Lancia Motor Club

The following post is from General Chat - posted here in case there is a Flavia interest that wouldn't find it otherwise:


Richard,

Thanks for saying nice things about my old pics. The funny thing is that it’s easier for me to dip into the chaos of my old Lancia stuff than it is to find the documents I need to file my tax return for last year!

Just because you reminded me, here are two photos from January 1985 of my Flavia Vignale. One is in the snow outside Tony Amato’s Deptford workshop, having just survived after being transported there after being abandoned in the open for the previous five or more years. The other is of the engine bay, which did indeed look like the remains of a washing machine. It was a daunting start, but the Flavia went on to give me lots of fun.

Colin 

On the subject of Tony Amato,Michael Clarke writes- I think my father knew the Amato brothers from the 1950s.They had a car site between Lewisham and New Cross.You walked in and Tony's stripped 4th series B20 was on a heap of stuff in one corner,and this particular time he had a V12 Miura engine/transaxle stripped down in all the muck!!(Gold Seal at New Cross were the customer)Amazing and fascinating days that I don't suppose will ever be repeated.

I am slow to pick up on this, but I am really pleased to read about Michael Clarke and his memories of older times. I guess it’s quite likely that our paths have crossed at some time, particularly because we both knew Tony Amato.

Tony’s workshop was in Stanley Street, New Cross and his brother ran a more conventional car business in Lewisham, but as far as I know they never worked together. The workshop was in really primitive stables and was totally disorganised. It was amazing that anything got done there, but it usually did and when Tony was motivated it was all done to the highest standards. Sometimes things got put aside and forgotten and this was the case with his own B20, which as Michael recalls lay for about twenty years under piles of stuff at the back. It was this car that I helped Tony sell in about 1990 when it went back to Italy for restoration – see photo below.

Such was Tony’s reputation for sorting out problems with anything Italian or otherwise exotic that he did lots of work for other south London garages including Gold Seal Cars and a dealer on the New Cross Road who specialised in American monsters. Tony will be one of the ‘characters’ to be profiled in the forthcoming book ‘Lancia in Britain’.

Richard has asked me off-forum if the old Stanley Street workshop still exists. I looked it up on Google street-scene and amazingly it does! See photo below taken from Google. It is almost twenty years since Tony died and the building looks like it hasn’t been opened up since then. Other photos below include Tony working on an Alfa outside the garage and of Tony in a customer’s B20.

Colin

Very nostalgic Colin, great to see the guys who kept the whole scene going at a difficult time and when the Lancia range weren't terribly appreciated.


P