How the Club started
The Origins of WSSCC
A chance phone call from honorary member Phil Shaw the other day started the trail. He recalled that his friend Norman E Jones was a founder member of WSSCC, and he had Norman’s phone number and address in Lincolnshire. I contacted Norman and the following tale emerged.
It all started with a small advertisement in the Express & Star in late 1951. The advert invited anyone in the Wolverhampton area who was interested in motoring and motorsport to attend a meeting at Wolverhampton Motor Services to discuss the possibility of forming a motor club for local enthusiasts. Wolverhampton Motor Services was on the Cleveland Road and was the town’s Rootes dealer (Humber, Hillman, Sunbeam etc). The ad had been placed by their sales Manager, whose name Norman could not recall.
On the appointed day, no less than 25 people turned up. They were mostly the owners of garages around the area and included such notables as Stan Potts (ex-RAF pilot and proprietor of the Essential Garage), Ted Fullwood who owned Staffordshire Tyre Services in Chapel Ash, Les Bouts of Bouts Motors, Stan Annis a Borgward dealer, Felix Day and Ray Gibbon.
They all agreed to form a club and that it was to be called The Wolverhampton & South Staffs Car Club – remember there was no such county as West Midlands then and Wolverhampton was in the county of Staffordshire. They arranged to have regular meetings at a convenient public house and guess where their first meetings were held - in the upstairs room at The Pigot Arms at Pattingham!
The club went from strength to strength. An early coup was to involve Ross Giles who was the Motoring Correspondent of the Express & Star who later became club president. The first competitive events were rallies and driving tests which were a sort of sedate auto test and were held at some of the many airfields left over from the war such as Weaton Aston and Perton.
Norman says that he still has one of the original metal club badges: it was a wolf’s head in gold and black like the Wolves Footy Team colours. This was before the club changed its badge to the Staffordshire Knot.
I am indebted to old members Phil Shaw and Norman E Jones for providing the information in this article.