A Day at Haynes Musuem (plus Retro Rides awards day) PICS

And so we step through the portal from the entrance hall and into the bathing red glow that bounces from a hundred voluptuous curves, drawn by a hundred spotlights and reverberated by a hundred mirrors. Oooh, it's like some sort of sportscar burlesque in here. And yep, they're definitely all RED





And y'know what? It works as a concept. You really do start to see each car for its own sake rather than which colour it's painted. Apparently all the cars still wear their factory paint; none have been changed to fit the theme, which makes it more interesting seeing how close even within the tiny range of wavelength between 620 and 750 nanometres the manufacturers came. Aside from the deep burgundy of the GK-1 (which is re-painted), most of the reds on show are what we tend to think of "that" Italian Racing Rosso, Ferrari Red. There, I said it. Yeah, despite being Italy's chosen racing colour and Enzo's mob coming pretty late to car manufacture, that shade of red is irredeemably linked in most peoples' mind to Ferraris. Which makes it slightly odd that there aren't any here. None? No, wait, what have we here?



No, definitely not a Ferrari. But you can be forgiven if you were thinking "that's a 166M Allemano Barchetta" because that's exactly what you're supposed to think. Born from those horrendous post-war days of austerity motoring, the kitcar industry was a canny way of sidestepping the crushing purchase tax on new car sales... and bear in mind that old cars were really old; most manufacturers took at least five years after the end of WWII to bring new models to market, meaning their 1946 to '50ish-year models were actually warmed-over early 1930s design at least fifteen years out of date. Those new cars that were being made were sold abroad in part of the "Export or Die" ethos, and the few that were for sale domestically attracting a one-third purchase price. And that was on family plodders. Cars costing over £1000 attracted a two-thirds purchase tax!

In this climate, canny engineers like Welshman Jack Turner exploited the loophole that self-assembled cars; kit cars in fact, avoided the worst of the taxation and also gave the buying public a chance to own something a little more exciting than the dreary and outdated mainstream of the day. No wonder people whose only automotive colour for the past years had been painting their bumpers and running boards white in compliance with the blackout measures desired cars that looked like the flamboyant sportsters of a resurgent Italy. And finally, in 1950 the much-loathed petrol ration was abolished (albeit some time after Germany had axed theirs, much to the outrage of British motorists) and whilst Pool Petrol was still often poor quality, at least the concept of leisure motoring was accessible again. You couldn't have run a highly-strung Colombo V12 like in the proper 166 on it, but the Lea Francis-engined 1950 Turner Sport lapped it up and were campaigned by racers into the 1960s



OK, so we're over the lack of Ferraris now, yeah? Good. Shall we have a look at what else is on offer?

One feature of museums (and this one in particular) is that space is often a bit of a premium. That's not such a problem in the V&A where a nice frock is a nice frock from any angle, but in a car museum it can make taking meaningful photos of entire cars a bit tricksy. The problem seemed especially bad in the Red Room, where I often found myself reduced to taking pics of little details because the whole car just wouldn't fit in. But that's fine, regular readers will know I love my little details. So how about this?



Included not because it's a great photo - it clearly isn't - but it is undeniably a great car. By the birthdate of this car in 1973, the muscle cars had died out as abruptly as the dinosaurs they're so often compared to. The only choice left in this post-OPEC crisis world was the Pontiac Firebird. And if you were buying a Firebird, why not make it a TransAm? And if you were buying a TransAm, you really ought to make it one of these. Cos this ain't no ordinary flamin' chicken. Under the hood lurks the unfeasibly prodigious 455 cu in Super Duty engine, a motor so overladen with grunt that even the emissions nazis on Capitol Hill couldn't emasculate it. If you knock a Super Duty TransAm into drive and touch nothing else, it'll get to 60mph on tickover alone. Have a think about that, and then understand that should you be brave enough to actually use the gas pedal, you can pull down buildings and uproot treestumps without ever needing to get the tractor out of the barn. The last great muscle car of the great muscle car era, we should salute it. And so to something a bit more elegant, if still rather brutish;



Yes, the more Bavarian-minded will have already got that's a Neue Sechs CS coupe, but what about the subliminal cue that got you there? Named in honour of Wilhelm Hoffmeister, then BMW Director of Design, the "Hoffmeister Kink" has featured on every modern post-war BMW. It's that little forward-leaning line that surges off from the base of the C-pillar. It's meant to represent the fact that all Bimmers are righteously rear-wheel drive by almost imperceptibly drawing your eye to the structure above the rear wheels and introducing a sense of motion even when stood still. So now you know.

