Here are the second five pages of the logbook.

The centre section is devoted to the yearly renewal of the vehicle tax and petrol coupon book serial number record. What is surprising is the cost in those days of owning such a vehicle. In 1947, the license cost £31/5/8 (thirty-one pounds, five shillings and eightpence). Or about one hundred US dollars at the then exchange rate. This rose to £32/10/- (thirty-two pounds ten shillings) for the next four years until in 1953 it dropped to a marginally more reasonable £12/10/- (twelve pounds ten shillings).

Given that an annual salary for an executive in 1947 was around £750, £32 represented around 4% of annual income before taxes. So, if the housewife did not work, the tax implications alone of owning a car of this type represented a cost of about 6% of the annual income of the family.

The curious damage to the left hand page in the picture is not woodworm, it is a multitude of staple holes where petrol coupon books were stapled to the logbook. The right hand side bears stamps from the "Regional Petroleum Officer" who was the civil servant responsible for issuing petrol rationing coupon books. The first entry is dated January 1947 and the coupons were issued at three month intervals until 1948 when this became six monthly and finally rationing was abandoned in 1950. Given the car's extreme thirst (12-13 1/2 miles to an imperial gallon). Getting enough petrol to keep her on the road must have been, to say the least, difficult.

One interesting fact is that rationing was abandoned in 1950. Had this not happened, the right hand panel of the book would have run out of space and so it would have been replaced and the record of her owners might have been destroyed as happened to the original book.