The Flying Ford Anglia That Was Too Famous To Hide
The great automotive heists of history generally share a few cinematic hallmarks: a hotwired ignition, a screech of tires, and a daring, high-speed chase and escape. The theft of the world’s most famous Ford Anglia involved exactly none of these things, primarily because the car lacked an engine.
Sometime overnight on a Wednesday in late October 2005, thieves breached the perimeter of South West Film Studios in Cornwall - a facility the press had dubbed "Aggiewood," which was then languishing in the dreary purgatory of corporate administration. B
eneath a simple tarpaulin sat a blue 1962 Ford Anglia 105E. Whether the culprits were obsessive cinephiles executing a targeted raid for memorabilia, or opportunistic metal thieves who only realised their prize was missing its internal organs upon trying to start it, the result was the same. There was no screeching getaway. The thieves were forced to endure the distinctly un-glamorous task of winching a highly conspicuous, world-famous paperweight onto the back of a trailer and trundling off into the night.
The Shape
Before it became a high-profile stolen property, it was simply a product of a very specific era in British motoring.
The 105E model was unveiled to the UK public at the 1959 Earls Court Motor Show, an event it had the historical misfortune of sharing with the launch of the revolutionary new Mini. But while the Mini relied on radical front-wheel-drive packaging to draw gasps from the motoring press, Ford opted for a different strategy: dressing a sensible commuter car in the transatlantic drag of an American Lincoln. The Anglia was instantly recognisable by its distinctive Z-back, reverse-rake rear window. It was a bizarre, sweeping aerodynamic feature that served a deeply practical, thoroughly British purpose - the sharp angle kept the glass clear of perpetual drizzle and prevented rear passengers from ruining their hats.
Beneath this eccentric glasshouse, however, the engineering was very conventional. Armed with a 997 cc overhead-valve engine, the original Anglia produced a modest 39 brake horsepower - a figure that inspired confidence only in the profoundly unhurried. The sprint from zero to sixty miles per hour required a glacial 27 seconds, providing the driver ample time to compose a poem before reaching cruising speed.
Yet even though it wasn't a fast vehicle, it was a very successful one. Ford UK churned out over a million 105Es before the line made way for the Escort in 1967. It became the quintessential British runabout, the sort of car that littered provincial driveways for decades, slowly decaying from respectable middle-class transport into cheap, battered, and beloved motoring for teenagers.
The Patron Saint of Joyrides
The Anglia entered literary history in the damp environs of Chepstow, Monmouthshire. A young J.K. Rowling was attending Wyedean Comprehensive School when, at the age of eleven, she met a boy named Sean Harris.
Harris eventually became a teenager equipped with a driving licence and an old Ford Anglia. His particular car was painted turquoise. To Rowling, the little Ford was a lifeline. She later stated on the record that the turquoise car meant absolute freedom and a permanent end to asking her father for lifts, which she considered the supreme indignity of a teenager living in the countryside. Some of her happiest memories of those times involved dissapearing into the darkness in Harris's car to sit under the Severn Bridge and talk. He was the first person she confessed her ambition of becoming a writer to, and the only one who told her she was bound to succeed. Years later, he would lend her money to help her survive a desperate period as a single mother.
When Rowling began writing Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, she needed a flying car for the Weasley family. She envisioned it as a turquoise Ford Anglia, a direct tribute to her memories of driving around the Monmouthshire lanes. Harris served as a real-life inspiration for aspects of the character of Ron Weasley. Rowling made the connection permanent on the opening pages, dedicating the novel directly to him. She referred to Harris in the official dedication as her "Getaway driver and foul-weather friend."
The Fourteen Wrecks
For the film adaptation of Chamber of Secrets, special effects supervisor John Richardson was tasked with physically making the 105E fly. A single surviving 1962 runabout was entirely insufficient for a modern production schedule.
The crew sourced a fleet of sixteen different Ford Anglias. Because the script required the car to violently crash-land into a magical tree known as the Whomping Willow, the survival rate of the Fords was spectacularly low. Around fourteen were crushed, battered, or destroyed during production. Translating a heartfelt book dedication into cinema turned out to be exceptionally brutal.
Some of the surviving cars were physically modified to accommodate the bulky camera equipment required for interior dialogue shots. Then there was a prominent film prop. This was an authentic blue 1962 model wearing the registration 7990 TD. To prepare it for the flights, Richardson and his crew had to drastically lighten the car. They gutted the vehicle's interior and removed the heavy mechanicals. The empty shell was then fitted onto a rotating crane using a special joint called a gimbal head. This apparatus was bolted to the back of a specially adapted American pickup truck fitted with heavy-duty suspension and wide outriggers. By driving the pickup truck and manipulating the gimbal, the crew could capture the rolling, pitching, and flying motions required for the film.
When the cameras finally stopped rolling, 7990 TD was retired. The engineless shell ended up parked at South West Film Studios in Cornwall, sitting under a tarp to await its undignified abduction.
A Getaway Without Horsepower
The Devon and Cornwall Police arrived at the St Agnes lot in late October 2005 to find a patch of empty dirt. They quickly deduced the physical reality of the crime. Because the car was missing its engine, the police concluded it would have had to be towed or lifted.
They issued a public appeal to the press. PC Baxter Provan addressed the media with a statement of masterly understatement. "It's definitely seen better days," Provan told reporters. "We understand there's no way it would have been able to drive away under its own steam."
The police formed two working theories. The first was that the heist was carried out by an obsessive fanatic looking to steal a movie prop. The second theory was that a classic car enthusiast had spotted the shape under the tarpaulin and mistakenly believed they were stealing a functional vintage vehicle for restoration.
Whoever took the car immediately ran into the biggest problem with high-profile art theft. A famously stolen object is entirely unsellable. Pictures of the Anglia were broadcast across global television networks. The thieves had stolen a car too well-known to sell, too recognisable to display, and completely incapable of being driven. They were condemned to keep it in a shed.
The Carn Brea Anomaly
The stalemate lasted for nearly seven months. The thieves sat on a gutted shell, and the owners sat on a missing asset, until the Devon and Cornwall Police received an anonymous phone call tipping them off that the missing car had been abandoned. Officers drove out to recover the vehicle.
They found 7990 TD dumped on the grass less than ten miles from the St Agnes film studios. The thieves had managed to hide a famous flying car for half a year, only to abandon it a few villages over from where they stole it. Forensics officers examined the car, but the trail ended right there in the mud. The thieves were never found.
The saga of the film's Anglias ended with a neat piece of familial symmetry. Following the production, a surviving prop was acquired by Nigel Grint. He was the real-life father of actor Rupert Grint, the boy who played Ron Weasley and piloted the car on screen.
The Grint family did not hide their car under a tarpaulin. They subsequently loaned a prop to the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, Hampshire, where the modified 1962 Ford took its place as a star attraction in their On Screen Cars exhibition.