Funding sought to restore WWI lorry

AN APPEAL has gone out for funding to complete the restoration of a three-ton lorry used in the First World War which is the last of its kind left.

The Coventry-built Maudslay vehicle was one of more than 1,700 Maudslays that saw service in the Great War.

Coventry Motor Museum which purchased the vehicle 14 years ago now needs to raise £5,000 to put the finishing touches to the restoration in time for the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War this summer.

Used by the War Department for airfield duties in Scotland during the war, the Maudslay had been used as a showman's caravan and as late as the 1970s was in use as a holiday home.

Having been discovered in a Dundee farmyard, the lorry was bought by the museum for £10,000 and since 2007 volunteers and museum staff have worked to restore and rebuild the vehicle, which will take part in a number of Great War commemorations in the Midlands.

Coventry Transport Museum's vehicle curator Christiaan van Schaardenburgh said: "As the nation prepares to mark the commencement of the Great War that claimed the lives of some nine million servicemen, we are privileged to be able to bring back to life this important piece of engineering history. "

At the end of the war the British Army had 66,532 trucks in service, of which nearly half were three-tonners built by companies such as Maudslay, Daimler, Dennis and Leyland.

Mechanised transport had been used successfully in the Boer War of 1899 to 1902 and in 1911 it was decided that motorised transport would replace horses on a large scale.

By Peter Woodman, Press Association