When one car isn't enough

Most petrol-heads (Ghastly description), whose enthusiasm, I thought, came from the heart, even the soul, will have owned quite a few cars. But who can compete with G RN Minchin who, between 1907 and 1939, claimed, in his book Under My Bonnet, to have had 151 and 13 motorcycles? His favourites in the post-WWI years were his 1920 Rolls-Royce, 1929 Rolls-Royce Twenty, 4.25-litre 1936 Bentley and a 1939 Frazer Nash-BMW.

Then there was Gerald Kilton who, between 1905 and 1976, had had five motorcycles and 86 cars, naming as those he especially liked as a Prince Henry Vattidiall and his four OMs, but regarding a London-Edinburgh-type Rolls-Royce as the best among the older ones. Indeed, he had had 10 R-Rs, including the London-Monte Carlo record-breaker of H R Pope and the one owned by Billy Moorhouse, VC. There had also been several sporting Gordon Watney-bodied Mercedes, and later the first (only?) Knight sleeve-valve Mercedes in this country. Another was the rotary-valve Itala used by Pope for another London-Monte Carlo dash.

And finally, there was Mr G de Gongh, who had had 37 motorcycles and 76 cars between 1915 and 1975. They included a gigantic Isotta-Fraschini, the ex-Percy Lambert racing Singer, and the Marendaz Special previously owned and used in trials by Mrs Aileen Moss, Sir Stirling’s mother.