V-E-V Odds & Ends, September 1972

V-E-V Odds & Ends.—In last month’s Fiat Rally report, a proof correction not having been made, we attributed the prize for the best British entrant to Hancock’s OM in the text; the tabulated results ascribed this award to Don Lincoln’s 1929 OM, which is correct. The Yorkshire Centre Circular of the BARC recently contained an interesting account of the early days of the BARC Yorkshire Centre, by Mike Wilson, including mention of how his father, out for a pleasure run to Pateley Bridge, was asked to park at the side of the road by someone wearing a leather coat, which was puzzling until E. R. Hall’s Brescia Bugatti came into sight—they had intercepted a public-road speed hill-climb! This led to Mr. Wilson joining the BARC and the Yorkshire Centre organised more hill-climbs, later changed to slow hill-climbs to humour the Police, “Slippery Ann”(?) drives and paper chases, one of which landed Mr. Wilson, Snr., in Court for creating litter (case dismissed when it was discovered that his four-year-old son had been casting the paper from the 12/50 Alvis’ dickey,) etc.

Blackwood’s Magazine (“Maga”) is refreshingly unusual in that, as a very long-established literary monthly, it is not adverse to including articles about motor racing and flying, of great length and notable accuracy. This may well be because the Editor joined the Brooklands ARC in the 1930s and raced there a few times with much enjoyment in a 1921 30/98 Vauxhall, until the engine blew up expensively! We were reminded of the magazine’s broad-minded policy because the July issue contained an article “Test Flying the Early Jets” by John Grierson, which was very interesting, both from the viewpoint of its contents and because we had no idea that the pilot who flew DH Moths and Fox Moths to the far places of the World long before the war and wrote books about his experiences “Through Russia By Air” (Foulis, 1934) and “High Failure” (Hodge, 1936), was engaged in testing jet powered aeroplanes just prior to and during hostilities. Incidentally, or not so incidentally, while on the subject of “Blackwood’s” anyone who is at all concerned about Britain’s future in the face of the prevailing industrial unrest is strongly recommended to read the item “Her Majesty’s Opposition” by the very clear-thinking and punch-packing “Looker-On”, in the same issue. — W. B.