If I hadn't been enjoying taking pointless photos of bizarre little details I'd probably never even have noticed the odd magnifying lenses within the headlights on this 1929 Alfa 6C. Once I did notice them, I started seeing them on a few other cars of the same vintage. I'm not exactly sure what purpose they serve, since they seem fixed. Do they spread the beam of light, or focus it? Is it a way of getting high beam into the same light with a relatively small and thus cooler bulb? I dunno, but I'd like to. I guess that's the whole point of museums, to make you think and question





And still on the details, Alvis are always good for an extravagant bit of mascotry



In addition to the Turners we saw earlier, another of those rarest of cars - a Welsh one - deserved a decent pic. I just managed to squeeze it in! As if a "normal" Gilbern Invader isn't unusual enough, how about this stylish estate? A fibreglass small-volume car, yes, but no lash-up, Gilberns were quality products. Only just over 100 of the estates were made, but they still featured electric windows, wood veneer and high-class trimmings. The suspension might have been relatively humble MG-C derived, but it was much improved. And it was no slouch either, with a 3-litre Essex V6 from the Zodiac powering it along. Those who scoff at Britain's history of "shed-built" specials (Clarkson, e.g.) really ought to think again





Which brings us neatly to possibly the archetype of potent home-builds, the Marcos. Marsh and Costin were never going to build shoddy cars, given their backgrounds in aviation engineering and those who mocked the plywood frame and GRP bodywork were seriously missing the point. Besides the strength, flexibility, low cost and ease of tooling, all of which would have been ruinously expensive to achieve using "proper" metal, the construction techniques allowed extravagant curves and shapes such as this gorgeous 3 Litre. It was only when the American market was being explored that the switch to spaceframes became necessary, due to the stringent Federal crash requirements.





Probably my favourite of the Citroën-era Maseratis. I dunno why. I just love the preposterous flying buttresses and everyone knows that V6 engines make the best noize. It probably wouldn't even have come about if Citroën hadn't gone even more bonkers than usual and dreamed up the SM project after a late-night board meeting featuring some especially strong cheeses. Seemed a shame to waste the beautifully-designed Alfieri V6, so Maserati did the decent thing; hopped it up and wedged it into a gorgeous Giugiaro-penned mid-engined coupe. Boras, Ghiblis and such may perhaps be purer to the Maserati bloodline, but I just love the little underdog





If you thought that Maserati were the only people to produce lovely little Frua-bodied Sportsters then think again. How about a car that travelled further than many did in an entire lifetime... all before it was even sold? Yep, the AC 428 had a complicated inception; based on the Cobra 427 underpinnings (no disgrace), the drivetrains were brought in from Detroit, the chassis was then mated to them at the AC Thames Ditton factory, then the whole lot shipped to Italy to be bodied, then back again for finishing. The joke was that the car had travelled so many miles before ever hitting a showroom floor that it was already out of warranty.



Perhaps slightly less grandiose... or foolhardy, depending on the amount of poetry in your soul.... the humble workmanlike Triumph sportster of the day owed no less great a debt to the luminaries of the Italian coachbuilders art. When post-war Sir John Black decided to re-focus marque identity and thus Standard would be the producer of saloons and tourers and Triumph would concentrate on sporting cars, it took the firm down a road that led to Giovanni Michelotti. The TR4 might have been almost the same car as the previous TR3A underneath, but it swept away the old in-house styling in favour of bold Italianate lines... and let's be fair, the earlier TR series cars were not what anyone could accuse of being beautiful. Michelotti's treatments were so decisive and popular that he became Triumph's go-to guy in shapes and colours pretty much throughout the rest of the firm's life before Leyland subsumation brought in Harris Mann who cheerfully threw out the French curves and protractor from the Triumph pencil case and only kept the ruler and set-square.



Just as well there was a TR3 right next door for comparison then. Funny to think that in its time, it was derided for the switch to the full-width grille from the TR2. Or indeed, any grille at all rather than a hole. This little row was a great advertisement for when Great Britain really did lead the world in affordable little sportsters, featuring an MGC and A, TRs, a Tiger and even a Rochdale Olympic!



I wish I'd paid more attention to the information boards, too because when I looked through the photos afterwards I realised that the MGA has an unusual recessed grille that I don't remember having seen before. I have to admit to preferring it to the normal smooth-to-the body type but I've no idea why it's different like this.



We'd better take a look at that Tiger, too, or GeorgeB will never forgive me!



