The Racing Straker-Squire

Sir,

I would like to thank you for your most interesting article on this car. Unless there were two racing prototypes still competing in Northern events in the early twenties, which I beg leave to doubt, this must be the car driven by Miss Marjorie Mitchell at Holme Moss Hill Climb in 1924. The car was then the property of C. H. Mitchell of Huddersfield whose daughter and two sons were familiar figures in Northern competitions until the middle thirties. The two boys rode in the motor cycle TT for some years and Hirst Mitchell won the Hutchinson Hundred at Brooklands a couple of times.

Just when the car was purchased I can’t say but I am assured that it was not later than 1923 or early 1924. The body was like the one on page 1610, was painted red and had a small hatch in the tail which, when removed, would accommodate a small boy with an acceptable degree of comfort commensurate with being conveyed in such a vehicle. The engine was of four litres capacity, had an overhead camshaft and six separate pots. It did NOT have a Vauxhall radiator. Francis Giveen’s accident at Kop having put an end to events on public roads, the Straker was disposed of and, apart from a Morris, the Mitchells were Morris agents, they turned their attentions to two wheels.

When I first subscribed to your journal it was The Brooklands Gazette. The first copy which I can recall bore a test report of a Bugatti by the Editor, Captain Richard Twelvetrees, and one on the SS 100 Brough Superior by Arnold Radcliffe. It was a very good paper but confined itself chiefly to the Track in those days. In so doing the staff missed a lot of fun at the events like Holme Moss.

With renewed thanks for the article and for many more V-E-V jottings which renew old memories of events and vehicles enjoyed in happier times.

Castletown, loM J. E. HALLAS

(l know that a Miss Mitchell ran a StrakerSquire in sprint events in the nineteen-twenties but did not mention it in the article as it seemed probable that it was a different car from that now owned by Adrian Liddell and as it could carry a boy in the tail this seems to have been the car. What puzzles me is that a Slate grey two-seater Straker-Squire quoted as having the same engine as the Kensington Moir racing car, was registered in Birkenhead in 1922 which might be the Mitchell car? -Ed.)