History |
| The Les Dawes family has finally been located and
a few clarifications have been added by Patrick Dawes, son of the late Leslie Albert Dawes. (1933 - 2002) |
The LaDawri
Conquest was designed and built by Les A. Dawes of British Columbia,
Canada and is recognized as Canada’s first fiberglass sports car.
 The
Conquest was first shown at the Pacific International Exhibition at
Vancouver Canada in 1956 as the Cavalier. Original plans were to
create a complete sports car for sale and distribution throughout
the United States and Canada. The body itself is fiberglass and was
designed to take a wheelbase of 100 to 104 inches and a tread of 56
to 58 inches. This covered Corvettes, Thunderbirds, and the like of
the day.
However,
within a year, the car, family, and company moved to Long Beach
California where production began and the car debuted on the front
cover of Road and Track in July 1957. From this point forward, the
car was known as the “Conquest”. Soon, Dawes
expanded both the number of designs available and the sizes of each
design as well. New models included Quest
Q.T., Daytona, Sebring,
and Del Mar. Around 1960, Dawes again expanded the lineup of
available designs by acquiring a competing car company called
Victress. These cars became known
as the Cheetah, Vixen, Castilian, Sicilian, and Cavalier.
Two additional
models of cars were added later which included the Centurion 21 and
the Firestar. This series
of acquisitions made LaDawri the largest fiberglass car manufacturer
(both kit and complete cars) in the early to mid 1960’s based on the
variety of models offered and produced.
The last car
designed and built for production was the Formula Libre around
1965. LaDawri continued with car production producing both cars and
kits from 1957 through 1965 when operations ceased.
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| Penticton ST |
1540 Canal ST |
Neptune ST |
Les Dawes |
Memorial |
From Patrick Dawes:
Your call and the website
were a big welcome surprise for my family. We appreciate the work
you've put into this. Clearly my Dad has some fans! He passed away
only a few years ago and it’s very unfortunate that you did not find
us sooner. There's nothing he liked better than chatting up old
times, and he would have been flattered by the attention.
We all had a good laugh reading through the
history page. Rumors are great! Some of it is nonsense; some have a
germ of truth. For example, my Mom did go to Canada with the kids
while my Dad took a business trip to Mexico: that's probably where
the divorce / Central America sojourn thing came from. My Dad was
not in the RCAF, and did not attend college, except for possibly
some drafting courses. (He probably thought he was too smart for
college and didn't need it. He was not a trained engineer, yet
worked for McDonnell-Douglas and was even sought after by NASA).
Also, there were no LaDawri shop fires or IRS problems. Expenses
just exceeded income, and they couldn't pay the rent. I assure you
that my Dad would not in a million years have destroyed any molds.
I know because I hauled those molds around my entire life, every
time we moved (which was often). Molds were worth their weight in
gold to him because to the end he believed he would be building his
cars again someday. I'm sorry to report that the molds were disposed
of after he passed away. (BTW they were all fiberglass/wood
framework, not concrete).
One of those stories is pretty close to the
truth. After LaDawri closed my Dad tried to get something going
again in Canada. In 1967 my family was towing a prototype (the
"Vendetta") to Canada behind a VW station wagon. Around midnight a
big flat bed truck with a driver asleep at the wheel drove overtop
of the Vendetta (which had a very low profile) and smashed into the
rear of the VW, dumping my family onto the highway. My dad broke his
back, but recovered.
A piece of trivia that might interest you: the
name LaDawri did obviously come from LA DAWes, but the "WRI" at the
end apparently came from Don Wright, my dad's best buddy in Canada
(still alive I'm told). I don't think he had any hand in building
the first car though.
---Patrick Dawes--- |
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