Chassis number '26290', with engine number '922', was imported by J Smith & Co, Delage's main UK agents, who added the six-light Weymann saloon body.

This reduced import duty and the DR70 retailed at around £600.

The car was purchased new by R S (Reg) Dixon, of Brandon, Suffolk, managing director of Fox Umbrellas.

It was first licensed on 27th April 1928 and taxed up to 1955.

Reg Dixon had three children and one of their young neighbours in the 1930s was Peter Holmes, who later became a Ford dealer and garage owner in the same town of Brandon.

Indeed, in 1955 he made his first new car sale to Reg Dixon, who was beginning to find the Delage too big for him.

Some ten years later, Reg's widow asked Peter Holmes to take the Delage off her hands.

Peter Holmes kept it in an old cowshed for another ten years before carrying out a certain amount of restoration in the mid-1970s, as recorded in a local press report of January 1975.

He managed to drive it only 12 miles (on trade plates) b...