AVE ATIQUE VALE - Hail, Brother, Farewell

- the Story of the Vale Special

Ave Atque Vale, the official website of the book on the history of the Vale-Special Sports Car and other Vale Motor Company matters, by David Cox.

"The research  for this book  was an agonising process, that took over 10 years, with long periods of inactivity when nothing new was forthcoming. My starting point was  when I came into possession of the correspondence between former company directors Allan Gaspar, Bill Francis- James, and journalist Brian Woolley.  They had made the first attempts to write a book on the Vale Motor Company in the early 80's, and got as far as writing a 1500 word synopsis, before ill health and death intervened. With the letters came about a dozen photos, some of which were from Gaspar’s collection.

My initial approach was to contact the families of those known to have been at the company, and trawling through Westminster archives, and various libraries,  but the real breakthroughs came from  interviews  with Ian Connell, the ‘works’ supported racing driver in 1935, Guy Griffiths (who bought the defunct company in late 1936), and Pownoll Pellew’s girlfriend of 1931-36, the actress Kay Walsh.  I caught all of these people very late in their lives, and they were happy to recall the colourful goings on at the Vale company.
The Vale Motor Company Logo
Three people should be particularly thanked for their help at different times in the books gestation period – Mike Worthington Williams, who encouraged and prompted me two or three times a year, Tom Pellew, who proof read the book numerous times, and offered many sensible suggestions (some of which I ignored!), and David Nelms who generously gave his time and support in getting the book from manuscript  to publication. He could also be charmingly impatient and blunt , and never spared me an arse kicking  when it was most needed to get the job done!." -  David Cox, the Author.


Copyright © 2006 David Cox

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