11 countries. We made one sea journey, one rail journey and one air journey. There were no accidents, the car was not so much as grazed until the evening of the day we returned to London, when while parked in Holborn, someone demolished a rear wing. The hare had decorated the radiator the whole time, being removed only for the rail journey. It was stolen in St. John's Wood two days after our return.
The journey would not have been possible without the help of Lord Montagu and the Montagu Motor Museum, to whom we are extremely grateful. We would also like to thank the Automobile Association for the special services they rendered; Alvis Limited for their assistance and advice in preparing the car (what other British car manufacturer still in business cares for the cars he made 35 years ago?); Dunlop Limited; Goodlass Wall (makers of Valspar); Postland Engineering, distributors of Koni shock absorbers; the Pneumatic Tent Co.; Lambretta-Trojan; Grundig Limited; Brown Bros.; Tip-Top Vulcanizing Ltd.: Champion Sparking Plugs; Lesney Products; Delaney-Gallay; Interlock Ltd.; and last, but not least, Roy Adnams, who undertook most of the mechanical preparatory work and now has the mess to clean up.
Fred Basnett wrote a book called 'Travels of a Capitalist Lackey' about the trip.
You will be able to read different views of incidents on this and other trips in AmourZ