This motor was photographed a few days ago as it currently sits on a yard in Wigan, waiting to be shotblasted and re-sprayed prior to being fitted out as a drilling rig.
The motor is owned by Philip Whitter, founder and owner of J.P.Whitter., water well engineers.
I know nothing of its history and I’m just guessing that it would have been equipped with a mixer drum in its former life in NZ, but how it came to end up thousands of miles away in Wigan of all places, I have no idea, although a photograph of this self-same truck , fleet number 90, already exists somewhere floating around on the web, copyright of which being owned by Chris Globe.
Although the truck would appear to have operated out of a plant at Timaru , the thing that caught my interest is the address of what I take to be the head offices of Allied Concrete, several hundreds of miles away from Timaru in Invercargill .
Invercargill being the home and final resting place of Burt Munro , the self taught engineer who spent forty odd years of his life developing a 1920 Indian Scout motorcycle before shipping it out to Bonneville and taking the world land speed record for its class…this at the tender age of 68 years.
I believe his record remains unbroken to this day.
His exploits were documented in the film ’ The World’s Fastest Indian ’ , with Anthony Hopkins playing the part of Burt.
As Barry Waddy would probably say…just a useless bit of info.
Le Philistine.
