Bravery and bankings

Carlos Sainz seems to have braved the bankings on the old Sitges track. You-Tube videos show Ferrari and Porsche drivers accelerate like mad down the straights and pussyfoot the bankings, while last May Sainz took an Audi R8 round in 42.6sec for a Red Bull stunt. It looked a bit of an adventure, even for a twice World Rally Champion since the bumps and fractures in the 90 year old 60deg steep concrete sent the Audi bounding. Racing high on the bankings may have been all in a day’s work for Sainz, but hugging a low line suggests faint hearts in Ferraris and Porsches.

They have tidied the bankings since 1974, when I took the pictures with a road test Granada Ghia en route to the Spanish Grand Prix at Jarama. There were races at the Autódromo de Sitges-Terramar near Barcelona the 1950s, but it had been more or less derelict since its first season of 1923. A bit like Brooklands, but better built, it remains in surprisingly good condition.

Autódromo National SA was founded in 1922 to construct a concrete banked circuit for car and motorcycle racing. It took 300 days, and cost 4 million pesetas, for a 2km track in time for a meeting on 28 October 1923. Albert Divo won a race for 2litre GP cars in a Sunbeam, at 96.91mph, from Count Louis Zborowski in a Miller. There was no prize money and unpaid builders seized the gate receipts, leaving the organizers with nothing to pay the drivers. It was seven years before the birth of Bernard Charles Ecclestone.

The authorities forbade any more international racing. It was perhaps just as well; there had been complaints from drivers over the entry and exit from the bankings. They thought the change in camber from straight to banking and back again badly designed. It didn’t seem to upset Sainz. The local Catalunyan Automobile Club held races up to 1925 before the track was sold off in the 1930s. When I went there the surviving buildings, some beneath the well-made pillars of the banking, was a chicken farm.

MGenesis.

A Centenary approaches. It depends where you start counting. Worcester-born William Richard Morris (1877-1963) set up a bicycle-making business in 1893 at James Street, Cowley St John. In 1902 he made motorcycles and opened a bicycle dealership with premises at 48 High Street Oxford and 100 Holywell Street, known as Longwall. The 1903 partnership, the Oxford Automobile and Cycle Agency, at 16 George Street, George Street Mews, New Road, Longwall and 48 High Street failed and he had to borrow to buy back its tools. He decided never to enter a partnership again.

He resumed business at 48 High Street and in 1907 expanded into the car side at Longwall. By 1910 the premises were grandly titled the Oxford Motor Palace and 48 High Street was disposed of to Edward Armstead. In October 1912 WRM Motors was established with £4,000 capital from the Earl of Macclesfield and in November Morris showed the Morris Oxford design to Gordon Stewart of Stewart and Ardern. He was so taken with it that he agreed to buy 400. Morris was now sole proprietor of The Morris Garages in Longwall, Queen Street, and St Cross Road Oxford.

On 29 March 1913 the first Morris Oxford was built at Temple Cowley. It had a body by Raworth, engine and gearbox by White & Poppe, axles by EG Wrigley, and a bull-nose radiator made by Doherty Motor Components. (top right, the bull nose)

An MG car proper was still a world war and ten years away (above left), but its ingredients were already in place.

March 29 2013 for MG was “In the beginning…” The Genesis of MG should surely be celebrated. (below) 1930s classic Jaguar rival, MG SA Tickford Coupe

Aston Martin to downgrade?

It is hardly surprising that Moody's Investors Service has things under review as Aston runs through cash reserves. Moody's analyst Falk Frey: "The review was prompted by a significant deterioration in Aston Martin's liquidity profile as per end September 2012, caused by a much weaker cash generation and operating performance in the third quarter."

Aston has been on the brink of failure before. Its founders of 1914, Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford set up in 1922, yet were forced to wind it up in 1925. It was only Aston’s racing that sustained it under AC Bertelli and then RG Sutherland, until 1948 when it was taken over by David Brown. He had just bought Lagonda, which made available a twin overhead cam 2.5litre engine designed by WO Bentley.

