Previous Owner

[Tam]

I did a google search of the main owner of my P6 and it turns out he was a pretty interesting character! unfortunately i found most of the info from his obituary bloq.
http://teikohblog.typepad.com/jta/

It turns out he owned RKP from 1978 when he was 20 living in London untill his death on his 50th birthday 06 12 2007 .
I thought he lived in Forfar just down the road from me but turns out he just used his mums address to register the car as he was pretty nomadic. Being born in Malaysia, growing up there and returning to Britian in the late seventies.

Basically university in London couple of jobs then a racing driver in formula ford 79 - 82 , makes sense as i found a letter in car addressed to him at a driving school.

Then began a more nomadic lifestyle leading treks through some pretty wild places before adventure holidays were really established

He's the fella nearest the door!

After 10 years or so of that he moved on to transporting racing cycle teams aroud europe in half a million quid converted buses , Tour de France and such! This he did till his early death at 50 years old in his own house in Malaysia where he had planned to retire.

Also spoke the guy who restored RKP in 2006 just a year before he died who said RKP had a Weslake (??) tuned engine which was bust when he got car to restore and replaced it with a more modest engine hooked to the 5 speed gearbox. Also did all welding underneath and replaced the brakes so fairly comprehensive job. The restorer also also said the prev. owner picked RKP up and proceeded to drive straight to Belgium in the pretty much untested car and returned 2 weeks later (2000 miles) to report no problems

A picture of James Alexander from the early days, may not be of much interest to others but i found myself caught up in his unusual life for the last couple of days!!

Also found this snippet from one of his friends memoirs -

We went for a drink (in his souped up red Rover with racing twin-cams!) at the Serpentine Bar in Hyde Park. We had a couple of very strong German beers, and as it was a week day we decided that despite the birthday celebrations we should go home early. As we were getting up to go, we spotted a bottle of champagne on the bar, already on ice. Looking at each other, and it being our 21st's we thought "what the hell" and went for it.

 

[DaveHerns]

What did he die from?

 

[JVY]

That's quite interesting. A shame the guy died quite young.
I have some DVLA records for previous owners of JVY but have never got around to googling about to see if I can find any history....... maybe one day?

 

[stina]

That.s interesting reading , I'd love to find the history of mine , never seem to get around to it though :?

 

[Tam]

What did he die from?

Heart attack as far as i can gather! He certainly lived life to the full when he could !! As he had a pilots license and a few other things and at one point he and his expedition were attacked by bandits and although beaten and bruised he managed to get everyone to safety !!

Couple of other snippets from his freinds and colleagues -

James Todd Alexander joined the overland expeditioning company Encounter Overland in 1983 to train as an expedition leader/driver. In those days there were more astronauts in the world than professional, commercial expedition leaders. It was a time when the term “Adventure Travel” meant just that, not the luke warm watered down version it has become. Making it through his training he was fairly quickly earning his reputation as a fully fledged expedition leader of some distinction.

James worked all over Africa, South America and Asia, he drove from London to Cape town, from Cairo to Nairobi, around the great game parks, across the deserts, through the jungles, crossed the great rivers. In South America, he drove the entire circle of South America, Rio back to Rio, both north bound and Southbound finding himself at Carnival on more than one occasion. He loved that. In South America his versatility as a driver extended also to driving coaches, he had an excellent safety record.

Asia was a similar story, he drove the strait route across Europe, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and India to Kathmandu, in both trucks, coaches and once in a mini bus, he also did the route down through Europe and Turkey Jordan, Egypt Syria and up to Asia through Iran, Pakistan and India to Kathmandu. If my memory serves me well he also combined Africa with Asia, travelling from Nairobi to Kathmandu, always with his groups, all enjoying themselves immensely. He was a natural leader of men, and women. Though he was always too modest to acknowledge this.

 

[The Rovering Member]

Yes, interesting. What twin-cam engine did he have in the car originally?

 

[Tam]

Yes, interesting. What twin-cam engine did he have in the car originally?

Well i have no real knowledge of engines, all the restorer said was it had a tuned engine and given this was around the time he was a racing driver its anybodys guess. I would think the twincam bit is a red herring though!! probably just a confused memory from an old friend.
Mind you the restorer said he sourced a SD1 engine to replace said knackered engine but i know from the engine number its an earlier high compression engine with SD1 heads :roll: so more confusion !!