Sportscars real and fake

My comments about bogus versus genuine sportscars having caused some interest. I propose to return to the subject, or as l am no longer the Editor, to ask if I may add a little more? I may have seemed hard on some of the cars I listed as bogus, such as the Jackson-Jowett, perhaps, driven by Miss Victoria Worsley, who married Roland King-Farlow, the celebrated amateur timekeeper. This car sired the Yorkshire company’s own edition of the so-called sports version of the splendid flat-twin light cars.

But it must be accepted that good performances in competitions were often obtained with well prepared, not absolutely ‘catalogue’, examples, and maybe trade-entered. Price comes into it, but that does not excuse a low-price copy of a true sportscar, foolish as it would be to compare a Hadfield Bean or Hillman Husky with a Bentley or 30/98.

To conclude, I would never accept as sportscars the Standard Nine or the Wolseley Ten used to illustrate my piece last month. It was the 1923 £695 1261cc overhead-camshaft Wolseley Brooklands Speed Model, based on the 200-mile racing car and guaranteed to do 75mph in race trim, which I had in mind, on one of which novice Mrs Knox did over 71 miles in the hour.

Without wishing to sneer at bogus sporty cars, whether built by manufacturers or amateurs, perhaps it would have been better if they had been called ‘fun cars’?