1956 Maserati 250F

This car competed in a Twelve Lap Scratch Race for Post War Racing Cars at the Vintage Sports Car Club’s meeting at Oulton Park in August 1996.

It’s David Pennell’s 1956 Maserati 250F which has the 6-cylinder inline 2,491cc Maserati engine. It is chassis #2524 which was sold new to Francisco Godia-Sales and with which he competed in the F1 World Championship races in 1956 and 1957. In 1958 it was sold to Joakim Bonnier who raced it during the 1958 season with Phil Hill taking the wheel at the French Grand Prix and Troy Ruttmann taking over for the German Grand Prix, although engine problems meant that he did not start the race. Scuderia Centro Sud entered the car in the 1958 Italian and Moroccan Grands Prix, driven by Giulio Cabianca and Hans Herrmann respectively.

1950 Sheffield Tram 513

In August 1996 when returning home from a holiday in Scotland we paid a visit to the Beamish open air museum in County Durham and this is one of the photographs I took there.

It's a 1950 Sheffield tram, number 513, built by Roberts of Wakefield, and it remained in service in Sheffield until 1960. I understand that it is now on loan at the East Anglia Transport Museum at Lowestoft.

1948 Maserati 4CLT

This is a photograph that I took in the Donington Park Museum in March 1996.

It's a Maserati 4CLT which was a development of the pre-War 4CL and has a 4-cylinder inline 1,491cc supercharged engine. The first 4CLT was produced in 1947 and the 1948 variant made its debut at the San Remo Grand Prix, winning the race in the hands of Alberto Ascari. The 4CLT has ever since been known as the 'San Remo'. After spending some time trying to find this car's chassis number I eventually came across this site  which says it's #1607 and gave this information:

'Maserati 4CLT-48 [1607]: To Enrico Platé for 1949 (dated 14 Nov 1949 in Maserati records) and raced by Bira up to Geneva 1950. Car fitted with a 4450cc OSCA V12 engine for Bira for the 1951 season. The OSCA was taken to Australia in 1955 by Bira as a spare car to his 250F and sold there to Alf Harvey who raced it from 1955 to 1959. The car then went to the UK for historic racing and was bought by Tom Wheatcroft in 1971. Subsequently in the Donington Museum.'

1956 Maserati 250F

This is a photograph that I took at Lodge Corner during the Twelve Lap Scratch Race for Post War Racing Cars at the Vintage Sports Car Club’s meeting at Oulton Park in August 1996.

It’s David Pennell in his 1956 Maserati 250F which has the 6-cylinder inline 2,491cc Maserati engine. It is chassis #2524 which was sold new to Francisco Godia-Sales and with which he competed in the F1 World Championship races in 1956 and 1957. In 1958 it was sold to Joakim Bonnier who raced it during the 1958 season with Phil Hill taking the wheel at the French Grand Prix and Troy Ruttmann taking over for the German Grand Prix, although engine problems meant that he did not start the race. Scuderia Centro Sud entered the car in the 1958 Italian and Moroccan Grands Prix, driven by Giulio Cabianca and Hans Herrmann respectively.

1937 Lagonda LG45 TT Replica

This car competed in a handicap race at the Vintage Sports Car Club's meeting at Oulton Park in August 1996.

It's the 1937 Lagonda LG45 TT Replica of Colin Bugler which has a 6-cylinder inline 4,453cc engine that is a modified Meadows unit. It was produced from 1935 to 1937.

Pre 1952 Grand Prix Car Race

This is a photograph that I took during the HGPCA Pre '52 GP Car Race at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in August 1996.

Leading is Martin Stretton in Simon Bull's 1932 Maserati 4CM closely followed by Peter Hannen's 1937 Maserati 6CM with Ludovic Lindsay's 1936 ERA R5B bringing up the rear. The car in the background appears to be Tony Merrick's 1934 ERA R1B.

1955 Jaguar D-Type

This car competed in a  Scratch Race for 1950's Sports/Racing Cars at the Vintage Sports Car Club's meeting at Oulton Park in August 1996.

It's Andrew Pisker's 1955 Jaguar D-Type with the later 3,781cc version of the 6-cylinder inline Jaguar XK engine. The car is chassis XKD544 and has a very interesting history detailed in the coventryracers website. It was driven in the race by Ian Donaldson.

1933 Talbot 65

This was one of the cars that took part in the Concours d'Elegance at the Vintage Sports Car Club's meeting at Oulton Park in August 1996.

It's a 1933 Talbot 65, chassis 32704, which has a 1,665cc 6-cylinder inline engine and is the only Talbot 65 to be fitted from new with a Vanden Plas Alpine Tourer body.

Car Badges

Here are photographs I took of the badges of 6 of the cars at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in August 1996.

