Five In The Car Park

Silverstone Classic

GALPOT Weekly #50

Welcome to GALPOT Weekly #50 a review of the last seven posts at "Gettin' a li'l psycho on tyres".



The week started with a trip to Danville Concours d'Elegance with Geoffrey Horton where this Aston Martin DB2/4 with coachwork by Serafino Allemano was one of several one off vehicles on display.


The MG NA which I looked at on Tuesdays blog features a hidden rear petrol tank making it easy to distinguish from it's K-Type predecessor.



On Wednesday it was a huge thrill to welcome Jay 'California Streets' Wollenweber to the GALPOT contributing team, Jay also attended the Danville Concours d'Elegance where he met Geoffrey and his XK140 FHC SE MC.



Jay's photographs also featured on Americana Thursdays Land Yacht blog which included this 1957 pillarless estate / station wagon Buick Century Caballero.



Ferrari Friday's blog overdosed on California Sunshine and also included an error, I erroneously had the spyder above down as a 330 GTS, it has since transpired that the car is one of just 20 365 GTS models, essentially a slightly updated 330 GTS body with faired headlights and a larger 4.4 litre /267 cui motor.



Yesterdays blog featured a couple of 1958 Lotus 16's with oblique mounted motors.



Today's Sunday Special feature is about a six cylinder Aston Martin DBS that outwardly appears to be a V8 DBS for the benefit of viewers of the television series "The Persuaders".

I hope you have enjoyed catching up with the last seven "Gettin' a lil psycho on tyres" posts using the links in this 'GALPOT Weekly #50' edition of "GALPOT" and that you will join me daily in the week ahead. Don't forget to come back now !

GALPOT Weekly #35

Welcome to GALPOT Weekly #35 where I am reviewing the last seven posts to appear on the "Gettin' a li'l psycho on tyres blog".



The week started with reviews of two events run over the Jubilee Bank Holiday Weekend, first, as seen above, a Banger and Demolition Derby event at Aldershot Raceway which introduced me to the delights of 7.5 tonne Truck 'racing'



and second the Jubilee Raceday held at Castle Combe which saw Steven Jensen, seen above driving his Spectrum 011b winning the Formula Ford race and the Driver Of The Day award.



On Continental Wednesday the 1964 CD 3 Le Mans car, seen above, was featured, a car which although ultimately unsuccessful anticipated some revolutionary aerodynamic developments that were first seen in Formula One in 1978.



 Americana Thursday's post featured a 1964 Prototype Ford GT which was built on the Slough Trading Estate in the UK by Ford Advanced Vehicles, after Eric Boradley of who was originally contracted to build the cars fell out with Ford in a disagreement over the materials from which the car should be built.



For Ferrari Friday the 1964 Ferrari 250 LM, above,  was featured which played a minor role, along with the rest of 1964 Le Mans grid, in the French film Un Homme et Une Femme.



Yesterday's post featured the Ark Racing Lotus Elan Group 5 World Endurance Championship race car seen above it's penultimate 'period' race at Silverstone in 1982, a privateer effort that added welcome variety to the Group 5 silhouette scene.



Today's post looks at 007 of the 50 exhibits on display at the 'Bond in Motion' exhibition currently showing at Beaulieu National Motor Museum. The original Aston Martin DB5, similar to the one seen above, borrowed for the production  of Goldfinger, was converted back to road spec use when it was returned to the manufacturer and sold as a used car, such was the dire financial position of Aston Martin at the time.

Thanks for joining me on this GALPOT Weekly #35 edition, I hope you have enjoyed catching up with the last weeks posts with the links provided and that you will join me at "Gettin' a li'l psycho on tyres' again tomorrow when I'll be revisiting the Avenue Drivers Club at Queens Square in Bristol. Don't forget to come back now !

GALPOT Weekly #8

Seems like only yesterday I started the first GALPOT weekly and suddenly I am on week 8, how time flies when your having fun.