Funny really; everyone knows the story of how Henry Ford, piqued by Enzo Ferrari's last minute change of heart as to selling Ferrari to Ford, resolved to hurt il Commandatore where it counted most - on the track. Thus Lola's endurance racer was morphed into the Ford GT40 and the rest is history. Which as we all know (cos Henry told us) is bunk. Fewer people realise that the Rootes Groups' little car that could was the result of similar, if slightly more humble collapse of entente cordial. Realising the little Sunbeam Alpine was in need of more grunt to become competitive, Rootes approached Ferrari in the hope a warmed-over version of the Alpine's four-pot bearing the label "Tuned by Ferrari" would be sufficient both in ability and kudos. When talks broke down, however, the path towards American muscle in lieu of Italian artistry was once again trodden.

Rootes competition manager Norman Garrad had his son Ian measure the engine bay of an Alpine using a "precision instrument of questionable antecedents", i.e. a wooden yardstick. Ian sent his service manager round all the local car dealerships trying to find a motor that would fit with this extremely scientific measurement. Eventually it was declared that the Ford 260 cu in motor ought to do it, and so Carroll Shelby, the world's fastest chicken farmer, was employed to make it happen. And so it did, though Shelby commented that the "figure of speech about the shoe-horn never applied to anything as well as it did to that tight squeak." It wasn't all bad, though; the tightest of fits meant the car had to switch from the Alpine's recirculating ball steering box to proper rack and pinion. It could have not worked. Just because Shelby had previous for wedging prodigious American mills into diminutive British sportscars didn't guarantee success; just look at the ugly mess that Daimler ended up with in the SP250, despite Edward Turner's wonderful Hemi-headed V8 powering it. Fortunately, it did work. The Tiger was brilliant and Lord Rootes, though initially "quite grumpy" about the idea, when he test drove it immediately placed an order with Ford for 3000 260cu in engines, the greatest single order Ford had ever received.

The Tiger was a roaring success (see what I did there?). The Hillman Imp was not, nearly bankrupted the Group, and Rootes were forced into majority ownership by Chrysler. The smallest Chrysler engine, the 275 did not fit in the Alpine bodyshell, and they were never going to allow a rival manufacturer to power one of their products. The Tiger, cruelly young at only three years old, was extinct



There is, of course, one legendary British sportster missing from this line-up so far. Sadly, despite being the tiniest car in the place, it was also one of the most wedged-in so I couldn't get a worthwhile pic. But since no chat about such things is complete without a Frogeye, here's what I did manage;



In fact, we may be reduced to little detail pics again for a bit. Space was very tight. Shame really, as our next car didn't exactly invent an entire genre (the idea of the Shooting Brake was well-established) but it certainly grabbed the ball and ran with it. The Scimitar GTE was the first real, proper, honest sports estate. Thrust along by the old faithful Ford three litre Essex, the fibreglass load-lugger was like nothing else on the road for a good few years (Audi were making re-badged DKWs for VW and BMW had only just finished messing around with bubblecars). The GTE was what happened when a small-volume manufacturer like Reliant with little to lose either way employed a bonkers design house like Ogle, and a visionary like Tom Karen to design a car. Other triumphs from the same company include the Raleigh Chopper, the Bond Bug, the maddest Aston Martin ever and Luke Skywalker's landspeeder.



Wheeltrims. Really oughtn't to be allowed, not when an options list as comprehensive and affordable as the Mustang's was on the salesman's desk in front of you



In 1963 in Britain you could have a brand new Austin 1100 (eventually a 1300, last seen assaulted by Basil Fawlty with a tree). The Moggy Minor had only been on the road four years. You could, if you were a bit more daring and your wage packet included a few more shillings, stretch to a Sunbeam Alpine... and probably be happy not knowing that it was about to morph into the Tiger in a years' time and render your pride and joy utterly obsolete. You could have a Super Minx from fellow Rootes stable Hillman. It really wasn't all that Super, though. Or, if you lived in Italy, you could have one of these.



And we were supposed to have won the War? And speaking of those who lost the War but won the peace, how about a Datsun? Or a bit of one. At first glance you might be forgiven for assuming it's a misspelling by an enthusiastic home decal fetishist, but of course the Samuri 240Zs were modified by Spike Anderson ...most famous of his ouvre being Win Percy's Big Sam. Not all Samuri-tuned road cars were air-dammed beasts on wide sports wheels and rocking the iconic brown-over orange livery. As this one, with positively leftfield wire wheels, shows succinctly!



