74 New Zealand Classic Car | themotorhood.com
KITS AND PIECES
Words and photos: Patrick HarlowT
his story is about a near-legendary car that I have
known about and searched for, for about 20 years.
It was so lost in time that I couldn’t even find a
picture of it. I knew of it only as the ‘Marlborough’ and
that it was built in New Zealand during the 1920s.
I was researching my book New Zealand Manufactured
Cars: A Cottage Industry, and I desperately wanted to
feature the Marlborough in the first chapter, as it was
almost certainly New Zealand’s first locally produced
car. In TVNZ’s video archives, I discovered a 1978 TV
programme called Sunday’s World, which featured a car
called the ‘Carlton’, also manufactured here in the 1920s.
Although I didn’t realize it at the time, it was the key to
unlocking the mystery of the Marlborough.
The revelation began last year when I wrote a story on
the JC Midge belonging to Graeme Crimp of Blenheim.
Looking for a nice spot to take photographs, Graeme
suggested we go to the Marlborough Vintage Car Club
Museum at Brayshaw Park in Blenheim. The curatoroffered us a free tour of the closed museum. And lo, there
on display was the Marlborough engine, albeit without
the car. It turns out that the Marlborough was originally
built by John North Birch, who was known then as
William Birch. Later moving to Gisborne, he preferred to
be called George and then ‘Old Bill’. The curator then told
me that the Carlton and the Marlborough were made by
the same person — and that the Carlton still exists and is
owned by the Gisborne Vintage Car Club (VCC).
This opened a new line of enquiry, and finally all the
pieces started to fall together. What follows has been
derived from various sources but substantially from a story
that appeared in Better Business magazine in 1968 and the
help of Rodney Clague of the Gisborne VCC.Ambitious safety-bicycle maker and inventor
John North Birch was born in England in 1867 and grew
up in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. In 1884, after completing
his apprenticeship with a company making steam engines,MARLBOROUGH-
CARLTON
1919 TO 1930:
THE FIRST ALL–NEW ZEALAND MOTOR CAR