1932 Alfa Romeo 8C Monza

1925 Bugatti T35T

1948 Talbot Lago T26

1936 ERA R12B

1959 Ferrari 246 Dino

1938 Maserati 4CM

1955 Lotus Mk IX

This car took part in a Ten Lap Invitation Scratch Race for 1950's Sports/Racing Cars at the Vintage Sports Car Club's meeting at Oulton Park in August 1996.

It's George Edney's 1955 Lotus Mk IX, about thirty of which were produced. It could be used with a variety of engines, most often the 1,100cc Coventry Climax unit, but the programme of the event says that the engine capacity of this car was 1,466cc. The first Le Mans 24 Hour race contested by Lotus was with a Mk IX in 1955, driven by Colin Chapman and Ron Flockhart, but the car was disqualified after 12 hours when Colin Chapman went off the circuit at the Arnage corner into a sandbank and reversed the car back onto the circuit without getting permission from a marshall to do so.

1950's Grand Prix Cars

I took this photograph at Luffield corner during the HGPCA Pre ’60 GP Car Race at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in August 1996.

Leading is Brian McCaw’s 1958 BRM P25 closely followed by what appears to be a Connaught B-Type. To the right is the Lotus 16 of either Philip Walker or Jeremy Agace and the red car on the left seems to be the Maserati 250F of Ludovic Lindsay.

1929 Napier Bentley

This is a photograph that I took at Lodge Corner at the Vintage Sports Car Club’s meeting at Oulton Park in August 1996.

It's Peter Morley in the 1929 Bentley Napier, a vehicle that he and David Llewellyn created in 1968 using a 24 litre Napier Sea Lion engine which has a 'W' configuration - two banks of four cylinders in a 'V' with a third upright bank between them. The car was originally built on a Sunbeam chassis but after an accident was rebuilt using the chassis of a 1929 8 litre Bentley.

Beamish Open Air Museum

In August 1996 when returning home from a holiday in Scotland we paid a visit to the Beamish Open Air Museum in County Durham and this is one of the photographs I took there.

Apparently it's a replica of a 1913 Daimler motorbus and the Beamish Transport Online website says this about it:

 

'In 1987 a replica of 1913 Daimler CC motorbus J2503 was delivered to the Museum from its builders.  It was based on one of at least fifteen vehicles supplied to the Gateshead & District Tramways and purchased to extend the Gateshead Tramway network of routes beyond their terminals, in particular at Low Fell.  The extension of this route to Chester-Le-Street was a significant as it shortly led to the establishment of the Northern General Transport Company (NGT) in 1913, who took over the bus operations as a separate subsidiary of the parent company, the British Electric Traction Company.  J2503 initially carried the 1913 livery, being overhauled and turned out in NGT livery in 2012, ahead of the NGT centenary the following year.'

1935 Maserati 4CS

This car took part in a 4-lap scratch race at the Vintage Sports Car Club's meeting at Oulton Park in August 1996.

It's Ken Painter's 1935 Maserati 4CS, chassis #1126, originally with a supercharged 4-cylinder inline 1,088cc engine that was replaced with a 1,496cc engine in 1938. The car was originally owned by Ettore Bianco who finished in 7th, and then 6th in the 1935 and 1936 Mille Miglia races, winning his class on both occasions. It was involved in a fatal accident with the next owner, then acquired and rebuilt in 1937 by Luigi Villoresi and Count Giovanni Lurani's Scuderia Ambrosiana, and in 1939 found a new owner in Singapore. Ken Painter, bought the car in 1969, and it's been with the family ever since.

1962 BRM P578

I took this photograph at the Donington Park Museum in October 1989 showing the the car that brought BRM its only World Drivers' and Constructors' Championships.

It's the 1962 BRM P578 which Graham Hill drove in the 1962 and 1963 seasons, although the 'stack-pipe' exhaust system was quickly revised as the pipes had a tendency to drop off quite frequently. The Great Racing Cars of the Donington Collection says this about the car:

'The ‘Stack-Pipe’

