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A few weeks ago I received an email on the www.ascort-tsv-1300.com web site. It was from a person who had been reading the page and came across references to BXL-022. He was emailing to say that he had owned the car in 1963/64.

This was very exciting for me as I knew nothing of the car's history in this time period. Part of my motivation for setting up the web page had been to hopefully make contact with past owners, but I never really believed that I would make contact with an owner of my own car from 50 years ago.

John Stone was the past owner and he said that I should use his name in case it prompts someone else's memory. John has also sent a few photos of the car taken when he owned it.

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While John owned the car it was repainted and re-registered DJT-008.

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:thumbup: :roll: :smile:
In my post above I mentioned the fact that BXL-022 had been repaired from a crash that had occurred in 1959.

This is the accident damage that the car had sustained when it hit a tree.

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:omg:

In my restoration efforts I find myself doing repairs to sections which are required as a result of this accident 55 years ago.
This is the sonic hull which has been found in Sydney. The hull is in very good condition, but some repairs are required to the timber transom.

Hopefully the Sonic will be restored in the future.:drool:

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Hope you can put up a photo. Then you need a shot of it being towed behind one of the cars. That would make a lovely photo.




Andy W

Originally Posted by: AW 



Sorry about the delay Andy. For quite some time I just could not log into Pre67VW and then I stopped trying. I am back up and working again now.

Here is a copy of a sonic being towed by an Ascort registered BXL-022 which is the car that I am now restoring. This must have been sometime around 1960-63 after the car was repaired from its crash. It would have been painted light metallic green at the time.

It is interesting to see that the car has a 4 tip muffler fitted. I guess that this gives me permission to use one in my restoration.

I will find a photo of the found Sonic and post that later.

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AW 10 years ago
Hope you can put up a photo. Then you need a shot of it being towed behind one of the cars. That would make a lovely photo.




Andy W

One little bit of the Ascort story that I was not certain about was where the Ascort Sonic boat fitted into the picture. Was it built in parallel, or was it built after the car construction ended?

I was recently provided some more scans of negatives from the Craney family and it shows the workshop with both cars and boats under construction.

Originally Posted by: ascort 



Well today has been just a little exciting on the Ascort front, although it is not car related.

Today I was sent a link to a fairly recent photo of an Ascort sonic. As the photo was on a photo sharing web site I was able to get a name and thanks to Mr Google I was able to locate an email address.

Contact has now been made!

It is now known that as well as 13 cars, at least one Ascort Sonic boat survives. I am yet to get the full details.

:smile:
It always interested me how the Ascort came to be developed. I had heard that Mirek Craney had built a model of the car that he intended to build, but the only photo that I had seen of this was in a Photo of Mr & Mrs Craney sitting on a chair holding the model. Almost no detail could be seen of the model though.

a few weeks back I was sent the following photo of the model. The original scan was in poor shape, so I have had to do a fair amount of photoshop work, but fortunately the car did not need much touching up.

The shape is quite different to the final Ascort shape, as this looks more like a 2 seat coupe, rather than the 2+2 that went into production.

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The Ascort was originally to be called the "Escort" and in some 1958 press articles it was referred to as this.

In 1959 Mirek Craney was given a stand at the 1959 Melbourne Motor Show to display the car, but it was realised that Ford already had a car called the Escort. This was not the popular small sedan of the 1970s, but a small 2 door van based on the Ford 100E Prefect. A name change was needed, so it was decided to change to Ascort.

One of the photos that recently surfaced is of the prototype Ascort with a rear emblem showing "Escort"

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This photo is a scan off an old negative and it required quite a bit of cleaning up. The car looks lovely in the photo, but I think that the colours are all wrong and that the car should actually be dark blue.

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Great picture Mark