Things I Like, Part 2 – Old Cars Being Spanked

When you think about it, caning an old racing car around a circuit or up a hillclimb is an entirely rational thing to do. It’s what they were designed for after all. Even so, I am always surprised by the enthusiasm VSCC members show in thrashing their cars in competition. It’s not that the drivers lack mechanical sympathy. You need lots of that to coax a good performance from a septuagenarian sports or racing car. I can’t imagine that they are the easiest things in the world to drive.

The car above is a case in point. It’s just about my favourite car in the whole wide world. It’s the Napier-Bentley owned by Chris Williams. It has a W12 Napier Lion engine of twenty-seven litres installed in a Bentley 8 litre chassis. Chris says that at Silverstone he starts it in second gear, quickly changes up into third and leaves it there for the rest of the race. It can smoke its rear tyres for most of the length of the Club Straight in third gear. It has a little signs painted on it which read “Napier-Bentley, nature’s laxative” and “If driven responibly, report as stolen.” I was slightly shocked when I heard that this was the only car Chris had ever raced. It’s such a beast that I assumed that he had spent a lifetime building up to racing it. Apparently not.

VSCC events are an absolute joy. I always go to the Spring Start meeting at Silverstone in spite of hating the place. Even in warm sunshime, it seems a bleak old place. Its only attraction for me is the cars in the paddock and in some of the car parks and in the enthusiasm of the people attending. The first year I attended it was on my birthday. I sat in a grandstand at Woodcote for the afternoon’s racing. I was watching the post-war sports car race which was packed with wonderful cars but there was a C-type Jaguar in the race and I only had eyes for it. There was just enough weak sunshine to take the chill off quite a cool day and as ‘my’ beloved C-type barrelled out of Luffield and through Woodcote onto the start-finish straight I remember wondering if any birthday could ever be better than this. I may even have blubbed a little.

I must have been the only motorsport fan in Britain who really, really wanted Donington Park to succeed with their F1 plans just because of my dislike of Silverstone. Not that I would attend an F1 event anyway. I like being in the paddock for practice and you just don’t get that opportunityas a fan in F1. In club racing you can poke around the garages, take photos, ask questions and as long as you’re polite, obey the safety rules and don’t get in anybody’s way when they really need to be getting on with things, you’re made to feel very welcome.

My favourite events are the hillclimbs at Prescott and Shelsley Walsh. You’re in beautiful surroundings and there are simply amazing old cars lying, almost disregarded all over the place. At my first visit to Prescott, I counted six or seven Bugatti T35s parked together in a corner of the paddock. It was my first encounter with one and to see so many of them together like that fried synapses. I think there were three ERAs there that day and I love ERAs. Again, I’d only ever seen them in books and magazines. There was a truly beautiful red Wolsley Hornet special which had a boat tail and made the most glorious noise. There were Austin 7s and MGs and stuff I’d never heard of and all of it was being pasted up this hill with great gusto. The most extraordinary thing about it was that nobody else thought it was extraordinary. I was hooked and I’ve been to at least three VSCC events every year since then.

This year’s Spring Start is on 23 April. It’ll be my birthday treat to myself as usual. You should give yourself a treat too because there really is nothing quite like it.