KEEPING THE SPIRIT ALIVE SINCE 1999
Oh I say…Well held Sah! When the bonnet flew off of French ace Robert Benoist’s Bugatti during the 1935 French Grand Prix, he managed to catch it as it flew past his head. And hold it with one hand while he drove back to the pits with the other, to have it re-fitted!
Ernest Eldridge (on the right with the glasses) was a gambler, a pilot, a racing driver of mostly fearsome aero engined cars, a Land Speed record holder and also a bigamist! He is seen here shaking hands with his record breaking rival, John Parry-Thomas
Born Horace Harry Twigg in Southmead, Bristol, England, Horace was a larger than life Bristol Motor Trader whose build and driving style led to him being dubbed 'the Gonzalez of the West Country'. He actually changed his name to Gould after acquiring Gould's Garage in Bristol and getting fed up with people asking him if he was Mr. Gould.
Ladies and gentleman (Drum roll, please), just in case you missed it the first time around, for your unbridled pleasure we bring you our old favourite; the one, the only, the very dead; Felice “The Pirate” Bonetto !
At Zandvoort in 1962. Photo Horst Baumann
Trevor Taylor was born in Sheffield in 1936. His father Raymond had been in the building trade before WWII and had become good friends with Stan Watson, a well known turner in the North of England.
Born in Buenos Aires to a wealthy family, Carlos Alberto Menditéguy was a naturally gifted sportsman. And it wasn't that he was just good at one or two sports, he excelled at everything he turned his hand to. Take golf for instance. He had a bet with a friend that he could take up golf and become a scratch player within a year. He did it within nine months! He was a top soccer player while at college and excelled at tennis, billiards, fencing, racquetball, squash, shooting and boxing.
Not, you are thinking, within the usual process boundaries that provide us with our properly ordered universe.
But the information that the driver is Emerson Fittipaldi should arouse one’s suspicions that this may not be, just yer average Beetle.
But the information that the driver is Emerson Fittipaldi should arouse one’s suspicions that this may not be, just yer average Beetle.
It says something of his popularity and charisma that, despite not being in the absolute top-flight of drivers, Piers Courage seems to have been better, and much more fondly, remembered than so many of his contemporaries. An Old-Etonian and an heir to the Courage brewery fortune, Piers was not only familiar to the public as a Grand Prix driver.
Archie was something of an eccentric 'mad inventor'. An instinctive and intuitive engineer who’d found himself employment at the Royal Enfield weapons factory at the end of WW2. In his spare time Archie had designed a Grand Prix car, as you do. Completely! Engine, gearbox, chassis, the lot. Read on!
Oh I say…Well held Sah! When the bonnet flew off of French ace Robert Benoist’s Bugatti during the 1935 French Grand Prix, he managed to catch it as it flew past his head. And hold it with one hand while he drove back to the pits with the other, to have it re-fitted!
Here we have Karl Kling (right) and Hans Klenk in their Mercedes-Benz 300SL on the 1952 Carrera Panamericana.
Of all the mad races that ever were, the Carrera Panamericana ranked amongst the maddest. A nine-stage, five day road race, inaugurated in 1950 to commemorate the opening of the Mexican section of the Pan-American Highway. It ran almost the entire length of Mexico, combining sections of mountain switchback with enormously fast lengths of flat straight road. All with the added colour of precipitous ravines and goat-infested villages.