LOOKING BACK: KILDARE'S FIRST REGISTERED CAR

An historic occasion caught by the cameras, in a clipping from the Leinster Leader dated 1 October 1983, courtesy of Joe Murray. The first car registered in Kildare, IO 1, pictured under the Rathangan Road bridge on the Naas Bypass with the owner, Denis Lucey, and Liam Kenny, local historian and then a member of Kildare Co Council staff.

The car is the Silver Stream, a handcrafted luxury touring car built in Carnalway near Kilcullen between 1906 and 1909 by railway engineer Philip Townsend Somerville-Large, and which was the centrepiece for many years of Denis Lucey's collection at the Museum of Irish Transport in Killarney. In April 2007, it was sold at a Bonhams auction in London for £130,000.

The photo was taken the week before the official opening of the M7 Naas Bypass on 4 October 1983, by then Tánaiste Dick Spring. It was the Irish Republic's first section of motorway.

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