It's worth a shot, he says. "He" is our very own editor in chief, writer of stories, paste-up guy and general gopher of this humble piece of reading material: Phil Singher. The recipient of this pronouncement is the guy who e-mailed Phil to suggest that maybe we might be able to salvage something from the large effort made in this past year to obtain some papers that were generated by one Edgar deNormanville, Automotive Journalist and Inventor. Yup, I'm the guy who made the suggestion. It's time to get the keyboard up to proper operating temperature.

Actually, the whole thing started earlier this year (or was it last year?) when our Eastern Seaboard correspondent Lee "VolvoGirl" Holman was working on her informative article on the Laycock deNormanville overdrive units found on many of our Volvos, to say nothing of scores of English rides. She wrote me to ask if I knew why the name sounded French. I didn't really know the answer to Lee's question, but in taking a cue from my dear wife Deb Donovan, who subscribes to the adage, "Never let the facts stand in the way of a good story," I theorized that the deNormanville portion of the name could have been a throwback to the days when the royal courts of England spoke French, not English.

About the time I hit the "Send" button to transmit this piece of balderdash to Lee, I remembered that many months earlier, Phil had received an e-mail from Mrs. Jill Wane in the United Kingdom, inquiring of any interest we might have in some papers that had once belonged to Edgar deNormanville. They included some correspondence between deNormanville and Percy Martin, Esq. of the Daimler Works in Coventry, regarding an epicyclic gearbox. At the point of receiving a copy of that letter, I couldn't help but figure that this gearbox might be a predecessor to the overdrive we are somewhat (or greatly) familiar with. At this early juncture, I'd written Mrs. Wane back with a suggestion that the British Motor Heritage Trust, a national archive and museum of all things to do with the British motor industry, would surely want to have the opportunity to obtain these important documents. Another fine suggestion. I was wrong. There was no interest on the part of the BMHT to secure these artifacts.

So as this memory hit me, I looked up the letter from Mrs. Wane in my files and e-mailed her to see if the papers were still in her possession and if so, could we please borrow them in the hopes of maybe making them tie in with Lee's article. Jill and her husband, Bob Wane, a retired employee of Jaguar Cars (they absorbed Daimler in the '60s), generously consented. Their only question was, "Where shall we send the papers?" Now we were being entrusted with possessions which alternately were priceless or worthless depending on one's perspective. No institution had yet stepped up to claim them as a worthy addition to an important collection of Motoring History, hence they had no value. In contrast, should the papers become lost, damaged or destroyed, no amount of money would replace them. Priceless. I was far more fearful of the latter point than the former.

Pondering the means of getting the papers to us for inspection, I was rather uncomfortable about removing them from the country to whose heritage they were undeniably connected. Pondering the less happy possibilities involving the Royal Mail and the United States Postal Service, I worked my little grey cells into a cerebral overdrive trying to develop a scheme which would enable us to have a chance to see the papers without their leaving the United Kingdom. Moving outside the realm of Volvodom, I came up with the name of a gentleman I'd been sporadically corresponding with about such esoteric machines as the Alvis Stalwart 6x6 and the Foers Ibex, a Land Rover-based specialty vehicle.

Peter Bradley had always been an enjoyable correspondent, whether it be about the Foers Ibex, or just relevant current events. A self-employed businessman with a lovely wife and two children, and webmaster of the official Foers Ibex website, Bradley already had a demanding schedule when he got my e-mail asking if he'd be willing to look at the papers for us. As if he needed more things to do, he replied that he'd be glad to see what they were all about and by the way, he'd recently purchased a V70 wagon, er, estate and loved it! Ah, but of course.

Bob Wane drove to the Yorkshires and delivered the papers to Peter. Over the ensuing weeks and months, a round-robin of e-mails ensued between Phil, Lee, Peter, Jill and Bob Wane, and myself regarding the papers, Lee's article, the state of the world, and the finer points of a somewhat obscure label of Scotch. The scans began to arrive at our e-mail boxes for next couple weeks. Over the course of this time, we learned that just before Jaguar cleaned out their basement (which included the removal of the body bucks for the XK-E), Bob Wane obtained a pile of papers which turned out to be sketches and letters from deNormanville. We learned that a scotch named Lagavulin had a somewhat phenolic aftertaste but really shines if you add just a drop of water to the glass, and we learned that the papers in question had to do with an earlier invention of deNormanville's. It was an epicyclic gearbox which replaced the traditional one, not something that attached to the back of the transmission like the later overdrive units. We were given the opportunity to view letters and memos, to and from Mr. deNormanville as well as the official patent papers for the epicyclic gearbox he designed. Dates on the tops of the papers ranged from the late 1920s to early 1930s. Ironic when you consider the lack of action from the British Motor Heritage trust, one of the letters from deNormaville apologizes for seeming to press the reader, but an offer has come from a large gear concern in the States. He states "he'd be damned..." if he considered the offer if there was any hope of interest in England for his design.

This was fascinating, but it was not the overdrive. Great. Now what?

What does this all have to do with Volvo? Not much, I guess. Sometimes, we go down a couple of dead-end streets before we find the story we wish to share with you, and this was an example of a cul-de-sac which I thought should be shared. In most cases, it is fairly easy to knock out a few paragraphs that tell of an experience, a skill to share, details we hope you'll enjoy reading about. Sometimes (almost always) the effort involves more than just the writer. Sometimes the leads we chase are not the ones we expect when we catch up with them.