Weekend update Part 4

Time for a little light entertainment before the weekend. I am quite pleased with some of the photos I took at the Gold Cup. Static photos are quite easy to take but I’m particularly fond of this scene with a Lister Jaguar.



Action photos are more difficult. I know a poor workman blames his tools but action pictures don’t always focus in time and there is an annoying delay between pressing the button and the picture being taken – time that can make the difference between capturing the moment and missing it completely. One that did come out well was this scene of three Lotus Cortinas cornering hard at Cascades corner.



Sometimes the pictures were just a little too small or slightly out of focus. This picture of a Ford Falcon illustrates the problem.



Even more depressing is the perfectly framed shot that is completely out of focus. This Chevrolet Corvette was an interesting subject as it had been hastily repaired after an accident, you can make out the blue “gaffer tape” but the detail is lost.



Then there are the photos that were taken way too soon…



… a little too soon …



or too late.



I can’t remember what happened here but it was probably quite dramatic given the smoke hanging in the air…



But sometimes, if you’re too slow on the button, all you get is a picture of an empty stretch of tarmac.

Weekend catch up part 3

Time to cover some of the highlights of the Gold Cup weekend. One of my favourite things about the Gold Cup is the support from local classic car clubs who bring all manner of interesting machinery. I failed to photograph a very tidy chrome-bumper Alfa Romeo Alfasud but whoever owns it deserves a medal for keeping it in such great condition.

To start with, the Rolls-Royce enthusiasts club gathered some lovely cars, including a good many series-1 Silver Shadows but my heart was more taken by this Corniche.



If you prefer older cars there was this lovely Thrupp and Maberley 20/25 saloon.



It looked imposing although I noticed a distinct lack of rear-seat leg room. This is certainly not a R-R in which to be chauffeured. Even more interesting was this Silver Cloud.



According to the notice in the window this was a development vehicle and had been fitted with an experimental V8 engine (although I believe it now has the production V8).

It wasn’t just Rolls-Royces, Bentleys were well represented too. I think this is an S-series Bentley Flying Spur Continental but I’ve never seen one with suicide rear doors before.



My favourite Bentley was this one.



Not sure what model it is but I love the lines of this two-door coupé. I’m not sure I have captured its best angle but the cars were so tightly packed it was difficult to get back far enough to line up the photos – especially as I didn’t want to risk scratching someone’s pride and joy.

Lots of Jaguars turned up including plenty of XKs:











The last car was parked in the paddock rather than on open display. Whenever you go to a historic race meeting it is always worth having a look at the cars being prepared for racing, not only do you see interesting machinery like the Jaguar above but on the whole it is a friendly and relaxed place to be. Just remember not to get in the way of anyone working hard to prepare a car for racing.

Jaguars were also present on the track, including Peter Lanfranchi’s standard-looking Series-1 E-type and Steve Tandy’s Lightweight E.



The lightweight E-types did very well in their race but smaller, lighter TVRs with big, American Ford V8 engines seemed to go faster.



In fact plenty of almost prosaic machinery was giving the expensive stuff a run for its money. MGBs, for example, can go far faster than you’d think possible.



I hope this hasn’t been a pictorial overload; I’d like to finish with a personal favourite sighting. It is a Bristol 400 in very tidy condition but looking like a car that is used and enjoyed as it should be.

Weekend catch up Part 1

I spent the weekend up in Manchester with my friends Simon (of MG Midget fame) and Ally. What a wonderful weekend it was, catching up, chatting, messing about with Si’s sports car, enjoying tasty food and taking in some motor racing at Oulton Park.

Over the next few days I’ll try and post some of the photos I took of the racing and of the interesting cars parked on the hill overlooking Cascades. Before then I need to share a few observations:

1. The noise limit seems to have been tightened, some cars did not sound as ear-splitting or dramatic as I remembered from past years.
2. What happened to the pre-war cars? Last year there was some pretty good racing from the vintage and post-vintage crowd.
3. Where have all the Jaguars gone? The first Gold Cup meeting I attended had XKs, C-types and D-types racing but they seem to have deserted the Gold Cup.
4. Digital photography of moving cars can be a bit hit and miss. I promise to share some of the more amusingly bad examples.

I’ll leave you with this picture from practice for the Guards Trophy race.

Picture of the Week: A quartet of Quattros

The last time I featured an Audi Quattro it was a rather sad and rundown example. To see a collection of cherished Quattros was therefore a heart warming sight. I took this photo at the Oulton Park Gold Cup meeting. Catching a Quattro on the road is an altogether more difficult proposition. There have only been 2 occasions where I have encountered a Quattro on the road but both of those were opportunities to marvel. Once was on a tightly curving exit ramp from the Coventry ring road. The ramps are concrete with expansion joints running across the carriageway and those joints seem perfectly designed to jolt a car off the road. The Quattro shot down the ramp and the last I saw, following at a more sedate pace, was the tail lights disappearing off into the night. The second encounter was a simple display of speed as a Quattro hurried past on the wide, single carriageway section of the A46 from Alcester to Red Hill.

Weekend Fun 3

Last post about the Oulton Park Gold Cup. I’m not much of a fan of motor racing but it is much better to see racing cars in action on the track rather than static in a museum. You do see some fine displays of driving skill as old racing cars generally have more power than they have roadholding or braking ability. This year some of the more prestigious cars stayed away because the Goodwood Revival was the following weekend. As a result there were no C or D-type Jaguars, no Listers, Ferraris or Corvettes, which was a disappointment given the high standard of entries in past years.

What was interesting was the difference in sound quality between the different engines. The sound of a 4 or 8 cylinder engine carries much more clearly than any six. Subjectively the loudest cars of the weekend were the Chevron sports cars and the Formula 5000 single-seaters. Formula 5000 was an interesting discipline, using Formula 1 chassis but with production-based 5-litre American V8 engines to keep costs down.

Favourite moments of the weekend included watching the historic Formula Junior cars and seeing both a Fiat 124 coupé and a BMW 328 (well, a Frazer-Nash BMW) in action. The Fiat is such a rare car because most examples rusted at a frightening rate – a shame because contemporary accounts rate it highly. As for the BMW, it was the most modern of the pre-war cars – no wonder so many people hold the 328 in high regard.