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Probably (though not necessarily) the last batch from this venue. As you can see, apart from the storage section, very well lit and flash not required. In some ways, this really will be a museum, showcasing makes and models and individuality that is being phased out or has already long gone from Britain's heritage. The Leyland years were sad in so many ways, and if you really want to understand a lot of what went on, I highly recommend you read Sir Michael Edwardes book 'Back From The Brink'.
Those of us of my age who grew up with a proliferation of small manufacturers, some better than others, larger local manufacturers, some better than others, although many were rubbish if compared to today's offerings, they can at least be looked back on with a degree of fondness that the current generation(s) will never, ever understand.
The last photograph in the batch above has 10 vehicles that never made it to full production, including an estate version (Rover), replacement prototypes, jet cars, twin-engine vehicles, convertibles and so on. Thank goodness these are available to view, as quite frankly, I can't see future generations visiting museums of the future, showing current offerings or current prototypes which are generally so characterless that you can't even tell what they are without reading a badge.
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Sorry about so many front three-quarter views, but as stated before, they are for a library and not for winning a photographic or artistic competition.
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ERC, Ray thanks for more pics, some very interesting cars, the Rover Gas and Prototypes the Minis, the same never seen on the road.. and one of my favourite's the Group #44 E -Type.. finally that TVR, closest I have got to that is the two 1;43 models that grace my English / European cabinet .. cheers oops forgot the 30's Riley, must show that to my uncle when I get back to NZ in December ..
Although I called in briefly at Donington, once again, I opted to not go through as so many great cars have gone and the staff could only really offer the addition of a couple of modern F1 cars since my last visit. If you have never been before, the Donington Collection is worth a visit and as it backs on to the race track, you may be lucky to be there when they have a track day. That being the case, if you head down towards the paddock, the chances are that they'll let you in for free.
My last car call of this 2016 solo trip, was en route to Heathrow, the London Motor Museum at Hayes. I'd stayed at Watford Junction the night before so I didn't have the hassle of the M25 which can be a bit of a gamble at times and Hayes was just a short hop.
The entry fee was way over the top and the most expensive of the trip. I didn't know too much about the place in advance other than I knew there were custom cars and hot rods included. This is a privately owned museum and one person's personal collection and therefore represents his interests. The first picture is of the notice displayed just inside. Pity about the spelling mistake...
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An Opel...
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The Lincoln Zephyr referred to on the notice.
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Ferrari ute...
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The museum info is often misleading by quoting real cars yet displaying replicas, some of which were quite poor. This obvious replica had no info attached at all, real or fake.
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Some of the customised cars were either unfinished or dreadful, or both. Others were very impressive.
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Despite the notice stating "All cars are customised", that is blatantly incorrect, as there were plenty that were unmolested. They seem to push the sale of alloy wheels and at least three exhibits had totally inappropriate modern alloys - but with no sign of any other customising. A bit pointless.
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Gumpert Apollo - I needed to read up on that one as like so many small volume super cars, there is little real external individuality.
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TripAdvisor feedback states that rather than the collection growing, it has been shrinking. Given the owner's LA and USA connections, there are several cars with movie associations, again, real or copies I wouldn't know, such as the James Bond Lotus and a Batman duo, Disney 'Cars' and so on.
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Just one example of a classic car with inappropriate wheels
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Last batch from this venue (thank goodness I hear you purists say...).
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See post #930 for the interior. Barf bags not supplied.
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Maybe this last pic sums it up rather well?
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A little closer to home and another private collection. This is NOT open to the public and if you do know the owner, then please do not publish the location!
This Bentley is ex South Africa and whilst there, fitted with a different grille and was badged and registered as a Rolls Royce!
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For the pedantic ones, this is NOT a Jensen Healey GT, but is correctly labelled as a Jensen GT. The Americans have a lot to answer for with their 'safety' regulations.
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Dratted attachments disappeared again...
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This car very nearly had 'Royal Connections' but the visiting Royals' advance security advisors considered the lovely convertible would expose them.
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Not shown is the amazing collection of model vehicles, still in their boxes.
Back to a real Mix of Pics! What follows is a reversion to a mix of recent digital, older digital and past slides and negatives.
A three wheeling ever exuberant Gordon Burr
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Spotted at a motorway services area near Donington, what appears to be the latest incarnation of the GTM, orginally called the Cox GTM and a rear engined, Mini based kit car.
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A rather nice Scimitar outside the British Motor Museum.
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Another from the local collection.
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Did they, the Americans, really think that fitting bumpers on steroids to cars was going to make any difference in a crash ? I have been to this collection with the VCC.......allsorts of interesting stuff, and the shed itself is a work of art.......