Once again racing was a key and the Claud Hill-designed, essentially pre-war 2litre, driven by St John Horsfall won its class in the 1946 Belgian Grand Prix. A new car with independent front suspension and open bodywork with separate wings was built quickly for Horsfall and Leslie Johnson to win the Spa 24 hours’ race. Encouraged, the new owner embarked on a programme of racing and a range of great sports and GT cars.

In 1972 the David Brown Group sold Aston Martin to Company Developments Ltd., a Birmingham-based consortium, under accountant William Willson MBE, but following another bankruptcy the receiver sold Aston in 1975 to American Peter Sprague and George Minden for £1.05 million. They returned it to a trading profit in 1977, and William Towns styled a Lagonda saloon with advanced and extremely complicated electronic systems, which turned out to be a mistake. The firm was hit by the economic slowdown of the 1980s, sales collapsing to three cars a week and chairman Alan Curtis nearly closed it. In the nick of time he attended a Stirling Moss benefit day at Brands Hatch sponsored by Pace Petroleum, and met its proprietor Victor Gauntlett.
Curtis had plans to buy MG, and a prototype Aston-MG was built, but MG Rover would not relinquish the title.

Victor Gauntlett bought a 12.5 per cent stake in Aston Martin for £500,000. Tim Hearley of CH Industrials did he same, and Pace and CHI became joint owners in 1981. Robust, patriotic Gauntlett was executive chairman and effectively head of sales. Pace Petroleum sponsored racing and the Nimrod Group C car, owned by Aston Martin Owners’ Club president Viscount Downe, came third in the Manufacturers Championship in 1982 and 1983, finishing seventh at Le Mans. Once again, however, annual sales collapsed to an all time low of 30.

Gauntlett had to sell out to the Kuwait Investment Office in September 1983. Then, as Aston Martin needed cash, he also agreed to sell his share to American importer and Greek shipping tycoon Peter Livanos, who invested via his joint venture company ALL Inc, with Nick and John Papanicalou. Gauntlett remained chairman with 55 per cent owned by ALL, with Tickford a 50/50 venture between ALL and CHI. This ended when ALL exercised options to buy a larger share. CHI's residual shares were exchanged for CHI's complete ownership of Tickford.

In 1984 Titan, the Papanicolaou’s shipping company was in trouble, so Livanos's father George bought their shares in ALL, leaving Gauntlett once again a shareholder in Aston with 25 per cent. The company was valued at £2 million the year it built its 10,000th car.

The irrepressible Gauntlett bought a stake in Zagato, resurrecting its collaboration with Aston Martin while negotiating a return to the James Bond films. Producer Cubby Broccoli had recast Bond with actor Timothy Dalton, intending to bring Bond back closer to the original of Sean Connery. The great Gauntlett narrowly turned down the role of a KGB colonel in the film.

Sales prospered until a pressing need for investment in new models. It was time for another of the chance meetings of minds that punctuated Aston Martin history. In May 1987, Gauntlett and Prince Michael of Kent were guests of Contessa Maggi, wife of the founder of the Mille Miglia, revived as a classic event. Walter Hayes, vice-President of Ford of Europe was also a guest and although still smarting over Ford’s aborted negotiations to take over Brian Angliss’s AC Cars, Hayes knew the potential in a premium brand.

Ford took a shareholding in September 1987. After producing 5,000 cars in 20 years, the economy was improving, sales of limited edition Vantage, and £86,000 Volante Zagato coupes rose, the venerable V8 ceased and the Virage was introduced. Gauntlett remained chairman for two years while Hayes took stock, contriving an engineering rationale for a new, smaller Aston Martin. Ford took full control, Gauntlett handing over the chairmanship in 1991.

Ford put Aston into the Premier Automotive Group, opened a new factory in 1994 at Banbury Road in Bloxham. There was investment in manufacturing, production quickly increased to a record 700 in 1995; the 2,000th DB7 came in 1998 and in 2002 the 6,000th. Aston Martin now made more cars in a year than it had made in all its history. The DB7 was enhanced by the V12 Vantage in 1999, and in 2001 the V12 Vanquish.

