Glorious Goodwood

Off-track the Goodwood Revival is a paradise. The racing is fine but how glorious to find oddball cars you haven’t seen for years. An Austin Sixteen like the one in which I passed my driving test. A bit down at heel perhaps but what do you expect for a 63 year old? They made 36,000 for a post-war car-starved market. And Riley RMs. There seemed to be a lot this year. Imagine it; torsion bar independent suspension and twin high-camshafts in 1946-1952. How well-proportioned and what fun for geeks looking for dark blue badges for 1½ Litres and light blue for the 2½. The first time I saw 100mph from a driving seat was in a 2½ in Glencoe. Maybe it wasn’t quite. Speedometers were notoriously optimistic, but it certainly felt like it. The car park was full of that were quite ordinary a generation ago, like the Austin A70 Hampshire converted into a woody estate. I wonder if it was original. Quite a lot were made as estates in a wheeze to escape tax. I wonder if it was sold.
Exotics in the car park. The Hispano-Suiza badge features the colours of Spain (red and yellow) and the Swiss white cross on red. The story behind the stork, like the Ferrari prancing horse, goes back to a First World War aviator, in this case the French ace Georges Guynemer an adversary of the Red Baron. His SPAD biplane, powered by a Hispano-Suiza V8, failed to come back from a flight over the Western Front on 9 September 1917. His squadron adopted the stork symbol of Alsace (annexed by Bismarck in 1870-1871, which France was then trying to win back) and in 1919 it was applied to the cars made at Bois-Colombes, in the Rue du Capitaine Guynemer.
Aeroplanes were one of the best bits. This is Number One daughter with the Spitfire. She is into vintage clothing and the hat is based on a 45rpm vinyl record. See http://tuppencehapennyvintage.blogspot.com. It is astonishing how the British enjoy dressing up. The period feel is amazing even though what looks like a visiting general taking to Dad’s Army is a Major with a staff officer’s hat and the medal on the left dates from the First World War (but with the ribbon the wrong way round). Well maybe not so odd. Quite a lot of the Walmington-on-Sea worthies guarding the Tangmere satellite airfield were probably 1914-1918 veterans.

Jensen SP

Despite a fuel consumption like the bath running out, the Jensen SP was a glorious finale to a range of cars which, in seems, Charles Dunstone the Carphone Warehouse founder wants to revive. He has joined the board of Jensen International Automotive, according to The Sunday Telegraph, after investing in the company that aims to relaunch the Interceptor. I tested an SP in the 1970s. Its acceleration was swift yet its refinement so profound that I could take my elderly (and very cautious) father to 125mph without him realising. It had multi-choke carburettors with accelerator pumps that squirted neat petrol down their throats providing highly exciting speed along with single-figure mpg.
The 7.2litre 385bhp SP was made from 1971-1973 and http://www.richardcalver.com reveals that SP meant the “Six-Pack” Chrysler engine that not very surprisingly failed its emissions tests in the United States and had to be discontinued. Jensen bought up Chrysler’s stock of the engines to make the 232 SPs, of which 216 were sold in Britain. The SP coincided with the opportunist Kjell Qvale’s arrival at a critical time for Jensen. Fifteen SPs were made with a tan vinyl roof, one of which, I recall, was the Jensen press car. I can’t remember the colour. Richard Calver would know.
Had to dig deep in the archives for a Jensen piece. This one does not refer to the SP. It comes from a freelance column of about 1971.
The works at West Bromwich prospered making Austin-Healeys and Sunbeam Tigers, and I remember how massively Jensens were made. They looked as if they would last for ever. If they were remanufactured with fuel injection and modern engine management systems they might be quite practical. They could even be made a bit lighter. At 36cwt (1829kg) the SP carried a lot of inertia. It handled well but was scarcely nimble.

Editors and The Vauxhall Motorcycle

Andrew Neil was affable, professional and responsive throughout the 13 years I was motoring correspondent of The Sunday Times. We didn’t talk a lot but when I called, he called back. He didn’t much care for my predecessor (I thought her competent enough) judging by memos in a desk I inherited. Irascible? Not really. Approachable? Invariably.