Did the 'Merit' range of plastic construction kits make it to NZ? Dad managed the full set and made a good job of building them. I think I have them here in NZ. Although from memory, about three or four times the price of the 2/- Airfix kits that were my staple as a teenager, they were affordable.
The nearest I have got to them in recent years are the Tamiya kits - and I got hooked on the Jaguar MkII kits when I was recovering from (the first) spinal fusion operation about 18 years ago.
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Whenuapai of course and one of my favourite cars to photograph. This is the 1986 event.
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And 1987.
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The Waitemata VCC Chelsea Hillclimb - when they had noisy cars... Must be on shortly and my guess is that it will probably clash with TACCOC's Pukekohe meet.
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Was there ever a car like it! Once heard, never forgotten - and there weren't any at Goodwood this year. This was the 1996 Festival meeting (hillclimb) and I think there were 3 V16s there. At that meeting, I used a digital camera for the first time. The quality was terrible...
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Manfeild Whittaker's meeting, 1997. Even without the delicious Nigella pushing their products, we have bought Whittakers chocolate for years. Their support of motorsport was one of the initial reasons, but now, we buy it because it is so good.
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Yes they did. This is a very poor scan of the box my Vanwall model came in.
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Skipping around a bit as I try and clean up some folders on the PC, deleting duplicates or some with dodgy focus that have been superceded.
One of my extensive collection of race programmes! Programmes often offer very interesting insights into the sport and those from earlier years are always worth a read. Note the illustration on the cover, of Starkey's Bridge. Can you imagine hurling those 500+BHP Mercedes and Auto Unions through there?
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Dad's pic of course from the above meeting - Lagonda chases Riley.
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My pic from the reopening of Donington, 40 years later. Mick Hill's F5000 Trojan based VW Chev. Mick sadly passed away not so long ago but was a key figure in the success of the UK Super Saloons as a builder and driver. Interesting that at the British GP meeting, the F1 fraternity were very interested in this car and that led to Dr Harvey Postlethwaite assisting Mick with the car - for free.
Mick was fairly local to Donington and trained as a Post Office engineer, so was very much a local celebrity, starting off his passion for large engines in smaller cars with the well known Janglia and V8 Capris, the Jaguar XK8, then after the VW, Skodas and even a BMW M1 - and others.
The VW was sold to Border Reiver's driver Doug Niven, who painted it blue and had a lot of success with it, particularly at the northern and Scottish tracks.
It appeared at the Goodwood Festival a couple of years ago, back in this livery and Mick was present to see it run.
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Richard Dodkins well campaigned Ginetta. Richard raced that fearsome March Canam car at Hampton Downs.
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Ellerslie Concours was usually on my calendar, but I have missed it for the last three years simply because it comes at a very busy time of the year with Taupo, HD x 2 and even Leadfoot all crammed into a few weeks.
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The Ellerslie dates may or may not be correct...
Five years on and Garrat's Riley is there again...
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The Waitemata VCC Chelsea Hillclimb - when they had noisy cars... Must be on shortly and my guess is that it will probably clash with TACCOC's Pukekohe meet.
Chelsea hillclimb is this coming Sunday 20 November. TACCOC at Pukekohe is on Sunday 27 November.
Thanks Roger.
What descriptions would you like Terry? Most are fairly self explanatory in terms of broad identification, for anyone with a smidgin of general motoring knowledge.
Often, I simply just take a pic and apart from the make of car, which is usually obvious, I don't necessarily know too much. Where any previous pic since your last grizzle, might not be too clear, I have added something appropriate.
If you can't recognize a Ford Escort, Mercedes or Ford Anglia or even the giant Renault and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang from the pics, then I'm really not sure why you are still dipping in here. If you need locations or dates - which may or may not be obvious, or have another specific query on any posted pic, then by all means ask. As pointed out before, all my pics are dated as accurately as possible from the file name, but as I also pointed out before, those on PC's don't seem to have a problem, just you and your i-pad. Posting the pics takes enough time without also writing a book.
There are also some pics where I don't know what they are either, particularly 1940's and 1950's Americana, standard or customized - and even some single seaters, particularly Formula Fords.
Thankfully, many of the regular posters on here are able to fill in some of the gaps, particularly with regard to NZ events in the 1983 to 1990 bracket, when I neither kept a daily diary nor managed to get a programme.
Some pics take a lot of detective work and assumptions such as the pic of the Mick Hill VW. I wasn't sure what year it was, 1977 or 1978, and it took a good half hour of research to confirm it was indeed 1977 as it had sat in my 'undated folder' since it was first scanned.