In 2003 Aston Martin moved to Gaydon and in 2004, set up a 12,500 sq m (135,000 sq ft) AMEP engine production plant within Ford Germany at Niehl, Cologne. This could produce 5000 engines a year but under pressure from America, Ford divested itself of the Premier Automotive Group, selling first Aston Martin, then Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo. UBS AG was appointed in August 2006 to sell Aston Martin by auction and on 12 March 2007 a consortium led by Prodrive chairman David Richards and co-owned by Investment Dar and businessman John Sinders, purchased it for £475m ($848m). Prodrive had no financial involvement and Ford kept a stake, valued at £40 million ($70 million).

Now there have been bids from Investindustrial and Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. Investindustrial, a European private-equity fund based in London, offered just under £250 million, Indian Mahindra then making a higher bid. The winner would get 50 percent of voting rights and a 40 percent equity stake. Investindustrial plans to use technology and car parts from AMG Mercedes-Benz. Aston Martin still gets engines from Ford but lost access to other resources after Ford sold it.

AC cars

Almost as though nothing much had happened since 1939, in 1945 AC Cars at Thames Ditton restarted manufacturing the same sort of car as it had before the war. It used the aluminium single overhead camshaft 1991cc wet liner 6-cylinder, designed in 1919 by John Weller. The engine had been shown at the first London Motor Show following what used to be called the Great War. The post-Second World War AC 2 Litre had half-elliptic leaf springs, a stout chassis and it was largely hand-made on old machine tools. It was just as well the car-starved market of the time was not choosy.

It said a great deal for AC that the old design had lasted so long. The rather lugubrious saloon, in which Weller’s engine was installed, was obviously not long for the automotive mainstream. The headlamps were sunk into the wings and the radiator grille curled, otherwise there was little to distinguish it from 1930s counterparts. It held its own only so long as cars remained in short supply. Once the market returned to normal it was no longer competitive.
AC had been essentially a sports car manufacturer so, with the 2-seater market once again in view, it responded to an approach from John Tojeiro. His designs for sports-racing cars were working well in British amateur racing. The formula he followed was simple, not to say simplistic, owing something in its conception to the BMW 328 of the 1930s. Tojeiro’s ladder-type frame was in the shape of an H, with two 3in (7.6cm) diameter parallel tubes joined by a cross-tube in the middle, with independent suspension mounted on welded fabrications at both ends. The body style was cribbed, without much alteration and certainly no acknowledgement, from a contemporary Ferrari. The result was the AC Ace.

It was an instant success. The frame was stiff, the handling spectacularly good for 1953 - it would still be commendable ten years later - and a coupe version, the Aceca was added in 1955. By a process of steady evolution an excellent, intuitive design improved. When disc brakes became available they were included; this was not a preserved undeveloped design, although a top speed only just over 100mph (160.1kph) did not make the best of the exemplary road holding. As an alternative to the old 102bhp Weller engine, in 1958 AC offered the Bristol (née BMW 328) 2litre with 125bhp, giving both Ace and Aceca well over 115mph (185kph) and taking the Ace into the connoisseur class.
The Ace-Bristol lasted until 1961. Bristol, perhaps unwisely, discontinued the engine and as an alternative AC offered a rather unsatisfactory modified Ford Zephyr pushrod of 170bhp. It had scant refinement, great weight and was unworthy of a hand-made premium priced, well proportioned 2-seater. Its only virtue was to keep things going until something better turned up.
Help was at hand. Led by the colourful Texan Carroll Hall Shelby (1923-2012), the prototype AC Cobra of 1962 was basically an Ace chassis altered to accommodate a Ford V8 engine. It had stout wheel arches to cope with wider tyres and more than twice the horse power of the Ace Zephyr.
For bravura, few cars could match a well-tuned Cobra. There were two models, one with a 4.2 or 4.7litre V8; then from the middle of 1965 a 7litre giving up to 345bhp in road trim and a top speed around 145mph 233.3kph). It could manage a standing quarter-mile in under 13sec.

