Aero-Engined Racing Cars At Brooklands

Aero Engined Racing Cars at Brooklands: these are the stories of the monster cars which, between the wars, raced round the famous banked track to the enduring excitement of 'the right crowd'. William ‘Bill’ Boddy, has from boyhood had a great interest in these extraordinary cars. Here he evokes those carefree, adventurous times with an enthusiast's delight. He takes the reader from the 9-litre V 12 single-seater with which Sunbeam designer Louis Coatalen experimented just prior to the 1914-18 war and which, but for a quirk of fate, might have led Britain to make the first production 12-cylinder luxury car through the cruder, chain-driven constructions that relied on inexpensive war-surplus power units and aged chassis, to the far more scientific 24-litre Napier-Railton with which that devotee of large racing cars, John Cobb, set the all-time Brooklands lap record of 143.44 mph in 1935. Each car listed below is recorded in meticulous detail, together with its performance in the short handicap races at the Weybridge Motor Course. Woven into this are tales of the intrepid men, most of them charismatic amateur private owners, dedicated and brave exponents of the sport of motor racing, who built the cars and competed with them. These were personalities such as the mercurial Count Louis Zborowski and his legendary Chitty-Bang-Bangs; Captain Alastair Miller (later Sir Alastair Miller Bt) and his Wolseley Viper; and Ernest Eldridge with the Fiat 'Mephistopheles'. Theirs is a unique and irresistible history of an age long departed. The 1913 V12 Sunbeam The 1919 350 hp V12 Sunbeam The Chitty-Bang-Bangs The Martin-Arab The Cooper-Clerget The Wolseley Viper The [sotta-Maybach The Fiat Mephistopheles E.C. Gordon England's ABC The White Mercedes The Higham Special/Thomas Special Babs The Sunbeam-Napier The Napier-Railton The Rest: Harry Hawker’s Sunbeam-Mercedes, Scariscrow, Rolls Napier, 300HP Tipo S76 Fiat, Metallurgique-Maybach, Bluebird, Railton Mobile Special