Beaulieu International Autojumble pic report

[Lucky]

I thought I'd port this thread over for anyone who's interested? Just realised I failed to copy a few of my show reports over from other forums (I guess cos there's no rotary content I never thought of it) but they may be of interest to some peeps on here who aren't on the other places I psoted them. Gahhh, worst sentence evarrrr... anyway, this is my day owt at the Beaulieu autojumble.

To be fair, I'd never been to this event before, though often meant to, and wasn't totally sure what to expect. I always assumed that the "International" part was a bit grandiose and over-egged it somewhat, but it turns out this is not so. I probably heard more continental accents and languages than I did English all day. I was also expecting it to be loads of trestle tables with rusty old lumps of Cortina and such lying on them, but again that falls far short. It's MASSIVE! And yeah, there are loads of trestles full of rusty car bits, even some Cortinas, but there are also bits for every single make, model and iteration of car you could imagine. Plus products, wheels, aftermarket, tools, consumables, brochures, anything that has anything to do with vehicles, in fact. Plus the Bonhams auctions, the for sale car paddock, free entry to the Museum...

Anyway, after the Brighton Speed Trials the day before, with a full workshift in between, neither me nor my mate Rich/Phil felt motivated to get down particularly promptly on the Sunday, assuming it'd be easy enough to whizz round, and since neither of us had any proper money, we weren't going to buy stuff anyway. Most of Rich/Phil's agenda involved getting into the Museum to trunk around the James Bond Mercury Cougar and re-ignite his passion for his own flagging build rather than the event itself. Big mistake. Suffice to say arriving late morning on the second day wasn't the ideal way to ensure getting round it all. In fact, we fell far short; didn't get through a fraction of what there was on offer! Best stop talking and get some pics on the go, then...


The first part of the show... well, not really a show, is it? Errrmmmm... event we came to was the For Sale paddock. This would constitute a decent show in any other context, the breadth of cars on offer to anyone with deep enough pockets was amazing. One of the first things to arrest my attention was my favourite bonkers Citroen


A DS wagon, complete with superb ventetian blinds. Look at it, it's got venetian blinds, for God's sake!


and of course the defining baroque weirdness that passes for Citroen interior. One-spoke steering wheel, lovely


art deco clockset. Warning: warning lights may induce dizziness lol


More bonkers-ness ensued, just over the way from it;


and then next to the Caddy (which was taking up two postcodes anyway, to be fair) from the sublime to the ridiculous was one for Colum


I mean, what a jumbled-up mix of vehicles. And it just got more random, since it's basically a massive forecourt of individual vendors there's no reason that there should be any theme or continuity, and you could travel decades in a few paces, jumping genre with every car you passed. Some were undeniably gorgeous, whether "real" or not... another car that one always assumes must be a replica (see AC Cobra lol)


Mmmmmm, curves


Then you'd get an unrestored SL500 that looked as though it had been dragged out of a barn after fifteen years only that morning, then a Renault Five GTT that was beautiful, immaculate.... and 30 grand! No, that's not a typo, the seller was asking thirty grand for a R5GTT. Funnily enough, it was unsold at the end of the day. Perhaps no surprise when just next door is the ultimate chest wig chariot


at two-thirds the price...


In fact, this Begently was £450 cheaper than the R5....


It's a funny old world, innit


Mmmm, more curves


Speaking of cars that you always guess must be reps. In this case, I'm feeling this may be the real thing


Certainly those pipes look like they've been there long enough to pre-date the release of copyright to all the kitcar makers lol


Sensible mods only. Aeroquip meets twin Malpassi FPRs


If there truly is such a thing as the male menopause, the noise it makes would be a primal scream of futility. What it'd look like would be this;


Slant-nosed fat-assed Porker awash with end-of-sale hormones


Jeez, just look at the dash hahaha. Put this pic to your ear and you can still dimly hear the previous owner sobbing into his bankrupt portfolio and drowning his wasted life in cocktails made from Just For Men, Taittinger and Hugo Boss. It's wrong on so many levels it just oozes cool


Not everything was quite so... vulgar? Too harsh? OK, brash then. Some truly beautiful pieces of automotive art on sale


And some iconic pieces of history.


