By the time that Hanks was in his mid-20s, he started a rebuild on the Hillman.
Drawing of a 1932 Hillman Aero Minx two/three-seater saloon
He stripped it down, got a free retrim courtesy of his then-bosses at BMW and put the car back together.
In fact, due to his ever-expanding collection, including a two-seater Aero Minx, he did everything but put it back on the road.
Then, when he was 35, Hanks got divorced and everything had to go.
He shed 20-plus cars, including the two-seater Minx, a BSA Scout that had belonged to band-leader Billy Cotton, three more Minxes, five Austin Sevens, a Ford Special, Riley, MG Magnette and more.
The only car to survive the cull was this Aero Minx.
The Hillman Aero Minx Streamlined Saloon’s Rudge-Whitworth knock-on wire wheels
When Hanks remarried to someone with little interest in cars his passion for them stayed on the back-burner, but he threw himself into them again as a distraction when he lost his wife 12 years ago.
So far, the car count is back up to 13, including a 1936 Rolls-Royce 25/30, a 1925 Daimler 25/70, another Aero Minx, a 1910 Flanders and a 1912 Studebaker.
Yet foremost in his collection, as it ever was, is this car, even if it took a prod from the owners’ club to motivate him: “They phoned up and asked if I would display it at the NEC.
“That may sound daunting when it hadn’t been used for so long, but the reality was that the full restoration had happened years ago when it was retrimmed.
“My dad had even done the woodwork back then, it was simply that it hadn’t been used. So I dragged it out, gave it a quick rub-down and spray over and had it ready to go in two weeks.”
Between 1000 and 2000 Hillman Aero Minx Streamlined Saloons were built, but very few survive
From that history you may be misled into thinking either that Hanks wasn’t aware of the importance of the car, or that it only achieved that status gradually, but the converse is true on both counts.
“I found out how rare it was back in my 20s,” explains Hanks.
“There was an Aero Minx club and when I gave them the details over the phone they became quite excited. It seems that – even then – there weren’t many survivors.”
Usually, this sort of story would end with a facile question about whether the owner will ever sell their car and an impassioned, if not always convincing, response that they never would.
On this occasion, the answer that it will never be sold is so obvious that it was nice to not have to even bother to ask.
Instead, the best aspect of this particular tale is how, having finally resuscitated the car for the NEC, Hanks is now using the Aero Minx more than at any time since the ’60s.
Images: Adam Warner
Thanks to: Tim Green; Hillman Owners’ Club
This was first in our July 2014 magazine; all information was correct at the date of original publication
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James Elliott
James Elliott is a former Editor of Classic & Sports Car