Such performance made demands on a chassis so more changes were wrought. One of the first was rack and pinion steering. There had been a tendency of racks and pinions to lock-up at inconvenient moments, so until that was curbed many designs carried over from the 1930s continued with drop-arms and drag links. The Cobra's suspension had to be brought up to date as well, combined coil spring and dampers with wishbones, replacing the transverse leaf springs.
The Cobra went under a lot of names. Sometimes the AC part was dropped altogether and it was known as a Shelby Cobra, a Shelby American or sometimes a Ford Cobra. AC engaged Tojeiro again 1958 to design a space-framed, de Dion axled car for racing. There was another stretched Cobra, for which Frua produced a lookalike body to its Maserati Mistrale, calling it simply the 428. It was fast, around 140mph (225.3kph) stylish but not very successful. Only 86 were made, a survivor the firm's sole exhibit for years at the London Motor Show long after production ceased. The design had really outgrown the proprietors, the staid deeply conservative rather dour Hurlocks, who had bought the company in 1930. You felt they neither understood nor really quite approved of the cult status the Cobra had achieved. It had not been what they had in mind at all. All that noise and speed was scarcely gentlemanly.

From: Sports Car Classics: Original road tests, feature articles and motoring columns by Eric Dymock. Amazon £3.08 or $4.99. Pictured 1) AC Ace 2) AC Ace-Bristol 3) AC Aceca and 4) 39PH the Le Mans Ac Cobra track tested by Eric Dymock and featured in Sports Car Classics.

Restoration

The National Trust is obliged to preserve houses and gardens. It can’t just let them decay. Its dilemma was touched on in a TV documentary about Sissinghurst, when a resident descendant of the donor family woke up one morning, to find the trust replacing a crumbling, antique stone statue with a modern copy.

It’s the same with cars such as Ian Brown's TR3 (right). Triumph TR2s were like first love. Their handling was not very good, but I didn’t know any better in 1955 when I went to the British Grand prix at Aintree in one. A treasured girl friend had another. One of my first published features was a competition history of the TR2 up to about 1956. I knew TR2s, so a chance to drive a restored one was too good to miss. What a disapppointment. It felt good at first. Lovely to drive an open car with your elbow overhanging the low door. What clear round instruments. Great to hear the exhaust crackle at 2,400rpm. I liked the crisp gearshift and roomy cockpit. What a practical car it was, with a decent boot.

TR2s are eminently restorable with a separate chassis and simple body parts and the owner had paid a lot for it. I hadn’t the heart to tell him the steering was terrible. TR2 cam and lever was never great but this was just stiff. It had no feedback at all. The Motor road test of a TR3 in 1956 thought it, “satisfactorily sporting”, which in road test language probably meant no more than “all right”. At two and a third turns lock to lock it was, not surprisingly, “heavy at parking speeds”.

There is a sharp division over restored classics. Some people like patina. Seats sat in by generations of drivers. Paint and chrome dulled and weathered. Exhausts that smoke because the cylinder bores are worn. These enthusiats try not to renew anything. Remaking decaying bodywork is anathema. Like the new Sissinghurst statue it’s no longer original.

I don’t agree. I like originality but not at the expense of practicality. When I drive a classic I want it to feel and behave as it did when new. The best restorations are done using period materials, techniques and workmanship. I’ll allow some liberties in the interests of research. When I did my MGB I took the best features of various ages – chrome wire wheels, chrome grille, leather upholstery but modern paint colour, and equipped it with a Rover 2litre twin-cam 4-valve engine with fuel injection, and a 5-speed gearbox. (TR3A right, at Goodwood)

That restored TR2 was joyless. It looked good but that was the end of it. In that case I’d have gone with the patina, saggy seats, draughty hood, opaque sidescreens…
Bit of both (below) my MGB had a new bodywhell. My A30 behind was all original.