Brown is back in, too. I wanted to take this Imp home and cuddle it. But I only had thirty quid, and needed some of that for a burger and copious cups of tea


Practical Classics had a little stand thing at the entrance to the car park paddock bit (never had time to see what they were about) and had this barn0find Moggy Minor thing parked outside. Not sure what it's all about, but I could have taken pictures of it all afternoon. Actually, I very nearly did. Here's some highlights


Poor thing, coming back from the dead as zombies does seem to follow the Hollywood rule that at least one eyeball has to fall out


Think you got patina? You ain't got nuttin'!


Got all the original badging, mind. Gentle resto needed, lol...


Hmmm, those hubcaps'll come up lovely with a bit of Autosol


Here's a British classic that's had a bit more love in it's life. Not sure I've ever even seen a Rover Ten outside of photos before.


But that's apparently what this austere beauty in stove black is


and speaking of tuff black'n'chrome, it doesn't come much more gangsta than this ridiculous, wonderful article;


A '60 (I think) Caddy Sedan DeVille. In Murder Black


Can you imagine in the corporate, uniform, sanitised, safety-legislated world of car design nowadays when the junior designer goes to his team leader and says "I've got this fantastic idea for a grille design, boss. It'll take, like, a hundred and fifty separate components, weigh two hundred kilos, take a man-week to assemble, and any pedestrains who get hit by it will be puree but it'll look the absolute tits"
"Clear your desk, Scroggins. You're fired..."


More classic Brit madness, a TR8 in fag packet colours. Because the original wasn't unreliable enough, Triumph wanted you to have twice the number of cylinders to overheat


Dunno what this is. Well, yeah, I know it's a Volvo, but what flavour I'm not sure


Seems to have a dash designed by someone who spent a lot of time working at Wurlitzer, not what you'd expect after such a severe-looking exterior


Guess these are the Swedish equivalent of "Obscure Volvo OC" and "IAM" badges

[Lucky]

Leaving the first hard-standing behind and wandering off into the lawns and leafy avenues of the Beaulieu estate (be glad when this thread's over and I can stop trying to spell "Beaulieu") we found it just as rammed with amazing cars for sale. One lucky punter was just getting his new purchase loaded up onto a trailer for delivery;


Don't see these too often, then! Rich/Phil was more excited by this than all the Bentleys and such we'd been past already. But then, he's a Blue Oval afficianado through and through


It looks immaculate in the pics, though the arches were a bit scabby inside up close. Still, find another one...


Everywhere you looked along the avenues there were recent sales being loaded into trucks and onto trailers for dispatch. Damn, should have got here earlier.


There were some truly amazing Fords on the grass behind the paddock. Not just the MkI Capris,


mint as they were...


this RS2000 was in every way better than when it first left Dagenham


Soooooooo tidy




There were plenty of big Yanks around here, too. This BelAir Townsman caused me some lustful moments


It's not even as though I ever carry anything big enough to warrant an estate, let alone an American one, but there's just something about patinated old wagons that gets me all unecessary


Takes some size of car to dwarf an Arnage


The Pontiac leMans is often rather unremarkable as American cars go, overshadowed by more ostentatious and movie-star sort of siblings, but this convertible goes some way to re-stating their case


There was plenty of more veteran interest of course. This XK140 (differing from the 120 mostly in terms of the speed claim Jaguar made for it, I understand. Whether they'd actually hit 120 or 140 mph I've no actual idea) was either loved all it's life or well restored, it was immaculate


Here's something then. Skirting the periphery of the tarmac-ed area still we came across a gaggle of vintage barges of massive size and collossal opulence. One of them had this lady on the front


I saw one of these kneeling Spirit of Ecstasy mascots at Goodwood this year, but I'd never seen one before that. Might have to get into some googling there...this particular one graced the bonnet of this rather impressive 1948 Silver Wraith. Yours for only 65k


Maybe she's just tired. At last, a car more expensive than a Renault 5


For a detail freak like me (OK, borderline OCD), Rollers are nirvana. Even the headlights have an entire world of wondrousness hidden within if you look deep enough. Joe Lucas, Prince of Darkness, meets messrs Rolls and Royce in glorious chromium plate rhapsody. Like, why not etch your company logos into the bulbholders...


