Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[Brian Read]

A friend of mine acquired a very rare 1930's sports car that had been totally dismantled and stored in large lumps in various locations for over 40 years so the chances of it being all there were pretty remote.It seems that the owners had disagreed over some aspect of the car and how it should be restored etc., so it lay dormant for many years but amazingly on gathering up all the bits from the various locations it was found to be almost complete.
The actual car had been known to have competed in pre-war hill climbs there is photographic evidence to prove it and was also raced at Brooklands but no information existed of when and what race is was entered in and to the best of my knowledge and surprisingly even Brooklands Museum couldn't trace any records of it.(I may be wrong on this so stand to be corrected).
The interesting thing is that my friend had somehow acquired the actual Brooklands race engine quite legally from the then owners.

Fast forward to 2007 when a local house was being cleared in a bereavement sale half a mile from where the car was being restored and I was asked if I'd be interested in a pile of old motoring mags etc.so naturally I said I'd have a look.
To my astonishment amongst them were two original 1938 Brooklands programmes from different race dates, both complete and in almost mint condition and showed details of entry of the actual car, who the entrant was and who the driver was and some race results pencilled in in the centrefold.
I'll leave it to the reader to imagine the look on the face of my friend who's restoring it who made a generous donation to my Rotary club in return for the programmes.
I have deliberately omitted names and the make of car in the interests of confidentiality and security, but the car ran superbly at a recent Crystal Palace sprint meeting.