Miscellany, April 1999

How involved car makes have become! Once you could separate one from the other and most kept a degree of individuality. No longer. I heard someone say jokingly that he owned a Jaguar, adding “Well, it’s a Ford but it’s made by the same organisation”, to which his girl-friend replied, “Oh, then I have a BMW, although it is badged as a Rover”.

A reader who owns a Brooklands Riley and replica Le Mans Frazer Nash asks if anyone knows the address of the son of Stephen Payne whose Ford V8 Baldwin Special I wrote up many years ago.

Four little books about Irish motoring have arrived from Treoilin Publications Ltd of Garristown, County Dublin, all by Bob Montgomery. The titles are Early Motoring in Ireland (ISBN 1 902773 004); Leslie Porter – Ireland’s Pioneer Racing Driver (ISBN 1 902773 01 2), about the driver who competed in the Paris-Madrid race of 1903; The Irish International Grands Prix 1929-31 (ISBN 1 902773 02 0) and The Phoenix Park Speed Trials 1903 (ISBN 1 902773 03 9). Each of these 32-page albums I thought excellent, as they sell for only £4.50 apiece and tell their stories well, with many pictures, plus some reproduced advertisement, etc. They form part of the Guinness/Segrave Library and Archive of the Royal Irish AC, and as informative sources I recommend them.