School for Chauffeurs

If only Mellors had been Lord Chatterley's chauffeur, and trained last century by Rolls-Royce, the vexing business with her ladyship might have been avoided. Gardeners were under no obligation to avoid eye contact with the master's family. It was forbidden for chauffeurs. They could proffer an arm to assist elderly or infirm passengers, with the hand clenched to look reassuring, never outstretched. That would have been too familiar. Well-bred chauffeurs did not swivel round when reversing. They sat upright, turned slightly, or kept their hands on the wheel and used the mirrors. Sticking a head out of the window looked bad and they would never put an arm round the back of a passenger’s seat. The chauffeur’s handbook advised on how to address nobility, diplomats, and people in holy orders including, if he happened along, the Pope. (Above) Back seat chauffeur. 2007 chairman and CEO of Rolls-Royce Ian Robertson, with the owner of the 3000th Phantom.

Caps were doffed for royal personages, and replaced when back behind the wheel. Mellors would have been in no doubt about his place. Rolls-Royce’s handbook said firmly, “Avert your eyes from lady passengers wearing revealing clothing.” Advances from Lady Chatterley would have been rejected and, with his eyes steadfastly downcast, the relationship would never have flourished. Chauffeurs, a French term for firemen or stokers looking after the boilers of steam locomotives, would sometimes get airs, regarding themselves as analogous to the skipper of a gentleman's yacht. They were among the best-paid liveried staff, often selected from coachmen accustomed to looking after carriages and were crucial to a well-ordered household. When an Edwardian car was put away for the night, the fuel tank had to be de-pressurised, the clutch braced so that it would not seize, the radiator drained and sundry items greased or oiled. Drive chains were removed and boiled in tallow, the brass burnished, and the coach varnish needed constant attention.

(right) Original Silver Ghost much polished.

In the 1920s the Duke of Bedford employed 16 chauffeurs, but motor servants got a bad name and the press was full of grumbles about their bossiness, dishonesty and bad driving. “Much of the horror of motoring is centred on the chauffeur,” ran a complainant in 1906. “It is his convenience that must be consulted, it is he who gives the word to stop and to go on, he who decides that you must sleep in Coventry when you intended to go on to Shrewsbury. You may not make plans without consulting him; he is ruthless in his discouragements; he spends your money with a fine liberality.”

With its customary solemnity, Rolls-Royce set up a school for chauffeurs in 1907 which, by the 1980s had developed into a week-long course costing £1,400. It included maintenance, car care, security, first-aid, etiquette, and driving on the road and on the skid-pan. A maintenance lecture included advice on checking fluid levels, changing light bulbs and keeping records. There was a technical briefing, and car care started with washing and polishing - Rolls-Royce advised lots of water, a hose and sponge, and working downwards from the roof. Polishing was encouraged even though its new automated paint plant provided a high-quality gloss. “We take account of the chauffeurs of older cars as well,” said a principal. “There are good practical reasons for keeping a car polished. You can tell if it has been tampered with. Car washes were not recommended and only one newspaper seemed to have the right consistency for cleaning windows, - The Financial Times.”

American chauffeurs only. 1924 Springfield Silver Ghost Salamanca by New Haven, chassis 112JH.

Security was a separate course and included defensive driving. Rolls-Royce would have preferred owners to be unlikely to get involved in that sort of thing, but discreet armour and bullet-proof glass could be provided. Driving standards were strict. Nothing short of Institute of Advanced Motorists or ROSPA Grade 1 was expected, while safety and smoothness were taken for granted. Rolls-Royce chauffeurs were expected to avoid bumping over catseyes, and to know the owner's favourite radio station or CD. Procedures were laid down with care. A well-bred chauffeur knew how to alight, pocket the keys, walk round the back of the car - a relic of coaching - and open the door. He (it usually was a “he”) knew how to wait, not to eat in the car and never smoke. Only suitable material could be read while waiting, such as the car handbook or highway code and certainly not a tabloid newspaper. “Owners do not expect to pay a person to waste time.” There was not much to show at the end of the course except a certificate, a cap badge, a log book and the famous manual. The certificate could be a passport to a job and the course paid for in upper-class wages.

(Above) Torsten Müller-Ötvös 2012 CEO Rolls-Royce.