To my shame, at first glance I thought this was another Roller, but a second look reveals it is of course a 1937 MG SA built by Tickford. As any fule kno, lol. Yours for 72.5k. Blimey, found the expensive corner then. Mind you, just look at it! Seems cheap at the price


And then we were back amongst the rather more common Rolls Royces lol. Here's one where the bird can be bothered to stand in the more traditional manner


That's the trouble with modern engines; not enough brass and the stroke is less than a foot long. Nice horn

[Lucky]

I belive this to be Rover Light Six of quite considerable age


What really got my attention was the mascot though. Grrrr! Angry Viking dude!


I have to say, I've a bit of a thing for mascots and emblems and pageantry, and I love their many forms like this Alvis


And this Riley (presumably a Falcon?). Shame you're not allowed things like this any more just to make the front of your car a nicer place for bucolic idiotic pedestrians to get themselves run over


By now, we were into the realms of seriously well-presented cars, and the sort that didn't dirty themsleves to put anything as vulgar as a price up. If you had to ask, you couldn't afford... Even this T-Bird, albeit too late a model to be truly wonderful, justified its no doubt mad price by being as near perfect as makes no odds


We were now outside the Bonhams tent... well it was a big tent. Invitation only, us proles could only peer through the distorted plastic windows and drool at the contents; classic Brit sportscars, pristine American muscle, rare vintage brasswork. *sigh* Couldn't even take pics, the windows were too wobbly and relfective. Still, the cars outside were good enough. Like this absolute squadron of big Healeys


I gather the later models lost a carburettor and were all the better for it. Imagine the shlorking noise three SU carbs must make on full honk, anyone who's even had one on a car knows that evocative, unmistakeable gurgle


Yer nail varnish's chipped, love


Don't see many of these about nowadays. Or ever, for that matter


Despite being a white elephant (and hideous to boot) the car that bizarrely saved Aston... once. I meant to check and see if this one had the Captain Scarlett dash still in it cos a lot were converted from the electronics to old-fashioned dials, but I got distracted and only remembered when I was editing the pics.


More Americana; an early Goat


and a properly tuff GTX


cubes. It's all about the cubes, baby


This Delahaye rocked my world, despite being French. Maybe it's the fencer's mask grille, but I can't shake off perverted thoughts of it in the weeds and 'rodded up. It's probably wrong of me, but...


It wasn't just cars either, there were some ancient motorbikes around, too. Like this FN (yeah, Fabique National, Belgium did used to have a motorbike manufacturing base when they weren't making guns. Who'd have thought) which insists on apparently wearing half its valve-gear on the outside of its engine.


Mark I Transit flatbed was excellent enough in itself, but also had this BSA AA patrol outfit in the back. Dunno if it came as a complete set or separates lol


Not all the vehicles on sale were immaculately-restored or lovingly preserved. There were several that were barn finds, basket cases in need on tonnes of work just to make road-legal or even to get running, let alone presentable. For example... can you tell what it is yet?


No? Maybe a glimpse of the dash will help?


Hahaha, OK I'll stop teasing.


Holy cow! Not often you see a Begently in such a state!


It did look like most of it was there, albeit half the outside trim was on the inside, but by god there's a job of work getting that back up together!


Makes for a cool pic though, doesn't it? When I win the lottery and buy my petrol-heads meeting point cafe I want one exactly like this to mount on the wall


It wasn't the only one;


or even the only marque to fall prey to the ravages of time. This Europa needs a bit of flexi-fibreglass-filler to look truly lovely again


and this li'l MG seemed to be held together mostly with bungee and rust


I love ornate old instruments and never miss a chance to take pics of them. Another one of my weird fetishes

[Lucky]

By now we were wandering out into the grounds of the Beaulieu estate, past the walls of the ruined Abbey or whatever it is. There were some severely old cars for sale racked up here, like this gnarly old Talbot


with one of those excellent radiator-mounted temp gauges I love so much


and even more ancient, this Renault thing. Moses had one of these


Shares in Brasso not included in sale


Just over the way were some quality Jags. Who doesn't get moist over a nice C-type?