An email to Bell and Colvill in the UK was sent yesterday, to try and date a pic of their BRM - which hopefully, will also enable me to date several other pics from that race meeting and move them out of that 'in limbo' folder. The research and detective work can be very time consuming just to try and avoid errors, but alas, sometimes, a lot of work leads to dead-ends and zero responses, which is very frustrating.
Modern digital is easy, but the internet/Google doesn't always come up with the answers.
I'm sorry if you want more on every pic, but it isn't going to happen anytime soon. I'm still cataloguing the film negatives most of which haven't yet been scanned, and I'm up to 12,000 so far - admittedly, that includes family and work pics.
ERC, Mark Donaldson's BN2 Healey 100 a 1956 model i note the left wing mirror is missing, just the post .. and in the previous sets the Riley LH1936, that turned up at an AHCCNZ Hillclimb in the mid 1980's complete with some advertising .. took a couple of photos on my Healey thread
As mentioned earlier, buses and commercials from the recent trip.
The London bus museum is located at Brooklands
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Goodwood's Wembly parade
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Coventry Transport museum with a locally built Daimler. Daimler were very prolific bus builders in the UK and I'm not sure whether they came under the BL wing along with the cars. Of all the vehicles I have driven, I'd still love to have ago in a separate cab double decker to fulfil an ambition! I've driven most things, from trucks to motorbikes, Aston Martin to Formula Ford, vintage MG to Reliant 3 wheeler, Marcos LM500 racer to a NZ train (honest!), but never a double decker bus.
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I think this group is from 1985 but I haven't confirmed the exact dates, so any confirmation would be appreciated. As these haven't been dated, the file name is only temporary, so my normal labelling rules can't apply.
This could even be as late as 1989 given the Lyle & Scott branding. Rob Walters Lotus 23. I presume this is a genuine Lotus 23? Note the earth banking as track construction is one of the guides for dating.
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Probably Tony Roberts, on the no longer used club track extension.
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I doubt anyone needs this captioning.
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...or this
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Cooper Bristol of course and again, no fixed date.
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More from the undated folder
Is this a Ralph Watson car? Not sure at all, but others will know.
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Probably one of the first events I organised in NZ, along with MGCC President Derek Prior (on the radio) was a series of sprint meetings at Pukekohe. I had been less than impressed with MGCC hill-climb meetings, where hours were wasted, running cables for electronic timing and/or telephones. Unlike a serious championship where timing to 1000th of a second might be crucial, club events weren't as critical, nor was there a real need for a telephone system.
I worked out that we could run two sprints at a time at Pukekohe using about a quarter of the track and using a 3-2-1 countdown over radio, and stop watches at the finish, setting cars off at about 10 or 15 second intervals, then after the finish line, they'd slow down and join the queue for the next one, before queuing up again for part 1. After a short lunch-break, we ran the cars in the opposite direction, giving us 4 circuits. A laptop and a printer meant results issued immediately afterwards. I think we had 600 runs through by 3pm.
When AHCC handed over Otaua hillclimb to MGCC, I ran the same system there. Radios and results issued immediately. Remember that in those days, results for hill-climbs were usually printed the week after.
This is Harley Norager in his MG BV8 and the first to break the ERC Speedbar at Manfeild and Pukekohe! The car is now owned and raced by Dave Mallin. We started the sprint part 1 from pit lane, so the exit was the current pit lane entry and the sprint finished some way after the hairpin. The second sprint started before railway and used the old, short link to the club circuit and back to the main track, finishing before what is normally pit exit.
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Morgan and Triumph V8 regulars with young Bill Hewson (Alfa) far left.
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Yes...... Ralph Watson BSA Front Drive Special
Thanks chaindrive.
The first pic here is from an excellent website covering race programme covers. It does help a lot and although I have managed one or two programmes from this era, having the actual Pukekohe programmes would be fantastic. If anyone is having a clearout and dumping theirs, I'd be happy to acquire them! Pukekohe only from January 1983 to about April 1991 and Whenuapai 1984.
The programme website does not have a full set (see the pic to see the gaps) and relies totally on contributions from interested supporters.
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These are obviously from the same meeting as the Cooper Bristol posted earlier. Judging by the cars parked in the background, quite possibly, a higher profile meeting.
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Someone will be able to identify this car for me! BCM maybe - based on pics taken much later at Hampton Downs? Seems it had a tragic history as the following extract from the interweb shows.
"But for the tragic death of Nelson motor racing driver, Brian Mabey, the two-day programme of the Nelson Car Club on the Tahuna circuit, would have been an unqualified success. Mabey lost his life when his B. C. M. Special overturned during the fifth lap of the 12-lap provincial championship on the first day."
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Note the pink paddock pass on the belt of the guy leaning in, on the last pic. Sadly, even at 400%, I can't read it well enough.