I worked for lots of editors. The Guardian, The Times, Telegraph, News of the World, Motor, Autocar and most motoring magazines. Peter Jackson, editor of Drive, the AA magazine, the Sunday Times Magazine and Road and Car paid well and approved expenses an MP might envy. Editors were polite, reasonable people who encouraged contributors. If they didn’t like what you were selling they would say so. Which was fine; you could always sell it elsewhere.

Michael Bowler was an old colleague at The Motor. Founder editor of Classic Car he edited The Automobile until Jonathan Rishton replaced him. I wrote for The Automobile from time to time. Michael was professional. He liked features that were accurate, well written and appropriate. I liked The Automobile. I have kept every issue over its entire 28 years. That will make 336 magazines to the end of the current volume.

I won’t be renewing my subscription.

The magazine’s not bad; it has lost Bowler’s deft touch but Rishton is so rude. Ignores messages. Fails to call back when he says he will. Never replies to emails, even to say No. Editors are not what they were. Andrew Neil was a pleasure to work with.

The Vauxhall Motorcycle. Part 1

In 1920 Vauxhall was in a quandry. It had had a good war, making 25HP staff cars for British officers. One took King George V to Vimy Ridge, another General Allenby on his entry to Jerusalem. A Vauxhall was first across the Rhine following the Armistice, but post-war the outlook was bleak. Laurence Evelyn Pomeroy (1883-1941), inspired designer and architect of its Edwardian prosperity had intimated he was leaving.
1922-1927 OD
Pomeroy had been responsible for the glorious 30-98, spent much of the war experimenting with camshafts, and was off to America to work in aluminium. His successor, Clarence King, did not inspire confidence. King had worked with the Adams Manufacturing Company and the Société Lorraine, but was something of a mystic and trying to earn a living in France as a painter.

The Vauxhall directors wanted something new. Losing the 1914 TT to Peugeot rankled, so in 1922 they commissioned two projects from the design consultancy led by 37 year old Harry Ricardo. He was to restore Vauxhall prestige in motor racing with a 3 litre racing car for 1923. “It was”, said Ricardo, “one of my most fascinating jobs; a racing engine for which I was given a perfectly free hand.” Provided with a budget the generosity of which astonished WO Bentley, he undertook the design himself.

Vauxhall also wanted to sell a smart sporting motorcycle to returning servicemen, for which Ricardo engaged Major Frank Bernard Halford (1894-1955).

Ricardo’s racing Vauxhalls were well engineered but only moderately successful. They competed in the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy, where Bentley regarded them as at least unsporting, or worse, imposters. They seemed to him out and out racing cars, which was not sporting. He was further annoyed when the sole Vauxhall survivor took third place, not only splitting the winning Bentleys, but also beating WO, who dropped to fourth after losing 6sec through missing a pit signal.

It was Vauxhall’s last hurrah. The cars were good but times were hard and motor racing was expensive. The team was disbanded and the cars sold. Raymond Mays bought one which in 1928, with a supercharger as the Vauxhall Villiers, paved the way for Mays and Peter Berthon to create ERA.

FB Halford was a former Royal Flying Corps pilot. He had ridden a 4-valve Triumph with a Ricardo engine to 13th place in the 1922 Senior TT, so he knew what he was doing with a classy motorcycle. His inspiration came from aircraft engines, which usually flew inverted, crankshaft uppermost driving the propeller. Halford’s motorcycle in-line 4-cylinder had its crankshaft underneath, like a car’s. (to be continued)

Driving in Europe

Pride of Dover a couple of weeks ago
I am careful of French police. I used the BMW Z8’s splendidly straightforward cruise control on the recent Le Mans Classic trip. Went Dover-Calais by P&O and although this time I never saw any, I’ve been caught too often, along with other British tourists, by Autoroute radar traps. They must make millions of Euros in tolls and fines. I wish somebody would do a survey of how much, like the one undertaken by the German online travel-agency ab-in-den-urlaub.de .

This showed that Germans drivers suffered 515 874 speeding tickets from Switzerland, Holland, Austria, Belgium and Italy alone, while Germany rarely fines foreign motorists. Around 5 million German cars are taken on European holidays each year. There are many reasons for the fines – sometimes tourists can't read the Italian-language sign for “Quiet Street”, hidden in the parking area next to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. This means €194.50 if you are not prepared to pay without appealing.

The agency ab-in-den-urlaub.de has calculated that 515,874 parking tickets with a value of €53.6 million were sent to German drivers during 2009 alone. That means in 10 years, European countries have cashed in €520 million from German drivers abroad.