This week started with a look at the Piagio Ape Cross Country, a youth orientated pick up based on a ubiquitous vehicle which not only keeps a large part of the Italian economy on wheels but also keeps a large number of passengers on the move on the Indian sub continent.



Getting Smart on Tuesday I looked at the Opel GT a mini European Corvette which featured on the intro to the 1969/70 to the a well known secret agent TV series.



On Wednesday I looked at a unique camper based on the Ford Zodiac Mk 4 featuring a camper addition built by the founders of the Ginetta sports car manufacturer.



Thursdays blog featuring the Martini Corvette used in endurance racing by the John H Daniel team was dedicated to my friend and Corvette fan Sebastian who got married yesterday.



For Ferrari Friday I looked at the latest in stylish shooting brakes the 208 mph all wheel drive Ferrari FF.



Yesterday it was a return to a little light carceaology with a look at a Lotus 23 with some hill climbing history in Austria.



Rounding out the week today I am looking at the bespoke Aston Martin Virage that was designed to use parts from Audi, Volkswagen, General Motor's, Chrysler and Ford prior to the latter taking over the marque in in 1988.

Coming up next week I'll be looking at the future of motoring with first ever GALPOT road test tomorrow, on Tuesday I'll be featuring a model of the type in which I first legally clocked 100 mph, and on Wednesday I'll be keeping warm looking at Project Sunbird.

I hope you will join me daily for all this and more to come in the week ahead at GALPOT. Don't forget to come back now !

PS Don't forget ...

Automobiliart GALPOT Seasonal Quiz



December 26th - January 2nd

Win a set of Paul Chenard Greetings Cards



Set 1 Sports & GT Cars



Set 2 Phil Hill World Drivers Championship 50th Anniversary Edition



Set 3 1934 Season



Set 4 Grand Prix Engines of the 1950's

or



Set 5 Mike Hawthorn's Race Cars

The Automobiliart GALPOT Seasonal Quiz will comprise 8 categories.

Overall winner chooses one set of Paul Chenard Greetings Cards from the five sets shown above.

The cards measure 15.24cm x 11.43cm, come in packs of 12 with 3 copies of 4 designs in each set, plus A6 envelopes.

Which set will you choose ?

The free to enter Automobiliart GALPOT Seasonal Quiz will run from December 26th - January 2nd Entries close January 8th 2012, Winner announced January 16th 2012.

Full details on December 26th at GALPOT.

Looking for Automotive Seasonal Gift Idea's? Visit Automobiliart Now !

Goodwood Revival #1 - Track Action

After four all to brief hours sleep I woke up at 4:30 am on Friday and got togged up in swinging sixtyish accessorized fancy dress which included button collard shirt, period scarf, flat hat and a pair of round blue shades.



By 5.30 am I was headed back towards Lord Marches renowned Goodwood estate, this time to visit his private race track which I had not seen since in 1987. Back then I was visiting to take part in a track day, the circuit had not been used for racing since 1966 and the facilities were in a sad state of disrepair.



Five years after the runaway success of the inaugural 1993 Goodwood Festival of Speed, held on a special hill climb track round the main buildings of his estate, Lord March decided to revive events on his racing circuit with an event dedicated to vehicles that raced in the Circuits halcyon days from 1948 to 1966.



The Revival has become a huge fancy dress party covering possibly the most optimistic two decades the Western World has ever known. More on the fancy dress side of the Revival will follow with a special blog on Saturday. Like the Festival of Speed the Goodwood Revival has also become a runaway success both racing days this year were completely sold out. Seen here a Standard 6CWT Pickup, XK140 and a Mk2 Jaguar.



I got to the track in plenty of time to catch all the practice sesions which were held on the Friday, but I had not counted on spending well over an hour dribbling around the car park reserved for those spectators arriving in classic cars ! The first action I caught on track came courtesy of the touring cars, here Brian Redman in his Mercedes Benz 300SE leads another former Grand Prix driver and, in my humble opinion, one of the better former Top Gear presenters, Tiff Needell driving a Ford Anglia through Woodcote.