This must be a bit rare. It's an SS100 (I think, cos the 90s were all two-seaters IIRC) Jaguar. The 100 in the name stood for its claimed top speed, as was a tradition for jags until they started to use the "type" designations. The SS was from Swallow Sidecars, the original firm grew up in Blackpool making motorbike outfits, only becoming SS Cars in the early 30's. Of course, after the war the letters "SS" had all sorts of unwanted connotations, and they dropped to just being Jaguars


By the time they'd stopped re-engineering Austin chassis and running gear and begun building their own bespoke cars like the SS range, they were quite cagey about what the letters actually stood for; opinions varied from Swallow Sports, Super Sports, Super Swallow... pick one you like the sound of


Nestling right up amongst the walls were a load of campers and suchlike. My favourite one;


The back was well appointed, the cab... not so much. The word here, I think, is "utilitarian"


Hey, it's got an instrument. How many d'you need?


And that was pretty much that for the cars for sale area, we were now into the autojumble fields proper. The sheer scale of the place defies description, it's like Glastonbury but all the tents are stalls selling car parts! Four massive fields, row after row in a never-ending bewildering array of rusty, tatty, but glorious old tat!

I can see why it's held over two days, if you were on the hunt for that elusive nearside reciprocating flange sprocket for a 1932 Rootsifarian Super Bullroarer, it'd be here.... somewhere. But it'd take you two days to root through every pile, every cage, every tray of mysterious chunks of irongmongery to find it. And even then, you'd need to know exactly what you were looking at; half the stuff is unlabelled. If you dunno what it is you probably don't need it! I could have taken a million photos of the stalls alone, they were utterly and completely fascinating! But we were running out of time badly, and some of the stall holders seemed to think I was a bit of a mutant just taking photos and not buying owt and got a bit uppity, so I'll just put up a selection

Carburettors sprout like mushrooms from a field of trim and rusty old hood carcasses


Bike parts from ancient and modern nestle amongst wings and body panels from Avenger to Zephyr


Genuine NOS sparkplugs from times long gone (true story... back in the pioneering days fo the Isle of Man TT one competitor had already fouled his plugs and put his spare set in when the second set fouled as well. It was a long long lap back in those days, 33 miles, you needed spares and a good toolkit. He stopped by a field and negotiated with the farmer to borrow the plugs out of his tractor, completed the race and returned a new set to the farmer the next day. Those plugs came in a box like these lol.). Not sure the HT wires would be exactly safe after seventy-odd years though....


This stall was one of the many international ones, the guys were French and had a bewildering array of parts from ancient marques and models. Should you be searching for that grille for your 1930s Delahaye, this was where to come


Plenty of stalls with bizarre mix of stuff; this one saw no conflict in displaying period signs alongside weird shaggy car blanket rug things and brand new eBaytatsic tachometers and gauges! Actually, I'm a sucker for bomber art-type laydeeees so never mind a chance to take pics of them lol


and speaking of which, you could buy an entire alleged panel from an alleged actual plane with an alleged authentic bit of art on it. Errrmmm...


It would appear a pretty girl has always been able to sell anything. I like this old Art Nouveau French lady selling pneu velo to the discerning gentleman. Please don't touch in Franglais


And somewhat more prosaically, from a slightly more relaxed time;


It's unclear how pretty a lady has to be to manage to sell a product called "Englebert" to anyone, though. Judging by the fact I've never heard of them and how everyone who saw this sniggered, I reckon even the prettiest of lady's wasn't that succesful at it and the Englebert brand was consigned to history's footnotes. Maybe you have to be French?


and meanwhile, from a much more innocent time... I wouldn't advise asking your bootmaker for cock in this day and age, it might end up very ugly


One of the fields was pretty much dedicated to bikes, and I spent a fair amount of time trunking around here, bikes being my first automotive love. Rich/Phil grumbled a bit but contented himself going through bargain boxes of old Matchbox and Corgi cars (allegedly for that elusive Cougar). Here's a quality old Velocette, with fantastic fishtail;


There weren't just complete bikes for sale, either, plenty of spares and parts as well as modern manufacturing for your classic. Should you need an old Indian tank complete with brasswork


NSU were once at the forefront of sporting bikes, as befits the company foresighted and steeped in engineering prowess enough to take on Dr Felix Wankel's (snigger) rotary engine and make it work. Ish. This is a beautifully restored example of one of their more humble models (split single/twin engine in one casting, mind)


Their supercharged Rennsports and split-single racers once decomated all at the track. Lovely. Or if you don't fancy the bike you could always take home the giant aeroplane propellor stacked just behind


Here's something a bit different. The odds are you might never see another


The Czech contribution to world motorcycling, and as far as I'm aware, the only production three-seater inline bike


This is a Bohmerland. Some variants were over ten feet long, though this is a later one with the third seat above the rear wheel rather than in front. Above the twin fuel tanks, too! The engine was a single of about 600cc, which must have fired about once a calendar week, and had exposed valvegear poking out right where the intrepid pilot's gentleman vegetables would be! Hardy lot back then, your pioneering motorcyclist!


