Ray was brought up in a motoring family with a plethora of vintage and veteran cars including Alvis, Lea Francis, Minerva and Riley. A keen interest in cars developed and Ray spent much of his youth touring in an old Singer and Triumph TR6.
Ray’s more interesting vehicles include a rather pedestrian London Routemaster double decker bus and an Aston Martin DB2/4 MKII. The Aston had an early racing history and was class winner of the 1958 Tulip Rally and completed the Monte Carlo rally also in 1958. Ray recently restored the car from barn-find condition and it was a big job that took ten years. He has also become the keeper of the Ralph Watson BSA special and will campaign the car in various historic races and hill climbs.

Ray Ferner - 1931 Ralph Wastson BSA FW32

Ray was brought up in a motoring family with a plethora of vintage and veteran cars including Alvis, Lea Francis, Minerva and Riley. A keen interest in cars developed and Ray spent much of his youth touring in an old Singer and Triumph TR6.
Ray’s more interesting vehicles include a rather pedestrian London Routemaster double decker bus and an Aston Martin DB2/4 MKII. The Aston had an early racing history and was class winner of the 1958 Tulip Rally and completed the Monte Carlo rally also in 1958. Ray recently restored the car from barn-find condition and it was a big job that took ten years. He has also become the keeper of the Ralph Watson BSA special and will campaign the car in various historic races and hill climbs.

1931 Ralph Wastson BSA FW32:

The BSA was developed into a racing special by Ralph Watson in early 1950s. The car was modified with a lowered chassis, a lightweight body and doubled horsepower from the original. Ralph raced the car until 1954 when he sold it to develop the Lycoming Special.
Thirty years later the car returned to Ralph and he restored it back to its 1950’s form but with a new lighter body, new gears, a higher final drive ratio and a lighter real axle. Ralph raced the car around New Zealand and further developed it in the late 1980s to include rotary valves.
They were a real engineering challenge and sealing the combustion chambers and the oil system took much experimentation. The result was more horsepower and more torque across the rev range. Ralph machined a new crank case from an aluminium billet. The BSA has been extremely reliable and raced often in this configuration.