Organisers hoped to gather 15 Supermarine Spitfires at last weekends event here a Mk5, short wing 5 blade screw Mk 15 and two seater Mk9 fly past these awesome machines are powered by 24 litre / 1465 cui Rolls Royce Merlin motors.



Ford of Britain celebrated it's centenary with a stupendous collection of passenger, military and commercial vehicles, none quite as breathtaking as the Ford 3 litre / 183 cui formula 1 DFV powered Ford P68 /F3L designed by Len Bailey and built by Alan Mann Racing. Jim Clark was to have driven this car on it's debut at Brands Hatch but because of conflicting tyre contracts Jim ended up racing a Formula 2 car at Hockenheim with fatal consequences.



Surprise car of the meeting that I had never heard of before is the #23 Marina Special powered by Rolls Royce V8 driven by Mark Ashworth, turns out this car was built by Alan MacDonald at the Beagle Aircraft Hanger in Shoreham for Alan Mann who would later be responsible for the Ford P68. Rolls Royce were not in the least impressed with the Marina RR and the car appears to have been exiled in Belgium for fear that it might be impounded.



Ueber Formula One aerodynamicist Adrian Newey has an important day job at with reigning Formula One Champions Red Bull Racing, during this rare weekend off he teamed up to drive the #25 E-type Jagaur with 10 time Grand Prix winner Gerhard Berger. Some interesting tweaks to the boot lid helped the pair stick this car on pole over 2 seconds clear of the rest of the field for Saturdays Fordwater Trophy Race.



I had never seen or heard a screaming formula Junior car before Friday and their 1100 cc / 67 cui 4 cylinder scream enough to make your eyes water. The #9 Elfin Ford above of Bill Hemming was one of two Antipodean designed and built Formula Junior cars entered in the Chichester Cup.



Among the many features was a display of cars driven by the first five time world champion Juan Manuel Fangio. The #1 Maserati 250 F seen above was driven by Fangio to his last and perhaps the most masterful Grand Prix victory of all time at the Nurburging in 1957, after a botched pit stop Fangio made up over 50 seconds on two Ferrari's over taking them on the penultimate lap and holding on to win by three seconds. Seen at the wheel of a 250F for the first time in his trade mark hat is Sir Jackie Stewart, who by his own admission also drove his finest race at the Nurburgring winning a wet and foggy 1968 German Grand Prix by four minutes despite driving round the torturous 14 mile track with a broken wrist !



Among many evocative vehicles of US origin at Goodwood was this 1953 Chrsyler Hemi powered Cunningham C4R replica roadster, initially designed to compete at Le Mans, driven by Ben Shuckburgh during practice for the in the Freddie March Memorial Race.



The Madgwick Cup for under 3 litre / 183 cui sports cars built between 1960 and 1966 featured this rare Elva Porsche Mk 7P driven by Helmut Ries. Most Elva's entered for the Madgwick Cup were BMW powered.



The Richmond Trophy of the last front engined Grand Prix Cars had a fittingly international entry of vehicles, Hubert Fabri is seen here at the wheel of his Aston Martin DBR4.



The one and only Stig Blomquvist, 1984 World Rally Champion, mercifully no relation to the poor imitation on Top Gear, shared the 2 stroke #28 1963 Saab 96 Sport with Anders Jensen seen here at the wheel during the second touring car practice for the St Mary's Trophy.



I made time to take a break from the on track action to catch fellow blogger artist Paul Chenard who came all the way from Nova Scotia to promote his latest publication the illustrated story of the 1934 Grand Prix season "Silver Clouds". Apparently the Daimler Benz Museum were so impressed with this hand bound limited edition they have acquired two copies. Going fast, act now ! To avoid forthcoming seasonal disappointment you can contact Paul to order your copy on his blog here.



A number of incidents during the days qualifying sessions for the races held on Saturday and Sunday conspired to delay the proceedings by up to an hour. Gerhard Berger, sharing Grahame Bryant's #1 AC Cobra entered in the Glover RAC TT Celebration race, left the course going into Woodcote,



the resultant damage precluded the vehicles participation in the rest of the weekends proceedings.



