Late Entry

Sir,

Your article ‘Stranger than Fiction” in the October edition refers to a bogus entry in the 1995 Brighton Run. This prompts me to pose the question as to what was the latest car ever to be given an official entry to the Run. I would stake a claim for my father’s entry in 1938. In that year my father, Harold White, bought an old Humber which he found in a garage in WarIingham, Surrey, for £12/10/-.The car was unregistered, but bore a card saying it had been dated as a veteran of 1904. Accordingly he entered it for the Brighton run of that year, the entry being accepted by the RAC. My father was accompanied on the run by my grandfather and still has a Klemantaski photograph of them in the car on the way to Brighton. Sadly the finisher’s medal has long since disappeared.

Once the war started there was nowhere to keep the old Humber and it was sold to the VCC Secretary Francis Hutton-Stott, the price of £15 showing a small profit. The RAC subsequently reassessed the car, deciding it was a 1909 model. It later became part of the Rootes collection and is now at Beaulieu. Until quite recently it still carried the Surrey registration HPC 150 given it by my father in 1938. I wonder whether any of your readers are aware of any car more recent than 1909 which has been officially allowed to take part in the RAC’s annual commemoration of the Emancipation Run.

Ian White, Bessels Green, Kent.