TOM & LOIS NEWSOMES' CITROEN 5CV
SUBMITTED BY DIPSTICK PETER MOORE JULY 2020
Would you and your partner drive around Australia in this? You’re kidding. Not for Tom and Lois Newsome of York. Lois pushed Tom into buying a kit of parts that made up this car in about 2000 and then set a time frame for a drive around Oz – in it! Tom said, “Oh, well yes” and got on with it.
In October 2005 they left Perth heading north, Broome, Gibb River Road, Darwin, Cairns, Brisbane, Sydney then thunder struck. Between Sydney and Canberra, they were thumped in the bum by a Merc. The little car left the road, rolled many times, losing its occupants and load. Very broken rear quarters, bent guards all around, no hood, windscreen crushed and a couple of chipped corners on a pipe organ (another story).
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A local club jumped in and started repairing the damage and were joined by Lois and Tom when Canberra hospital released them after 3 weeks. 3 more weeks of work and then they drove it back to Perth to complete the circuit. After months of showing off at shows, Barbagallo’s showroom and others the little guy was returned to York for a little hibernation and dust gathering. I was introduced to it last week by the extremely cheerful owners who are now planning a 20th anniversary of the first run by a second circumnavigation in 2025. Brave – very brave. 4 cylinder. 856cc, 11bhp, 3 speed gearbox, foot brake to the transmission shaft and hand brake to the back wheel (no front brakes). Maybe 75-80kph with a tail wind but don’t rely on the brakes in a hurry. You do get a horn, ammeter and combined light switch/ignition switch (my knee knows it intimately) and it also had the optional windscreen wiper (one blade only) and the motor cooling fan (not considered essential in Europe but nice elsewhere when the outside temp rose).
I was offered a run around York in it and when we finally got it going, I managed to stall it with my knee – hit the ignition on/off switch as I tried to enter the passenger’s seat and by then it was a little too warm to easily start again. My pile of Citroen 5CV parts is somewhat worse off than theirs and might take a while long to reach the same point but theirs had a few modern innovations like the industrial dunny door latch marked Vacant / Engaged to replace the only door latch on the car.
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Tom is an avowed Austin 7 man and the 5CV is a substitute for now but his enthusiasm for it is huge and he has no thoughts of it leaving his care. However, if you must get excited, he has a complete Lightburn Zeta for sale and this would have enough power to pull the socks off a lizard, if the lizard was drunk on mulberry juice and asleep. But a major relic of Australia’s motoring past anyway. (Those who don’t know it have just googled one and have started giggling and yes, Joyce, the beige one in the Google search images is Tom’s – it could be yours for about $7K!).
The pipe organ – Tom makes them under the name Castlewood Organs. If these get you excited, get in touch with him. They come as a precision kit of parts and will produce the very original sound of a true hand ground pipe organ or Busker’s organ as he refers to them. The unit that was tumbled in the prang above was his prototype and he now uses it as his demo model, just a few scratches on a couple of corners attest to the inherent strength of the assembly (Malcolm, I can see you getting very agitated and disturbed by the raw musical qualities of these machines and wanting to know more, so bite the bullet, lad and step forth!).