Fortunately Gerhard was not seriously injured and finished second sharing Adrian Newey's E-type Jaguar in the Fordwater Trophy Race on the Saturday.



The 1.5 litre / 91.5 cui era of Formula One goes back to the heyday of British driver participation in Grand Prix racing when Graham Hill, Jim Clark and John Surtees took three consecutive World titles from 1962 to 1964 and Jim Clark won his second title in 1965. Above Kurt DelBene in the 1964 #29 BRP-BRM, Roy Walzer the 1964 #1 Brabham Climax BT11 and Paul Drayson in the 1962 #18 Lotus BRM during qualifying for the Glover Trophy. This era of cars were immortalised in the film Grand Prix, though many of the chassis used in the film are actually cheaper Formula Juniors.



For romantic dreamers like myself there is a sad tale to relate to the prototype E2A 'VKV 752' seen here being driven by Tony Dron. This was the second of two E type Jaguar prototypes featuring components including the independent rear suspension that would be carried over into the production 'E-Type' model.

E2A was driven at Le Mans by Hangsen & Gurney without success in 1960 and used by the Cunningham team in the USA with Sir Jack Brabham and Bruce McLaren amongst others at the wheel scoring a single minor victory against weak opposition. In 1961 Jaguar used E2A as a test mule back in England.

Roger Woodley Jaguar's customer competition manager at the time was allowed to save E2A from the scrap heap on condition that the car would not be raced again. Sadly the first thing new owner Stefan Ziegler did after acquiring E2A for US$4,957,000 was turn E2A into a weapons grade racer and disregard Jaguars request that the car not be raced again.

Seems rather pointless when any number of weapons grade 'D-types' can be acquired for a fraction of the cost of E2A. More on the 'to race or not to race E2A' argument can be seen on this Nostalgia Forum thread.



After the qualifying sessions were over it was time to head back through the spectators Classic Car Park, I could have stayed longer but it was getting to the dark end of an already long day.

Thanks for joining me on this Goodwood Revival edition of 'Gettin' a lil' psycho on tyres', I will continue to bring you more stories from Goodwood all week, I hope you will join me again for the first anniversary edition of 'Gettin a lil' psycho on tyres' tomorrow. Don't forget to come back now !

Who Said A Spider Couldn't Fly ? - Aston Martin DB2/4 Mark II Touring Spider AM/300/1161

The Aston Martin DB2/4 launched in 1953 was a 2+2 hatchback based on the Aston Martin DB2 dating back to 1950.



In 1953 David Brown the owner of the marque sent several bare chassis to a variety of Italian styling houses and coach builders and presented the finished cars at the great motor shows of the day where orders were taken for limited production runs.



The Mark II DB4/2 was launched in 1956 with a 140 hp 3 litre / 183 cui straight six motor. Three of these new chassis were sent to Carrozzeria Touring to have flamboyant Spider bodies designed by Signor Formenti fitted.



Formenti's design was a clean break from what had gone before with exceptionally clean lines for the period with unusual twin air scoops on the bonnet



and further air scoops ahead of the rear wheels.



Sales of the vehicle did not materialise as expected after the first car, seen here at the recent Silverstone Classic, was displayed at the 1956 Turin Motor Show and the second car had appeared at the Paris Motor Show.



After it's launch in Italy this particular vehicle was acquired by Associated Newspapers in London who ran a competition in the Daily Express in which the winner who could best sum up the drophead would take it home.



Mr Alexander Smith, entry "Who Said A Spider Couldn't Fly ?" was adjudged the winner, and took the, then left hand drive, car home.



AM/300/1161 remained in England and was converted to right hand drive while the two remaining examples were sold to customers in the United States where they remain to this day.

Although the first collaboration between Aston Martin and Carrozzeria Touring was not an immediate success the two companies worked together on a long line of vehicles that included the DB4/2's successors the DB4, DB5 and DB6.

Thanks for joining me on this twin air scoop edition of 'Gettin' a lil' psycho on tyres', I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don't forget to come back now !