For my final post on the Concours of Elegance at Hampton Court Palace, I wanted to focus on the motorsport-bred machinery on display.
We have a huge range of cars to cover from early Edwardian racers up to modern-day GT cars.
We’ll start our journey back in 1914 with this beautiful Humber TT.
This Humber TT is the sole survivor of three cars built in secret by Humber for the Isle of Mann Tourist Trophy (TT). Humber were trying to replicate the success of the Peugeot designed dual-overhead cam engine, but didn’t want to be seen as copying. Therefore the cars were designed with no Humber branding and bodywork that wouldn’t tie the cars to Humber.
Next up we have a 1926 Bugatti Type 35A.
The 35A was a detuned version of the Grand Prix Type 35 that was aimed towards enthusiasts for fast road and track days.
The A was powered by a 1991cc naturally aspirated straight 8 producing 75hp at 4000rpm.
One particular quirk of this car that caught my eye was the distributor cap coming through the dashboard. I’ve never seen that before! Because the straight 8 was such a long engine block, apparently that was the easiest way to mount it.
In 1927 Bentley entered a 4.5 litre and two 3 litre cars. They were named ‘Snitch’, ‘Witch’ and ‘Bitch’. This is ‘Bitch’, one of the three litre cars.
The race was dramatic. At 9:30PM Pierre Tabourin in a Theo Schneider entered the Maison Blanche (White House) corner too quickly and spun into a barrier. The resting place of the Schneider was obscured by the white house that the corner got its name from. This, mixed with the growing darkness, meant a pileup ensued involving 7 other cars, including the three Bentleys. ‘Snitch’ and ‘Bitch’ were both written off. Sammy Davis with ‘Witch’ helped his injured competitors before limping the car back to the pits.
Rules at the time stipulated that the car had to be fixed by the drivers, with the tools in the car. Davis and his co-driver Benjafield were able to jerry rig the car’s broken lighting and went on to not only finish the race but win it!
‘Bitch’ was repaired and changed hands several times over the years. It now belongs to Mike Dacre who takes the car to lots of events.
The most famous of the racing Bentleys was of course the ‘Blower’. One of Bentley’s works drivers, Tim Birkin, saw the success the Germans were having with supercharging. Birkin approached W.O Bentley with the idea of building a supercharged car but Bentley refused, saying that supercharging perverted the design of the engine.
Birkin was, however, able to convince heiress Dorothy Paget to invest £40,000 (£2.5 million today) into the Blower project.
This story comes to a head at LeMans in 1930. Birkin’s 4.5ltr supercharged Blowers would go up against W.O Bentley’s 6.5ltr naturally aspirated Speed Sixes.
As much as I love an underdog story, this sadly isn’t one. All three of Birkin’s Blowers retired with mechanical failures. The works team’s big Speed Sixes actually took first and second place.
I’ve made a couple of models of Birkin’s own car – UU 5872.
The first is the 1/12 scale Airfix kit: https://motorsportformentalhealth.com/2021/12/17/airfix-112-bentley-blower/
The second is a Penelope Pitlane slot car: https://motorsportformentalhealth.com/2018/01/30/penelope-pitlane-bentley-blower-build/
This particular Blower was prepared by Stanley Mann Racing who specialise in vintage Bentleys.
There were also a couple of more modern Bentleys. This Continental was raced at Pikes Peak by New Zealand’s Rhys Millen who was one of the early stars of Formula Drift.
This is the world’s fastest convertible on ice! In 2011 4x World Rally champion Juha Kankkunen took the car to 205mph on the frozen Baltic Sea.
There are a few interesting details on this car: The fake front grill and aero wheels designed to look like alloys were an interesting touch. The push bar on the back is very reminiscent of cars run at Bonneville, which are often pushed off of the start line.
This is an O.S.C.A MT4 1500.
In 1937 the Maserati brothers sold Maserati to industrialist Adolfo Orsi who kept them in the company on a 10 year contract. When the contract expired the brothers went on to create O.S.C.A (Officine Specializzate Costruzione Automobili) who built successful racing and road cars.
This is one of 72 MT4s built. I must admit this wasn’t a car or company I was familiar with prior to this event.
This is a Lancia Aurelia with Pininfarina coachwork.
This car featured the first production V6 and it had a transaxle gearbox in the back giving it a perfect 50/50 weight distribution.
Interestingly that coupe hardtop is removable! It flows so nicely with the rest of the body I just assumed it was a coupe.
The little aero screen on the bonnet really confused me before I knew that haha!
This is one of just 8 Ferrari 250 TR61s (Testarossa 1961) with a body by Fantuzzi. Worth 10s of millions of pounds!
The Shelby Cobra. Carroll Shelby mounted a Ford V8 into a AC Ace chassis and the rest, as they say, is history!
Moving over to Aston Martin. This is a Zagato bodied DB4.
DB3/5 is one of three surviving works race cars.
The DB3S followed the DB3 in 1953. In my, perhaps controversial, opinion the DB3S is the prettiest car Aston Martin have produced.
This was one of three DB3S’ delivered to Tony Gaze and David McKay’s Kangaroo Stable (they were of course Australian).
DBR9/1 was built by Prodrive and based on the DB9 road car and was raced around the world in period.
The car has recently undergone restoration by Pursuit Racing.
The Ford GT MkIV is a track only car based very loosely on Ford’s modern supercar.
67 were built in tribute of the original GT40 MkIV that won the 1967 Le Mans 24 Hours.
Whilst the DNA between the “normal” Ford GT road car and this are the same, very little is actually shared between the two cars. Even the wheel base is different!
Thanks for reading! I really hoped you enjoyed this look around the golden racing cars of the Hampton Court Palace Concours of Elegance.
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By Richard Francis
