The Tara Browne Art Car
BEV Stood next to the art cars the hand painted in the ‘60s
In 1966 Carnaby Street had the eyes of the world upon it, but quietly working away with delicate brushes and hand-mixed paints in a mews close by in Belgravia were Dudley Edwards and his friend Gary. Working day and night over several weeks, they were about to change the look of the ’60s forever.
Fast forward just a month, and the car they had carefully designed becomes an instant icon.
The car was an AC Cobra MK3 Chassis COB6107, one of only 25 ever made. Its owner? The Right Honorable Tara Browne, a prominent member of the Swinging London counterculture set and heir to the Guinness fortune.
Tara was at the center of the ’60s, having flown out Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, and Anita Pallenberg to this lavish 21st birthday party at the Luggala Estate located just a stone’s throw away from our HQ in the Wicklow Mountains. He was responsible for introducing Dudley Edwards to The Beatles, who would later paint Paul's famous 'Magic Piano' and is now the inspiration behind the latest AVA Classic.
A group of men are gathered around a work of art. With the utmost precision, it is driven out the window of a world- famous gallery where it has sat – LSD on wheels – for all of London to see.
The young man in the car is laughing; languid; golden. The city is swinging and he is its beating heart –
the playboy prince and cultural icon who tripped with The Rolling Stones and inspired The Beatles: the Hon. Tara Browne, heir to the Guinness family fortune.
His chariot is an AC Cobra, hand- painted in a blaze of psychedelic glory by Dudley Edwards of BEV Design, the pop-art collective whose iconic aesthetic would define the era.
To those who knew him, this extraordinary car embodied the man who owned it: daring, dazzling and unapologetic, with a profound belief that life is made only for living. Tara Browne died too young, but his spirit lived on, immortalised in vivid colour.
Tara Browne sadly died on the 18th of December while driving his blue Lotus Elan aged just 21. However, his legacy continued, and in 1967 he was the inspiration behind the avant-garde song from The Beatles, A Day In The Life.
Initially banned by the BBC for its drug references, it is in the opening verse where we find a reference to Tara. Inspired by the front page of a newspaper he was reading, John Lennon wrote the following.
“I read the news today, oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well, I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph.
He blew his mind out in a car
He didn’t notice that the lights had changed.
A crowd of people stood and stared.
They’d seen his face before.
Nobody was really sure if he was from the House of Lords.”
That is the story of Tara Browne and his art car, gone too soon. The vehicle was taken to America and, at some point in the '70s was resprayed, lost forever. Until now.
At AVA Classics, we think every car deserves it’s own story and that Dudley Edwards' work should be on our roads again, and that is what we are going to do.
Our engineering team is building a high-performance electric vehicle from the ground up. Working in collaboration with Dudley Edwards, we have something extraordinary planned, and you won't have long to wait either.
“As soon as you put your foot down your head went back and all you could see were the stars”
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