Looks like this is the Historic Race at the 1985 Nissan Sport Meeting. Car No 15 does match with the programme but Chris Read owns the BCM so he must have run that instead of the Lotus 20.
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Milan, you are a real star. Thanks very much for that. Confirms what I expected. Looking at the bottom of that list, the only person I don't know from that section is Graham Kyle. Several other well known names in that list, but also cars I can't remember seeing, specifically numbers 25 and 26.
Alas, film and associated processing costs often limited what could be snapped, so my memory could be playing up too.
The Group A cars and the Cooper Bristol are from 1985.
The Lotus 23B is from 1987.
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Thanks again. The D type and Talbot Lago locks the dates pretty well for several photographs and I'm sure Roddy McPherson's car was not a sports car!
Another mix... Apologies if any have been shown before.
At the 1977 British Grand Prix, Barry Sheene interviewing Niki Lauda with British boxer 'Enery Cooper looking on. I hadn't intended going to this race, but a buddy rang me a day or so before pleading with me to take a young lady employee or work mate of his, to the event. The attraction was that the young lady's uncle was something to do with the advertising hoardings at the track and we had admission not just to the race, but to a hospitality suite, on the edge of pit lane.
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Regular sprinter David Render was a good buddy of Colin Chapman's, hence the loan of this F1 Lotus - for a 900 yard sprint...
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No doubt Roger will know the exact date of this Le Mans race especially as it looks like Frank Karl. I believe it was 1984, but I could be wrong. The exact date would be useful.
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Another page of programmes from the website.
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Paul Leuch with the Lister Jaguar 1987.
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Needs no caption, but for Terry's benefit, Martin Morris in the D type!
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VCC member Kevin Andrew and fellow NSCC flaggie at the time, managed to sell me this Singer Bantam 'project' back in 1988 but it wasn't long before I realised I didn't have the expertise to make any progress. I managed to sell it some time later (at a small profit I might add) and it was shipped off to Waiheke. I have no idea what happened to it. There is a Bantam in the Classic museum at Hamilton. but I have no idea whether or not it is the same one.
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As mentioned earlier, the Singer in the Coventry museum isn't the coupe version. This is. Quite a shock to see this in Fremantle - even more so when I found that it belonged to the guy I was looking up, as he had a Marcos Volvo like mine! He had an amazing collection of about 14 cars including MG's, an Alfa, a couple of Fiat Multiplas and a very nice Riley Kestrel.
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I caught up with Rob again only last year and the Singer was for sale at $40,000AUD.
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Earlier, I mentioned the picture quality from the earliest digital camera available to the public, a Casio. Very expensive (as all new technology is) and it put me off using digital for years. The novelty of digital was fine, but I wish now I hadn't spent $2,500 on a Pentax SLR camera and lenses... The 1996 Goodwood Festival of Speed and I think I was juggling one camera with slides, one with film and the digital...
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Haynes Motor Museum, taken in 2014. Well worth a visit if you are heading to Cornwall from the London area. I posted a load of pics from there in 2014 and this to me is just is just a group of American cars...
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1989 - I think
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Denny Hulme and David Lange. Flagging at the Pukekohe hairpin when Lange was driving, I remember all the flaggies, regardless of their political leanings, giving him a huge standing ovation on his slowing down lap.
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Flagging wasn't confined to Pukekohe... A bit of stage marshalling wasn't unusual. I'm not sure of the date again, but it was probably Riverhead.
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I have no idea when or where or why, but I think a Hans Compter Jowett, that may have raced at the Whangarei street race January 2000. This may have been some sort of motor show in the Auckland region, possibly Henderson way, but before January 2000.
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A track day at Donington July 2002. A Lagonda (what a great name for a car!) I always popped down to the track after a museum visit and occasionally, it really was worthwhile.
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The Jowett is Hans Compter's car Ray. I am very lucky to have been for a ride in it circa 1986 with his old friend Vern Fairbrother.
I think this was one of the cars that raced at Le Mans. Cheers, Bruce
The Jowett Jupiter competed at LeMans in 1950 and 51. Won its class both years.....16th overall 1950 and 22nd overall in 51. It never competed in the body shape of the Compter car.
From the Interweb:
Stabilimenti Farina built four FHC Jupiters, and they all survive. Three are in excellent order, the fourth is under restoration
The maroon example was Marcel Becquart's Monte Carlo Rally entrant of 1952 and 1953.
His Class 2nd overall 5th in the1952 event is Jowetts best placing in this rally.
Ray, in post 1151, the 3rd picture, E Type Jaguar #33, is that the guy from Whangerai who went in Targa NZ and had some monumental "offs" a few years in a row? Malcolm someone? Had a female co-driver from memory?