If you're British you will remember the weekend. July 17-18 2022. The weekend the media went mad. It was going to be hot. Not just hot but ‘record breaking’ hot, the hottest ‘since records began’. We were all going to fry! People would die from it! Farmers crops would spontaneously combust in the fields! They could not get enough of the headlines, the superlatives, the…exaggeration, because of course it wasn't, not that weekend anyway. The peak of the summer heat moved on a few days and arrived after we had all gone back to work. But no doubt it sold a lot of newspapers and ice creams in the meantime. Then it was on to the next fixation…something to do with cakes at No.10 wasn't it?
But I digress. That weekend we were back in the marquee, selling books at an event for the first time since before the term Covid19 had even been coined. September 2019 in fact had been the previous event. I remember it well as youngest daughter Georgie had been waiting for permission to join in - the agreement had been that she must be 12 years old ( the same age her elder sister Charlotte had been) to start working with me at events. So back in 2019 we were happily selling at the Loton Park vintage hillclimb unaware poor Georgie would be 14 by the time the next event came along! But here it was at long last. And what a memorable event it turned out to be. However first they both had to get to work while I supervised...that marquee does not put itself up!
After some encouragement, the result looked pretty good…especially with an Avro Lancaster flying overhead (Thanks to Stuart King for the photo) . That's me in the hat (of course) taking some video and remembering my late cousin John Grail who was a tail gunner in Lancasters during WW2.
We hadn't been to Shelsley since 2017 - although it had once been a regular location to pitch the marquee . We once appeared at almost every meeting, but times have changed. This year we had the attraction of a BRM theme at the annual CLASSIC NOSTALGEA festival. And it certainly brought out the crowds and some famous names. This last time the place buzzed as much was when Le Mans winner Hans Stuck drove an Auto Union Grand Prix car on the hill 80 years after his racing father had done the same.
Instead of Hans and the Silver Arrow, we had a trio of ex BRM F1 drivers, Howden Ganley, Mike Milds and Richard Attwood along with a brilliant selection of BRM F1 & sports cars and the ‘continuation’ BRM V16 which has just been built from scratch the to the most exacting standards. Unlike the previous V16s that have appeared at the famous hillclimb over the years, this one behaved itself all weekend and genuinely thrilled the packed spectator banks as the shriek of it's 1.5 litre supercharged engine echoed off the hillsides. Once heard never forgotten!
In fact there was another , original V16 on display in the paddock as part of the static display that comprised Pedro Rodriguez 1970 P153 ( in Yardley colours),
An ex Graham Hill V8 P61 from 1963
a 1974 P201 in evocative green and silver Motul livery (it's designer Mike Pilbeam was in attendance too I'm told)
and the Rover-BRM Gas Turbine le mans car from 1965.
Aside from the ‘new’ V16 there were display runs by an ex Niki Lauda P160 V12(Mike Wilds at the wheel)…
An ex Jackie Stewart P261 V8 (Richard Attwood, his team mate in 1966 at the wheel)…
, A 1959 front engined P25, a couple of rear engined P48s (one ex Jo Bonnier, the other ex Dan Gurney)
and the Hepworth family's P154 CAN AM car which Pedro Rodriguez drove in 1970
All of which was enough to make this very special but there were lots of other great cars in the paddock and on the hill all weekend. A host of exotic mid 1980s Group B rally and rallycross cars included Mark Rennison's Ford RS200 (BELOW).
A class of Lotus single seaters…
And a Vaxuhall Firenza ‘Super Saloon’ built and raced in the 1970s by John Pope and naturally now referred to as 'The Popemobile', powered by a turbocharged V8 Aston Martin engine and road legal!
The car park was almost as fascinating, a plethora of exotic, vintage and classic machinery lined up just behind our pitch.
In the background of this shot you can see the striped roof of the WALL OF DEATH which drew crowds all weekend, including my girls, who had not experienced the very up-close nature of such a show before, with the bikes getting within inches of your fingers at times, and came away from it grinning like Chesire Cats and almost lost for words. They loved it!
To top it all off we had a visit from Ex BRM F1 driver Howden Ganley, who bought a photo from our BRM themed display. In fact two of our archive photos are included in his book THE ROAD TO MONACO . This one of the Can Am P167 at Riverside, California in 1971 (Click on the image to see order detail if you would like to purchase a print) …
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And this one of him at Monaco in 1972 with the P180 (again click on the print for order details)
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It was great to be back out at an event after so long and it became a sort of long joyous reunion with people who we hadn't seen since before covid and who, frankly, we had rather worried we might not see again… my girls reckon I talked too much but there are times when, as the BT advert used to say, “it’s good to talk” and this was undoubtedly one of them.
And the heat? Well, it was hot. But then it was mid-summer after all and we had the shade of the marquee plus a lot of bottled water and some ice creams from Kiwi Kev in his van to keep us cool!
And my favourite car?….this one.
Only ever driven by Niki Lauda back in the day. Do F1 cars get more purposeful looking that the P160? I don't think so!