BRM’s Championship winner

Sir Alfred Owen made it clear to BRM’s personnel that 1962 was to be their make-or-break season. They had won their first, and so far only, Grand Prix victory at Zandvoort in 1959, and now the expensive new 1½ litre V8 engine had to prove itself successful. It did, and Graham Hill won his first Grand Prix at Zandvoort, went on to win again in the German, Italian and South African rounds, and ended the season as World Champion Driver. British Racing Motors won the World Constructors’ Championship; honour was satisfied, and the concern survived. BRM’s prototype P56 V8-engined car appeared in practice for the 1961 Italian Grand Prix at Monza, where it impressed as one of the sleekest and smallest Formula 1 cars of its time. The engine was a 90-degree twin-overhead camshaft V8 with Lucas fuel injection, designed by Chief Engineer Tony Rudd, and initially it offered about 188bhp at 10,500rpm. The prototype P56 car introduced a neat and light multi-tubular spaceframe chassis with strikingly handsome bodywork, and the type began the 1962 season with individual megaphone exhausts swept-up from each cylinder bank. These won it the name of the ‘Stack-Pipe BRM’, and Hill won the first heat of the Brussels GP with it, then went on to win at Goodwood and then in an epic near dead-heat with Jim Clark’s Lotus-Climax at Silverstone. The stack-pipe exhausts regularly came adrift, and were replaced by a complex low-level system at Spa. Hill fought a season-long battle with Clark, and his American team-mate Richie Ginther drove ably to take third place in Germany and second to Hill in BRM’s great day at Monza. BRM V8 engines sold well to private customers, and the P56s raced on through 1963 when Hill won the Monaco and United States GPs and Ginther excelled once more. The pair chased Clark home in the World Championship table. By that time, people had stopped laughing at BRM!'

The car was generally known as the P578 to differentiate the 8-cylinder car from the previous season's 4-cylinder P57, but because it had a P56 engine the car itself was known as such by BRM. Behind the P578 is the Donington Museum's 1954 BRM P30, V16 Mk2 No2, alternatively known as V16/05. After the demise of the 4½ litre/1½ litre supercharged Formula One at the end of the 1951 season the Mk1 and Mk2 BRM's were raced in Formula Libre events until 1955, after which the BRM team concentrated on the new Formula One 2½ litre BRM P25.

1935 Alfa Romeo Bimotore

I took this photograph at the Donington Park Museum in March 1996.

It's a 1935 Alfa Romeo Bimotore, one of two cars that were built when the Alfa Romeo competition affairs were run by the Scuderia Ferrari team and it was an attempt to challenge the German Mercedes Benz and Auto Union cars that were dominating the sport at that time. It has two engines, one at the front and one at the rear, and it was conceived by Enzo Ferrari and his development engineer Luigi Bazzi. The chassis was effectively a lengthened Alfa Romeo P3 chassis with an 8-cylinder inline engine at each end, those for one of the cars being 2,905cc and the other 3,165cc. The cars were first entered in the 1935 Tripoli Grand Prix, the 6.3 litre car being driven by Tazio Nuvolari and the 5.8 litre one by Louis Chiron. The cars proved to be fast, but the weight of the cars and the power of the engines took its toll on the tyres though Nuvolari managed to finish in fourth place behind 2 Mercedes Benz and an Auto Union despite having to make 13 stops for tyre changes. Louis Chiron drove a more conservative race making far less tyre changes and finished in fifth place. The project was abandoned before the end of that season and the larger engined car was dismantled, but the 5.8 litre car was sold to British driver Austin Dobson and it is that car that ended up in the Donington Museum. The photograph is rather spoilt by the Merryweather turntable ladder on the fire engine behind the Alfa. 

1925 Salmson Gran Sport

I took this photograph in one of the car parks at the Vintage Sports Car Club's meeting at Oulton Park in August 1996.

It's a 1925 Salmson Gran Sport with a 4-cylinder inline 1,098cc engine. The Gran Sport was produced at Salmson's Billancourt factory from 1924 to 1930. The DVLA record says that the car is currently taxed up to May 2025 and that its colour is blue.

1955 Jaguar D-Type

I took this photograph at Lodge Corner during the Scratch Race for 1950's Sports/Racing Cars at the Vintage Sports Car Club's meeting at a wet Oulton Park in August 1996.

It's Ian Donaldson in Andrew Pisker's 1955 Jaguar D-Type with the later 3,781cc version of the 6-cylinder inline Jaguar XK engine. The car is chassis XKD544 and has a very interesting history detailed in the coventryracers website.

1955 Maserati 300S

This is a car that I photographed at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in August 1996 at Silverstone in what I think was its first outing since an extensive restoration in the early 1990s.

It's the ex-Benoit Musy 1955 Maserati 300S, chassis number 3057, entered in the Louis Vuitton 1950s Sports Car Race by Peter Scott and driven in the race by Martin Stretton.  It has a 2,991cc 6-cylinder engine that was based on the 2½ litre unit of the 250F Grand Prix car with a longer stroke. This car was originally owned by Swiss driver Benoit Musy and I remember seeing it being driven by him at Oulton Park and Aintree in 1956.

1928/30 DH-Riley

This car competed in a ten lap scratch race at the Vintage Sports Car Club's meeting at Oulton Park in August 1996.

It's the 1928/30 DH-Riley of Geraint Owen, a 6,124cc engined car about which the programme of the event says: '....Geraint Owen's DH-Riley is powered by another aero engine of the De Havilland Gypsy Variety....'. The car was put up for auction by RM Sotheby's in October 2020.