Wonderful instrumentation. Yep, I'm still on about it. Bohmerland started in the 1920s and were gone by the end of the War, for obvious reasons, but they had a lot to offer, including one of the first ever production cast wheels. Yeah, in cast iron (!) but hey, it's a start


Speaking of hardy motorcycling, how robust would you need to be to travel as either rider or passenger in this slightly scary-looking batchair on wheels!?


Still, at least with that massive rear sprocket it must do good wheelies when there's no passenger in the front! Or would if it had more than about 1/3rd of a horsepower


Anyway, with the time trickling away rapidly, we abandoned the show fields so we god hit the museum and let Rich/Phil complete his religious pilgrimage to the Holy Bond Cougar. I didn't have the time or money to buy anything much, and to be fair, most spares were considerably older than my metier, but I did pick up a decent haul of brochures


and mystery Mazda logo thing. No idea what it is, maybe a wheel centre or horn boss? It's about 3 inches across, alloy. Any ideas?

[Lucky]

And so into the National Motor Museum. I've only been here twice in my life, once when I was about seven (when it was in black and white) and once on a camping holiday in my late teens when me and a few mates dropped in for a visit. That time it all seemed a bit blurred through the thick cider-goggles I was wearing, so it was interesting to have a mooch round as a (reasonably) coherent and sober adult.

It's smaller than I remember, and some of the cars weren't there. I guess they might ortate some of the exhibits around for sake of space and keeping things fresh. I have a memory of the giant red-nosed Sunbeam landspeed record car, for example, and that was nowhere to be seen. At the moment there's a special exhibiton of "50 years of Bond, 50 Bond vehicles" which I suspect has taken up room from other exhibits. Clearly the actual place isn't small as such, but in the context of displaying vehicles you obviously need masses of space, and things seem rather.... wedged in.

Anyway, one of the features I liked the most was th eway it's a proper museum, with period displays set up all over the place. This really helps you envisage the past days of motoring long gone. Sets and displays like this garage scene;




Storerooms displaying packaging and memorabilia that must ahve taken decades to amass. This is all the ephemeral stuff we unwrap and chuck in the bin, it must be a thankless task trying to collect things like this into a coherent record of the past!


I couldnt resist titting around with the pics and trying to get properly into the antique vibe, lol






Even some of the exterior walls of the building are dressed as set faces




I remember the days when you'd pull up to a service station like this... well, I say "you", obviously I meant the old man would, I was a little kid in the back, I'm not that old. They used to be called service stations cos you actually got service there lol, some little old dude would dodder out in his grey overalls and actually fill your petrol tank for you from pump like these. If you were realy lucky he'd even wipe an oily rag across the windscreen in a desultory fashion. Blue was Super Shell, white was normal stuff


Even older; one you had to actually crank by hand!


Just to prove there's no partisan Shell bias (actually there is, V-Power roolzz), here's a Castrol one


Another way they've managed to exploit space and give the whole museum display feel to things, as opposed to just a load of cars parked up, is using the space three-dimensionally.


such as this slightly odd girder-work display of racing cars from various ages, an Allard, Silk Cut Jag group C racer and pair of F1 cars. It's impressive to look at, certainly. Hard to take decent pics of the cars from any one point, but you can get some interesting feature pics










Right, enough of that. The reason Rich/Phil was here was the Bond display, as I've already said so that was our first real port of call. I left him salivating over the Cougar and mooched about checking out the other exhibits. The gimmick is they have fifty vehicles from the films to celebrate 50 years of Bond. Sometimes the definition of "vehicle" is a tiny bit stretched (such as the hand-held underwater tow-subs) but it does mean you get to see some of the more bonkers items 007's used such as


the truly preposterous jetpack, and my own personal favourite, the croc-sub


epic! Like, why wouldn't that work!? Anyway, to more sensible things. Ignoring the blasphemy of putting Bond into a BMW, we find things like;


well, it's a bit nice, innit? In fact, there were Astons a-plenty, including the one that's done the most body rolls of any car in a motion picture, the DBS he so shamefully totalled for no good reason in the new Casino Royale;


considering how hard it hit how often, it's stood up incredibly well. I love the bits of mangled carbon fibre sticking through


The one from the opening chase in the impossible-to-understand Quantum of thingy was there, too, complete with bullet holes and scrapes


easy to take a spectacular pic of things like this


Time was when a stick-on 007 bullet hole decal was the height of ironic chic in vehicle customisation (remember those 2CVs?). Times have moved on a wee bit. Or have they?


