Lot details Registration No: BF 4031 Chassis No: 821025 Mot Expiry: Jan 2012
Recent émigrés from truck manufacture, the brothers Joseph, Robert, and Ray Graham entered the world of car production in June 1927 by purchasing the Paige-Detroit Motor Car Company from Harry Jewett.
Initially they sold the existing fare of Paige cars and trucks and the Jewett Light Six. However, they quickly established an all new car range under the name Graham Paige, and the resulting family of five vehicles was proudly unveiled at the 1928 New York Motor Show. The newcomers all featured different wheelbases, the first four of which were powered by six-cylinder engines and the biggest by a straight-eight unit. The entry vehicle, priced at around $870, was dubbed the 610 and featured a 111-inch wheelbase and a 2867cc straight six engine of 52bhp output. It was available as a four-door Saloon or two-door Coupe.
The right-hand drive 610 Saloon on offer is rumoured to have been imported into the UK in June 1930 by a close associate of Al Capone, named Wallace. With prohibition on the wane Stateside, the gangster apparently intended to create a protection racket here in the UK, but was sent packing by the authorities. In his haste he apparently left the car in a Surrey garage where it lay for approximately thirty years. A John Collard of Bracknell evidently acquired the Graham Paige from a private owner in Wokingham during the 1960s and is understood to have treated it to a major restoration between 1965 and 1967.
Following further changes of ownership, `PL 625' (now `BF 4031') passed to a Joyce Moss of Bracknell in June 1985, who kept it for around four years before selling it to Peter Nelson for his `Cars of the Stars' museum in Keswick. Purchased by a member of the garage trade in the summer of 2007, it subsequently passed into private hands later that year where it has remained since. It is finished in Blue and Black with Grey cloth upholstery and the odometer reads just 23,269 - a figure the vendor believes but does not warrant to be correct. Understood to be one of only six or seven 610s remaining worldwide, this fascinating, tidy example comes complete with especially thick history file (including factory letters, brochures, manuals, photographs etc), and an MOT valid into January 2012.
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