Tim Chadwick meets a former truck driver ¨and jewellery shop owner who collects chainsaws, and travels around in a classic CA Bedford

When I was a boy, CA Bedford vans were everywhere. Plumbers, electricians, milkmen, delivery drivers — they all motored around town during summer months in CA vans with the sliding doors wide open, and with grey drill shorts or overcoats flapping in the breeze. You could see the driver working the gearshift or using the pedals. They would lean out and wave at people, or gesticulate and call out. This was the closest you could get in the ’60s to open air motoring if you weren’t one of the few who owned a convertible sports car.

It’s not surprising that the CA Bedford was so common as they were one of the most successful vans of all time, lasting in production for 17 years with 370,000 produced.

Ahead of their time

The first CA Bedfords appeared in the early ’50s, and were ahead of their time as semi-forward control units compared with vans which had remained based on pre-war designs.

Early CA vans had a split front windscreen and a low wide-grin style of grille. Later, during the ’60s, the MkII appeared; recognisable by its simplified grate grille and wide, single pane front windscreen. Powered by the Vauxhall Victor in-line four-cylinder engine of 1595cc, the MkII CA Bedford remained in production until 1968.

I hadn’t seen a roadworthy CA Bedford, let alone a good one, for several years until one day a red blur whizzed by in Taranaki, the door wide open and an elderly gent leaning over the wheel going about his business like a tradesman in a time warp!

It turned out that this was one of the last CA Bedfords sold in New Zealand and is now owned and operated by Noel Petrie, a former truck driver, watchmaker, jewellery shop owner and Rhododendron Society president.

What’s more, this interesting fellow also collects old Canadian Pioneer chainsaws. He has the whole set of Pioneer models produced, and regularly gets out in his CA Bedford to carve up macrocarpa for firewood, loading the timber into the trusty CA.

Three miles on the clock

Bedfords have always been a part of Noel’s life. Before retraining as a watchmaker, the younger Noel drove Bedford trucks — along with De Soto and Mercedes models — for Bill Sangster and Len Angus, two pioneering Taranaki trucking company owners. TK, S and OLB model Bedfords were Noel’s usual trucking mounts, but when it came to private day-to-day jobs Noel had his own MkI split-screen CA van. In 1968, just before the CA vans were due to be replaced by a new model, Noel spied a bright red MkII at Johnson Motors in Stratford with only 4.8km (three miles) on the clock.

He just had to upgrade to the new version of a van that he was well acquainted with, and of which he had become a fan due to its reliability and no-fuss work ability. Over the years Noel has travelled many miles in the CA, and in 2008 it turns 40 years of age and is also due to turn over its first 100,000 miles (160,930km).

During this time, the CA van has never let Noel down or caused him any problem. Regular servicing — including healthy doses of Fisholene from the local panel-beater — have seen Noel motor rust-free and reliably right around the Coromandel Peninsula, across to the Hawkes Bay and on several trips to both Auckland and Wellington. Despite the van’s age, and Noel is almost an octogenarian himself, he is soon to drive the van down to the South Island with a mattress in the rear, for a spot of camping.

The day I visited Noel to photograph the CA Bedford I also received a potted history of Pioneer chainsaws from Peterborough in Ontario, Canada, and learned of the different colour schemes for the different saws from the ‘chocolate top’ to the ‘all-yellow’ model. We just had to line the chainsaws up in the sun and take stock of them. I’d always equated chainsaws with childhood go-kart engines, but here was a man concerned with preserving faithful old chainsaws in original working condition just as any classic car enthusiast might with their set of Borgwards, Bradfords or¦ Bedfords.

Cutting Edge

Although Noel is at the ‘cutting edge’, as it were, in the art of chainsaw maintenance, I was dying for a ride in the CA Bedford — with the door wide open!

I slid the passenger’s door right back and climbed in to a very Spartan cab area. The first thing that I noticed was the almost complete lack of useful passenger foot room. I had always thought that Fordsons were the only light commercial vehicles to cause the passenger to tuck their feet up, but here in the CA Bedford I was arranging one foot into a small footwell and the other against the door jamb.

I hooked the sliding door onto the factory-provided canvas strap to avoid having my arm lopped off in the case of an emergency stop. Then I sat back in a small supportive vinyl seat to enjoy Noel’s Bedford tales, and experience original Bedford air conditioning at first hand on a hot summer’s afternoon.

The Vauxhall-based engine hummed away beneath a bulky boxed area under the front window-sill dash. Access to the engine can be gained either from under the tiny bonnet out front, or by undoing a set of wing nuts on the interior box section.

Noel hasn’t lost the sense of joy from driving his Bedford van, and swung the big steering wheel with ease through a few tight corners. “One thing I do like about this van,” he said as we drove, “is that you can see the very front of it so easily from inside that it makes parking really easy.”

The large wide windscreen of the MkII version was also a bonus for good vision, according to Noel, who gave me a brief comparative analysis with his earlier MkI CA. Parking in the countryside near Stratford, Noel swung open the back doors to show me how good the access was, and also told me of his camping tales and nights spent on a simple mattress in the rear. This lead to discussions about the British built Dormobile pop-top camper vans based on the CA Bedford.

Mr Whippy

Early ice cream vendors also put the CA to use when the Mr Whippy franchise arrived in New Zealand during the ’60s. During the CA model’s lifetime several versions of the van appeared, including a mini-bus used by some rural schools, a long wheelbase van, and later a diesel option instead of the Victor petrol unit.

Local electrical power boards — which preceded companies like Vector, Genesis and Meridian — used CA vans for their trouble-shooting crews, and the NZ Post Office also used them. Lesney made a cute Matchbox toy of the CA Bedford in the livery of a British newspaper.

The list of CA Bedfords grew as we spoke, because the CA Bedford really was such an iconic commercial vehicle in the 1950-80 period. However, as with many of the very common old vehicles, which are neither sporty nor heart-stopping in looks, few seem to have been saved. Many CA vans were perhaps simply so good that they served until their last gasp, and were not worth the cost of restoring.

Luckily, as in the case of Noel Petrie’s privately owned odd-jobber, a few do survive. Thanks to Noel I got to fulfil one of my own small wishes, to experience open-air travel in a CA van with the sliding door hitched back, just as I saw grown men do when I was a child.

Thank you Noel for an interesting afternoon, and the full CA experience.

Quirky CA Bedford facts

¢ ¨Novelist Anthony Burgess, who wrote the controversial novel A Clockwork Orange, used to travel around Europe in a CA van-based Dormobile camper. He apparently described the CA van and its Dormobile accoutrements as a “marvel of British design.”

¢ ¨Len Fairclough, one of the rogues on Coronation Street during the ’60s, was ‘written out’ (killed) when his CA Bedford van crushed him beneath it during a dodgy roadside repair effort. The moral — always use a jack and axle stands when working under your vehicle, not a stack of bricks.

¢ ¨An early British B-grade horror film starring Christopher Lee, Circus Of Fear (1967), featured a CA Bedford used as a robbery getaway vehicle, its driver eventually ditching it in a lake!

¢ ¨The CA Bedford has a cult following in its native Britain. To find out more you can start at www.eclipse.co.uk/swvans/, where you’ll meet classic campers, award winners and a whole treasure trove of restored CA Bedfords.

Words and Photos: Tim Chadwick

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