Truth is, it was really dark and hard to take any worthwhile photos in a lot of the display (such as of the green Jag XJR with rocket launchers and gattling guns) so I went up to the top level of the display to find some easier subjects. Who doesn't want a Lotus that turns into a submarine?


Just a brilliant insanity!


Bond's used plenty of American muscle throughout his career as well, of course (no, not Felix Lighter). Here are some iconic Yank tanks;


the up-on-two-wheels through the alley stunt Mustang Mach 1


complete with not even remotely cheesy snakescale decals. No engine though


The AMC Hornet used for the first ever 360-degree spin jump over the canal in The Man With the Golden Gun


and the real reason for Rich/Phil's pilgrimage, the Mercury Cougar, complete with ski rack, as driven by that funny Antipodean Bond fella in that film no-one's ever heard of. On ice


This car is the reason he's spent nigh on ten years restoring his own red convertible '69 Cougar XR7 from a flintstones basket case to... well, to much better than this one. But then, this one's had a hard life. Takes all sorts, innit, but I'll take the DB5, ta

[Lucky]

Down below the Bond exhibition was the central atrium housing the collection of landspeed record holding cars, minus the aforementioned red-nosed Seagrave Sunbeam. This old Sunbeam was a record-holder before Campbell senior got hold of it and re-painted it blue to become his first Blue Bird, mind


Odd integers chosen for the tacho there. Huge steering wheel made for proper manliness wrestling match. You need that when you're aiming a v12 350bhp Manitou engine (oooh, evocative!) at the horizon. It was originally intended as an engine for the R34 airship


Streamlining was a "science" as much indulged for looks as performance back then as it grew from its infancy into true benefit and application. This car took the land speed record at over 150mph in 1929 in Malcolm Campbell's hands, prompting Seagrave to up his game with the Golden Arrow, and Louis Coatelen to build the Sunbeam 1000BHP, powered by twin Matabele engines... that sadly wasn't here today. That managed to break the 200 mph barrier before Seagrave smashed the doors off it two years later


There's an entire wall of this hall given over to information and memorablia about the superhumans who used to take these giant beasts into unknown territories in the quest for unvisited amounts of velocity. It's alright ma, I've got my goggles and a leather hat, I'll be fine


The Sunbeam looks rather anonymous when it's overshadowed by the big daddy of them all


the Bluebird, one of the most insane pieces of automotive sculpture ever. And incredibly difficult to fit into one picture frame. But just look at those curves!


rarely does form meet function to produce such a purity of beautiful shape


This is the Bluebird-Proteus CN7 (Malcolm Campbell named his record breaking vehicles Blue Bird, his son Donald dropped the space and made it one word). It was the car that tried very hard to kill Campbell at Daytona in 1960, fractring his skull amongst othe rthings, in a high-speed crash. To overcome his panic attacks as a consequence of this accident, he learnt to fly light aircraft in his convalesence, which gives you an insight into the mindset needed to pilot something intended to hit 500mph for the first time in human history. When Campbell did demo laps of Goodwood to unveil the car, it was limited to tickover partly because it only had a four-degree steering lock and appalling visibilty. It hit 100mph on the straight.


Four years later, in Australia's Lake Eyre bed the Bristol-Siddely 3.3k kW free-turbine engine took the four-tonne vehicle to an average of 429mph over the measured mile. When it left the strip, it was hitting 440 and still accelerating. It's believed that had the conditions been more optimal the average would have easily reached the 450 mark. It's got some serious engineering going on, this thing. Here you can see half of the exhausts lol


from above you can see the slippery shape in full (or could if it wasn't too damned mahoosive to fit into one pic). It's got 52-inch wheels. All-wheel drive, too. Tyres must have been tricky to find


Nestling alongside is the slightly slower, older, but no less astonishing Golden Arrow of Major Henry Seagrave


Blimey! It's got some shock and awe about it, no?


this was propelled by a far more sensible engine than the Campbell's turboshaft excess;


the very modest and sensible 23 litre Napier Lion producing an understated 925bhp at a mere 3,300 rpm


yeah, like the engine in that Bentley. Gives a whole new perspective on how brave anyone trying to wrestle one up Prescott Hillclimb is, doesn't it?