And so we're just about finished with our circumnavigation of the Redrum. Just as well, really cos it's starting to feel like being inside a bruise and red is the colour Photobucket traditionally struggles with the most, so no doubt most of these pictures are horribly pixelated and grainy. And not all down to my rubbish camera skills. Anyway, before we leave, there's one car we must pay homage to. Hard to think nowadays that the French pretty much invented motorsport. Yeah, the Gordon Bennett Cup was organised by... well, Gordon Bennett... and yeah, Ze Germans did invent the actual car, but the French made this new-fangled concept their own in the early days. You can write off Bugatti as being a re-located Italian if it helps, but that doesn't account for the Gallic titans of the early racing days; Darraq, DeDion (after whom the axle was named and the Germans stole), Panhard (after whom le système Panhard by which all successful sportcars were built for decades was named), Talbot, Delage... one could rant on for ages. Then, post-War a strange malaise overtook this once proudest of racing nations. Cars abilities dwindled away and atrophied even before the country slid into the obscenity of the horsepower cap. But before this travesty, some memorable last hurrahs squeezed out of the country before the lock. Madness from Citroën aside, perhaps the best of them was the Facel Vega. The marriage of an ex-Citroën designer, a firm of metal pressers who had recently made aeroplane parts for the Americans and bodies for Bentleys, and the frankly ludicrous hemi engine from the DeSoto Firedome (and in later models, the full-fat Chrysler Hemi)... how could it fail to be excellent? The Facel Vega HK500 (it's even initialled as a Hunter-Killer!) was, and is, nothing short of superb. Lazy, endless V8 torque wrapped in a gentlemens' club on wheels and impossibly understatedly stylish, it's just an absolute automotive acme. France might no longer have dominated the racetracks, but very few could compete with one of these parked outside the Casino Royale

At the end of the Memory Lane there is another small annexe you could easily miss. Sneaking through the doors reveals a room containing some pre-war British cars and a replica workshop scene, excellently "dressed" with period tools, equipment and products. There are even some flapper-ish clothes should you wish to dress up and get a picture taken in an authentic period setting. And what could be a better archetype of pre-war motoring than that mainstay of the British car industry, the Morris Cowley bullnose? This one looks like it could use the services of a metalworker as well as a beige-overalled artisan mechanic!



I really don't know whether the Union flag would have been a standard kind of motif on this Morris 8, but I did rather like the unexpectedly flamboyant mascot on such a stolid and otherwise unornamented saloon. This was a car that was defiantly pre-war, having been designed in the mid 1930s but was dusted off post-war and did great sales service for Morris, being manufactured in both Britain and Australia until Issigonis' first great meisterwerk the Minor finally replaced it just in time for the Fifties boom in personal motoring



Emerging from the Memory Lane side-street I now popped out back into the main hall of the museum. I was now gagging for a cuppa, but it looked like I was now at the far end of the building and figured I might as well check out what was here before heading back to the cafe. Possibly a mistake, but then who could ignore for long the raffish, rakish lines of a Threeandanarf. There's something delightfully caddish and debonair about the shape of the beast...



...that just didn't seem to carry over to the roadsters of the XK 120 and 150, despite them being absolutely contemporaneous to the Mk IV. Cool pedal car is cool!



I seem to have blundered into a whole swathe of cars representing the best and beautiful of the British industry here. Later on I realise this entire giant hall is a mix and match of global marques... it just so happens a lot them are British. Ah, them was the days. Perhaps underrated in its own lifetime, it seems that the last, unloved TR is now finding the recognition it probably deserved all along. After all, it was built to sell to Americans, and this meant horrid Federal crash protection which blunted the radical lines. It was also at a time when manufacturers very genuinely believed American safety laws would outlaw the convertible outright, and so the TR-7, which was unarguably much nicer looking with the roof down, gained a coupé bodystyle and that was it. Maybe if it had been scribbled by Gandini rather than Harris Mann the outré wedgey sweep of its body would have been on Athena posters rather than derided in the papers. Add in the awful industrial relations at BL meaning the sporty little soufflé was actually made with dogs' eggs rather than quails', and it was always an uphill struggle. Fortunately, sense was seen and by the time of the TR-8 a decent engine had landed along with the drop-top canvas it needed all along. And equally fortunately, there are preserved specimens such as this to admire and wonder how nice it would've been had the 70s turned out differently





...come to think of it, whatever happened to the wedge? Did it simply leave fashion behind, or is it no longer allowable because it's not a nice enough shape for bucolic pedestrians to get their fool selves run over by?



