Ellis, who had an abiding interest in cars, in particular, veteran and vintage cars, was also an enthusiast of early Vauxhalls. His automotive interests and expertise covered a ‘broad church’ as reflected by his appointment by Chrysler Australia, at the age of 28 years, to the position of Motor Racing Manager.5
Given his commitment to learn all that he could about his Prince Henry Vauxhall parts, Ellis made contact with Nic Portway, an acclaimed automotive historian of British veteran and vintage Vauxhall cars. At the time Ellis made his first contact with Portway, the latter was preparing information for his first book “Vauxhall 30-98: The Finest of Sporting Cars” (published in 1995). It is evident that Ellis communicated with Portway with regard to information in this book.6
At the turn of the century, given that he had “… always believed the story of the early Vauxhalls had never properly been written up and published …”. 7 Portway was starting to gather information for his next two books, the highly celebrated ‘VAUXHALL CARS 1903-1918 BOOK 1 BUILDING the POWER‘ and ‘VAUXHALL CARS 1903-1918 BOOK 2 CLAIMING the REWARDS‘ (published in 2006).8
These three books are praised with reviews by many, and in relation to the books published in 2006, Bill Body – Motor Sport magazine (long time editor) wrote “… picture books with their wealth of wonderful illustrations, the accompanying text covers the history of Vauxhall in typical informative, interesting detail … I have been reviewing books for longer than I care to remember and have never been more impressed or delighted than I am with Portway’s scholarly and wonderfully well-presented research, which is backed up by a great many fine pictures of production and racing cars, plus advertising material over the years…”.9
There is no doubt that Portway is regarded as the ultimate source of information about the early history of Vauxhall cars and his books, published in 2006, were important sources of information for Ellis.
An indication of the nature of the contact between Portway and Ellis is reflected in the “Acknowledgements” of these two books, where Portway has thanked Ellis (and three other Australians) for their help “… photographs and information…”10. It is believed that from the mid to late 1980’s that Ellis had considerable contact with Portway, albeit it is indicated in a letter from him to Ellis in early January 2001, that there was a gap in their communications between 1995 to the end of 2000. Nevertheless, they enjoyed a collegial relationship given their mutual interest in early Vauxhalls. Portway visited Ellis twice (in 1995 and 2001)11 in Adelaide (South Australia, Australia). He was, therefore, familiar with the Prince Henry Vauxhall parts that Ellis had brought home in 1982. While there are records of regular communications between Portway and Ellis between 2001 to 2003, records of contact prior to and after that have largely been lost.
As the following email communications between Portway and Ellis demonstrate, they spent a lot of time interpreting technical drawings, photos, magazine articles, factory records and information that was shared by others who had a close association with, and interest in these vehicles.
Notwithstanding the challenges related to the paucity of factory information,12 it is evident that the research undertaken by Portway and Ellis was invaluable with regard to building knowledge about the Vauxhall Motors competition engine C10.2. The following excerpts from emails (mostly) between Portway and Ellis demonstrate the nature of the exchange of information that contributed to the development of a credible history of the engine, and confidence in claiming that Ellis did in fact have the “mortal remains”13of engine C10.2.
It is important to note (as often pointed out by Portway) that at this early time in the Vauxhall Motors vehicle competition activity, it was common factory practice to make changes to competition engines without noting what they were, with the end result that there is no ‘blueprint’ of what an original competition C10 engine looked like.14 That being the case, it is inevitable that, given the extensive and multiple changes to the original engine C10.2.,it would bear little resemblance to the engine finally placed in the chassis A11-517 in 1912. However, the original sporting camshaft stamped C10.2. along with some other original parts, were amongst the parts that Ellis bought in 1981.15