For my money, this thing's just as astonishing as the Bluebird, is not more so because of it's greater age. Seagrave hit 231 mph in this. In 1929. That beat the old record by nearly 30mph. Now just think about what day-to-day cars were like in 1929, when even hitting 50mph was an achievement...


The huge tanks between the wheels were filled with ice to cool the prodigous heat from the beastly engine. The car had a telescopic sight on the nose to keep it tracking straight and help avoid running off-course

[Lucky]

With due homage paid to the groundbreaking speed record setters, we were free to spend the remaining time before the place closed having a look at the other vehicles. What an eclectic mix of stuff, from truly ancient to randomly modern, no apparent rhyme or reason about it. Bonkers. Let's start of back in the mists of time with this bizarre old fire engine




This DeDietrich has such marvellous seats I want one just to put in the front room


This old 1909 Rolls was found acting as a tow truck in Scotland. It's now restored to its full glory, as befits one of the most valuable vehicles in the world.


More of my instrument fetish. Wow, fifty mph!


As you'd expect, I suppose, there is plenty of highly desirable and expensive Rolls goodness in the museum, such as this 1914 Alpine Eagle, named in honour of the Austrian Alpine Trial ascent of the Katschberg Pass


This 1925 Phantom 1 is immense, amazing, and features one of the rarest details on any Rolls-Royce


The "Whisperer"


Many people know the story of how Charles Sykes sculpted the Spirit of Ecstasy for his friend, the Second Lord Montagu. The model was one Eleanor Thornton, Lord Montagu's secretary and secret lover. Despite his marriage to Lady Victoria Constance, Ms Thornton was his Lordship's true love though they couldn't marry because of her lower birth, and he carried on the afair with her in private until her death during the sinking of the SS Persia off Crete by a German U-boat. "The Whisper" was made by Sykes (who also apparently had a thing for Eleanor, the "standard" Spirit is sometimes disparagingly called "Ellie in her nightie") for Lord Montagu's personal Silver Ghost. Only two of this version are known to survive, and the hush pose is supposed to be a sly wink to Lord Montagu and Ms Thornton's relationship just as much as to the whisper-quiet quality of the vehicle it adorned. So now you know


Rollers aren't the only valuable old cars here though


There's this 1910 Type 15 Bugatti, for example


Complete with Ettore's signature cast immemorial into the head. Aye, they knew how to add quality touches in them days


Nice horn (snigger)


Here's a little relic of the days when Swallow Cars (them again) were re-engineering Austin 7s into cheeky little roadsters and coupes;


Making sure there was no mistake over its humble beginnings they threw some serious re-badgery into it


Need a spleenectomy? Just get run over by an SS-emblemed car


Lovely coke-bottle shape on this Riley Falcon, before coke bottles were taken as the acme of car shaping lol


More excellent mascotry/radiator gauge


Looking just as ancient, but of course nowhere near, is this 1968 car that looks as if it fell out of the turn of the (last) century. Everyone loves Chitty, lol. Our fine four-fendered friend...


There's plenty of weirdness if you look for it here. How about an Outspan Orange, made on a Mini base and costing 20 grand for the four built to advertise the famous fruity drink in the early 70s?


Sorry, couldn't help that. OK, I'll be sensible now, promise. How about


one of the most beautiful cars ever made, in any genre, any time period? The peerless 851 Auburn Speedster


the baby of the unlikely-named Erret Loban Cord who turned Auburn from near bankruptcy on his arrival in the 20s to being the car anyone who was anyone had to have. Rarely this was not through engineering prowess or the beauty of design, but simply because he was the salesman par excellence and could have sold turds as ready-to-hatch dog's eggs if he'd put his mind to it. Every Speedster made a loss, and by the time he moved on to Dusenberg (yeah, it's a Doozy) they were on the verge of collapse again, but the star that burns twice as bright burns half as long and the Speedster scorched the retinas of anyone who saw one










It's alright, innit, I think you'll agree. En route to Dusenberg, Cord establishe the Holy Trinity of American opulent car manufacturers by creating a marque named after himself. This


is a Cord 810, styled and engineered by Gordon Buehrig. There's some ingenuity going on here, like the famous Hudson step-down floorpans, the 810 was low with no trans tunnel to intrude, the gearbox being mounted in front of the Lycoming V8.


