About ourselves

We are told that very few people bother to read an Editorial, so we propose to write about ourselves, having, with this issue, entered our sixteenth year and commenced another new volume. MOTOR SPORT first appeared in July 1924, as a 1/- journal called “The Brooklands Gazette,” published by Radclyffe’s and edited by Oscar E. Seyd, M.J.I. That first issue contained road-test reports of the 3-litre Speed Model Bentley and S.S.80 Brough-Superior, a biography of Count Louis Zborowski and articles by Capt. Frazer-Nash, C. F. Temple, Col. Lindsay Lloyd, Capt. Loughborough, George Reynolds, George Brown, Tommy Hann, Miss Ivy Cummings, Capt. W. G. Aston and Capt. Richard Twelvetrees. From the start, a specialist motor-racing paper. Richard Twelvetrees, A.M.I.Mech.E., M.S.A.E., M.Soc.ing. C.I.V., shortly took over the Editorship. After a year the title was changed to MOTOR SPORT because the paper was concerned with the Sport the world over and not merely with happenings at Brooklands. In 1927 L.A. Hutchings became Editor, and later Rodney Walkerley, now “Grande Vitesse” of “The Motor,” was his assistant and R. B. Radclyffe conducted the paper. Circulation had now risen considerably and the price had been reduced to 6d., but towards the end of 1928 issues began to appear irregularly and it was put up to the original price. Hubert H. S. Keogh edited it in 1929 and early that year came a temporary lull. MOTOR SPORT then started off with a fresh lease of life in November 1929, published by a separate firm—Motor Sport (1929) Ltd.—and edited by W. S. Braidwood, B.A. Subsequently, Grenville G. O. Manton shared the Editorial chair with Braidwood, and the wealthy ex-Cambridge undergraduate T. G. Moore, owner of Frazer-Nash, 4½-litre blower Bentley, and 4½-litre Lagonda cars and a Monte Carlo Rally addict, took over, opening offices at 39, Victoria Street. For some five or six years T. G. Moore ran the paper in his own way and it went from strength to strength. Towards the close of 1936 he sailed for New Zealand, and his neglected “child” was in a sorry state. The present Acting Editor, W. Boddy, a 100 per cent. enthusiast with a flair for writing, had been allowed by Humphrey Symons to do important work for “Brooklands—Track & Air” without preliminary training or supervision. He has since become increasingly well established as a motoring writer, and at this period he helped to keep MOTOR SPORT going.

In March, 1937, the present publishers purchased the paper and from that time its popularity has risen by leaps and bounds, as it has become recognised as an outspoken and critical monthly review devoted to the Sport. A few months ago it absorbed the only other motor-sporting monthly, “Speed.” To-day, it is carrying on under war conditions. We intend to do our best in spite of limitations and, in offering Good Wishes for the New Year to all our friends, would hasten to apologise for the price increase to the original figure, which the cost of production in war-time renders quite un-avoidable. We hope that the time will not be far distant when war is ended and motor sport is revived. Trials will probably get going almost at once and, as happened after the last big war, motor-racing will return in time, as the world settles down to normal conditions, or, perhaps, to a quite deadly Trade War. Then, as before this war, the Sport will serve as a field of stimulus and research to a Great Industry, and this journal will jealously guard its interests.