Welcome to the home of Jowett cars in Australia
Jowetts in The Eagle Comic July 1951
The Eagle was a British children's comic which was published between 1950 and 1969. It was a sort of deluxe comic which featured a front cover in colour. The Eagle’s center page always opened out with a ‘feat of engineering’, display and information. Below is one such, featuring a pair of Jowett Jupiters racing and how they were timed over a lap of the circuit. In this case it would have been at Le Mans, with No. 36 taking part. Other topics covered in various editions were the Firth of Forth railway bridge, Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth, the Bristol Brabazon aeroplane and the de Haviland Comet jet airliner. The other pages that were a must for readers was the ongoing story about Dan Dare, Pilot of the future, and his outer space travels.
Ladies in Black behind the scenes
Jowetts on Screen
My work colleague sent me a note calling for historic cars built between 1940 and 1961 to appear in a television miniseries being filmed in Adelaide. I have had some of the Jowetts listed with an agency but have never had an actual request. However, I thought that this sounded like a good local opportunity so I made contact.
The filming company wanted to know details of the car so I set about providing a two page summary of the cars that were available or close to being available with some work. I received a response that the cars were wanted but no clarity on which ones.
Some considerable anxiety and stress followed once I realised that I had cars with modern radial tyres fitted, wrong colour wheels, binding wheel cylinders, a seat letting go and in one case, almost no compression in No. 1 cylinder.
Once over the panic attack, I set about ordering some tyres and inner tubes and getting tyres, wheels and brakes sorted out.
A couple of days before the first filming shoot it was requested that I bring the green Jupiter (169) and Suzie the Bradford. Suzie required little more than a battery and two rear tyres on newly painted rims and removal of oversized modern reflectors. However, Jupiter 169 has not been on the road for about 5 years. After changing all the fluids and replacing the top radiator hose it was actually very good. To ensure that we did not arrive late, we took Suzie down to Adelaide the day before, and then Megan and I took the Jupiter down in the morning, picked up Suzie and made our way to the East end of Adelaide.
Once at the East end, we magically transported to Sydney 1961 as New South Wales Film plates were fitted to the cars with double sided tape. After one minute, we realised the need to start looking for wire, nuts and bolts to fit the plates so they would stay put.
We then had to hurry up and wait and watch the filming which was really interesting, with the modern traffic and sounds contaminating 1961. We found access to the coffee and eventually the Holden FB and EK owners alerted us to a late lunch being served in the parklands. When we headed back, there was a hurried call for the Bradford and Jupiter to line up with the other cars along East Terrace.
The crews seemed quite pleased that the cars were in an original condition. After one scene, they had to be moved and then some hours later we were released and drove the Bradford and Jupiter back to Forreston in the dark (always fun in a 6V Bradford).
A week later we got called for the second filming at the South Australian Film Studios in Glenside. This time they wanted Noddy (Jupiter 451) and the metallic green javelin Bubble Bubble (PE111). I had offered the FB Holden thinking it would be ideal but other people had Holdens and the Jowetts were different.
Noddy the Jupiter still had radial snow tyres fitted so I needed to sort out some skinny 550 x 16" cross ply tyres and clean out the front wheel cylinders. PE111 had just been on a trip to Casterton so nothing much was required. My friend Deal and I drove both cars down in the morning but the traffic was pretty terrible and we arrived half an late. All the other historics were parked in the rear carpark but we were directed to park our cars around the set, before catching up with the film crew and learning the rules of when to be quite and how to keep out of the way.
We managed to get some late breakfast and came out to see Noddy being called up to appear in front of a green screen. At that point I relised why Bubble Bubble missed out as she is a green screen and would have been invisible.
The Ladies in Black miniseries was screened on ABC TV recently and you can catch a glimpse of the green Jowett in Episode 2.
The Morris Isis was rescued and hopefully will be restored, or at least parts salvaged.
Join our club today
Join our club today ! We will get you fitted for a Jowett, which you will find very affordable and fully supported by the club with parts and technical advice.
If you have kids, joining a car club is a great way to get them away from the electronic stuff.
The club has chapters in every state and holds regular meetings.