Plenty of other innovations, this car had variable-speed windscreen wipers at a time when some cars didn't even have windscreens, let alone wipers. Also has pop-up headlights in the pontoon fenders, though they didn't exactly "pop" up, since they had to be cranked by hand from the dashboard!


Oooh, I'm coming over all unnessecary now. Change of pace, maybe. The Museum offers loads of bikes, all mostly squeezed in far too close together to make any good photos, but here's one. In fact, this is probably the worst engine ever made by a British manufacturer pressed into the most hideous chassis ever thrown together in a garage


The Ariel square-four engine in a despicably ugly chopper frame with the most disgusting forks, bars, pipes... oooh, everything imaginable. If you stare at this picture long enough you'll actually be able to hear the rear cylinders start overheating. Just wrong on every level; the 60s and 70s weren't always the land of style iconography people remember them as lol


It's odd when you start seeing vehicles you used to own appearing in museums. I didn't own this exact bike, but the next model-year along. This is the Honda FirBlade, and a strange choice in some ways. Yeah, the 'Blade was an iconic bike that changed the evolution of sportsbikes for ever, but this is an unremarkable example from the middle of the run, not even the most desirable colourscheme for the model-year (the incomparable Urban Tiger would be the one to have). Why not an original '92 round-headlight model? Weird


Speaking of weird, we found this single solitary example of rally car hiding under the staircase and the motorsport display. Wide-arch 'Scort, lovely!


there were even some "normal" cars that actual humans might conceivably drive; more Ford goodness, yet another tidy MkI Capri.


A rather nicer Europa than the tatty goblin in the paddock, resplendent in JPS colours


My third-favourite evarr Ferrari, even if it isn't exactly a Ferrari if you want to be pedantic, a 246 Dino


No need to wonder if this is a genuine one; a narrow-arch early proper 427 Cobra in Satan's Heart Black


We'll end on some more motorsport heritage, shall we? How about some good ol' forced induction?


Of course, even though everyone reveres the blower Bentleys, old W.O. Bentley hated the idea, favouring increased cubes over supercharging and he only accquiesed to allow the Blowers to be built to prove his point. Indeed, they weren't as successful or as reliable as the N/A factory racers, but somehow have become the ones cemented in collective memory. They do, you have to concede, look extremely right!


More dashboard instrument righteousness. Lovin the "Square inch" logo on the pressure gauges. Anyone offer an opinion on what the funny little sight glasses with the burette droppers in were for?


Of course, there has to be some F1 presence in any car Museum, and this is no exception


Why is it cars always look best in fagpacket colours?


This '77 Lotus JPS is how F1 cars will forever look in my mind, because this is what they looked like when I first saw F1 racing. Just like your favourite Dr Who is always the first one you watched. Unless you were unlucky enough to grow up during the Colin Baker period, of course...


Hmmm, fag packets and booze sponsorship, double winner!




And that was it, our time was up. The museum was closing, and we just had time for a cup of tea before diving into the freeze-frame DVT of the queues getting out of the South Hants cul-de-sac. The exit through the atrium presented one last opportunity for snapping vehiclular icons


I have a lot of love for Beetles, bizarrely. We always had them when I was a kid. Not because they were cool (they weren't, back then) but because the old man was tight and they were the cheapest way to get four wheels and a roof. I remember days when my mum would do a school run for friends and there'd be like seven kids wedged into this groaning, protesting old Beetle. Being the youngest I used to get stuck in the parcel-shelf/well on top of the engine, behind the back seats. Seatbelts were the stuff of science fiction then, and no-one ever thought about the effect of a seven-year old suddenly acting as a cannoball around the interior in the event of an accident. Happy days, lol.


So that's it. Well worth the trip and the traffic nightmare, I'll definitely be going back next year, only this time I'll make sure I get there a damn sight earlier, and take some money with me. Fatal mistake?

lol. Thanks for reading as always. Now go away