Around half the total €25.5 million is collected in Switzerland. Swiss police accompany drivers to the next bank to demand money on the spot. Second highest earner is the Netherlands. In 2009 192,503 fines were sent to Germans with a total value of €19.2 million.

Transport lawyer Alexander Koden told the agency, “It is particularly difficult to prove whether a foreign traffic offence is really justified.” It can take over a year before a payment demand arrives. Not only that: The Italians accept only appeals which are written in Italian. English, German and French are accepted as official languages within the EU, however that still does not mean that one is allowed to write to an Italian police department in English or German.

Once more, says the agency, “The EU has shown its neither-here-nor-there mentality. Traffic signs in Sweden, Greece and Italy may only be produced in the local language. As unity of the signage is not provided, many tourists fall into the traffic fines trap simply as a result of misunderstandings.”
Joanna was driving the BMW at 115mph; OK in Germany, not elsewhere

Hitler's Mille Miglia

BMW Car has done a good layout for my feature on The 1940 Mille Miglia BMW 328. This was the car that took part in what has, perhaps unkindly, been called Hitler’s Mille Miglia. It wasn’t. It was Mussolini’s. BMW Car has unearthed a poster for what the Italians called the First Gran Premio Brescia delle Millia Miglia. Maybe they changed the name because they thought the Germans might win. Which they duly did. Top: A Sunday Times column featuring the exquisite 2-seater I drove in 1993. No wonder Sir William (as he became) Lyons cribbed the style for the XK120. Below: I photographed the 328 in front of one of my favourite hotels, Turnberry, Ayrshire, where in 1952 I saw it win, driven by Gillie Tyrer. I was quite young and impressionable.

Le Mans Classic 2010

Imposters every one. None had a proper ticket for the air-conditioned press tribuneLe Mans Classic. More like a motor racing Glastonbury than Garden Party Goodwood. The press service was well-meaning rather than effective. Took a long time to get accreditation because they wanted professional insurance of some sort and when we got to the Circuit de la Sarthe they had very nice well-mannered gels, very polite, very French, very pretty and totally unhelpful. It was very hot, 40 degrees, and it would have been nice if my number one daughter had been given some sort of paddock pass so she could carry my camera bag. At my age you need somebody to do that, but no it was impossible. What about a car pass to get us around on the infield? No that was impossible too.

In the event it scarcely mattered. Forty years of blagging into places where officials don’t want you to go, got us pretty well everywhere we wanted. It helped having BMW’s Z8, which meant we could park it at the BMW Classic exhibition tent. It also helped that number one daughter has big eyes, which distracted officials sufficiently when I mumbled (in Englishy French – it might as well have been Gaelic) that mamselle was with me and waved my enamel badge on a string.

Camped at Maison Blanche, well I say camped, number one son Craig had brought a camper van, which was a help although the queues at the shower block and half a dozen loos for a very large car park, mostly full of Brits, was more Pop Festival than Glorious Goodwood.

I always liked Le Mans. It was one place I thought I’d go back to as a spectator when I stopped covering Le Vingt Quatres Heures. I did this mostly between 1965 and 1985 and even went to the French Grand Prix (2 July 1967, Bugatti Circuit, Le Mans if you are interested) to see Jack Brabham and Denny Hulme win in Brabham Repcos from Jackie Stewart in a V8 BRM and Jo Siffert in a V12 Cooper Maserati. The caravan site looked like a loop of the Bugatti circuit, which was never used for a French Grand Prix again although Le Mans likes to think of itself as the birthplace of French motor racing. OK the first grand prix ever took place there in 1906 but it really is now a bit of a circus that takes itself much too seriously.

Ah well. The Le Mans Classic was fine really, with lots of swarthy rich people in Ferraris driving rather badly and masses of worthy clubs from the UK, Triumphs, MGs, Jaguars all having a wonderful time. The enthusiasm people show for classic cars is quite touching. They’ll chat uninhibitedly in the queue for the loo about how they fell in love with their first TR2 in 1955 and isn’t it nice the way you can drive along with your arm overhanging the door. Nostalgia is exactly how it used to be. Any TR2 driver will tell you to get the revs at two-five for the little crackle noise in the exhaust.