In 1934, six Couriers had been sold to an operating company for a hire purchase deposit of £5 each. Managing director, Nevil Shute, wrote that they could come back to Airspeed and as an "obsolescent type" might not be so easy to sell again. He got a reputation as "unscrupulous" for resisting the auditors' attempt to write them down on the books because, with growing talk of war, civil aircraft of any size would "sell immediately". As the six were worth nearly twenty thousand pounds, writing them down to half that would add £10,000 to their loss, making the firm's proposed share issue a very unattractive investment. Shute could see from his office the four hundred workers in the "shop" with families depending on their jobs. In 1936, most of the unsold Couriers and Envoys were sold and found their way to the Spanish Civil War. The demonstration Envoy was sold to the Spanish Nationalists for £6000, paid for in cash (six £1000 Bank of England notes). In 1935, the sole Airspeed Viceroy was nearly sold to Ethiopia for use against Italian forces.