It's not just Great British cars here... or even great British cars. There are some terrible ones, too. And the wedge... well, I'm not really sure if a Lagonda counts. It's sort of like a wedge that's been swallowed by a hippo and stuck in its throat. The later ones - when some of the worst (or most distinctive, if you prefer) styling had been blunted down a bit, the dashboard stood a fighting chance of actually communicating some information to the driver, and the switchgear might even be able to actuate the device it was alleged to control - were probably responsible for saving Aston from the brink, oddly. They sold to rich types and Arab princes where cachet and investment value outweighed good taste, presumably. However, this is an early one, still with the pop-up headlights that would be phased out eventually. It's a definite twenty-footer, too. It looks OK from a distance and in the pics, but up close you can see the rusty patches, paint chips and dodgy bits quite clearly. Some unkind types might say it's all rather dodgy. I say that's maybe a bit harsh. If you think it's awkward-looking now, you should see one with the lights up!





Mind you (and I realise that I might be going beyond the limits of acceptability here), I've never been a mad-keen fan of the earlier DB Astons either. I find the sorta hare-lip grille on the DB2 slightly upsetting and prefer the longer rear and Kamm tail of the DB6 to the "archetype" 5 rear end. Maybe I'm just a Philistine. With that said, next to the Lagonda, even a buck-toothed DB2 can't fail to look pretty



Past the Grand Tourers of the coachbuilt and high-end manufacturers is a little section of more humble offerings. Little family cars from around the globe are wedged in here. The Imp, for example. Such an innovative design that its strengths and worthiness are still only now really being acknowledged; an Imp owner will tend to be an Imp owner for life. The Californian was a strange idea in many ways. Most of the reliability and construction issues that gave early Imps such a poor reputation had been ironed out by the time this was made, yet the designers chose to give it less headroom and delete the useful opening rear glass "hatch" in favour of making it slightly more stylish.



The Quatre Chevaux was the first French car to sell over a million units. It had a good deal of innovation in its construction; monocoque chassis, rear-engine rear-drive making the most of passenger space, relatively light weight, and so on. It had a long production run from the late Forties to the early Sixties. It also weaves a thread through the mid Twentieth Century of deceit, industrial espionage, intrigue, false imprisonment, traitorous collaboration and Governmental shady dealings that would even make Ian Fleming raise a Bond-esque eyebrow of gentlemanly disbelief. La motte de beurre (the Lump of Butter, referring to it's slightly melty shape) was also part of the death warrant for Louis Renault. The design was heavily influenced (some might say stolen) from the embryonic Kraft durch Freude-Wagen, Hitler's Strength Through Joy Car that would become the post-war Beetle. Renault was reported to have instructed his design team to "make me a car like the Germans". He then compounded the felony by keeping his factories open through the War, or as much as the conflict allowed. This he justified on the grounds of wishing to look after the interests of his staff but that wasn't how it was seen after hostilities ceased, especially given that the factories had been seized by the invading Germans and turned to their own war production uses. Accused of collaboration with the Reich, he was imprisoned and, old and sick, died in prison. The fact that this gave the French government a justification to plunder all his assets and take Renault into national ownership was no doubt purely coincidental... maybe if the early 4CV cars had been painted in anything other than desert yellow diverted from Rommel's Afrika Corps vehicles his defence might have been more persuasive.

Whatever the sad fate of Louis Renault, the 4CV was brought to general production just after the War by the newly appointed head of the company, former Resistance fighter hero Pierre Lefaucheux. He exploited his influence to ensure Ferdinand and Ferry Porsche were arrested for complicity in war crimes, specifically the use of forced French labour in Volkwagen military derivatives production. As much as anything, this in hindsight seems to have been a pre-emptive strike to avoid accusations that the upcoming 4CV on which so much of Renault's future depended was actually a shameful theft of VW design... something that Lefaucheux furiously and repeatedly denied. Conveniently, the Porsches were unable to raise the vast sum of money demanded to secure both their release, so whilst Ferry was able to return to Germany, there were not sufficient funds to release his father too and Ferdinand was incarcerated for almost two years. By which time the Quatre Chevaux was in the market, and the Allied car manufacturers were still months behind, each rejecting the VW as a flawed design that would never catch on. The 4CV thus hit the ground running, the French people embraced the little quatre pattes ("Four Paws") to their hearts, and it went on to sell 1.2 million.

All of which begs one question; where the hell have all of them gone?





Honda was already the largest motorcycle manufacturer when it turned to small car production. The N600 was the middle car in a three-car range, and betrayed its bike origins in the tiny, overhead cam twin-cylinder engine. Japanese cars might have been a joke to many, but this was the start of the punchline and it wasn't going to seem so funny a few years later



Just past the Japanese answer to the Mini is a room off the main hall, yet another of those little side-rooms that you could easily miss. And within is the British answer to the Mini; the actual Mini! Several different flavours are presented here, including an excellent autopsy display of one that's been cut in half to show off just what an astonishing job Issigonis did of packaging so much into such a small space



and at first, it might seem odd to find a Mini Moke hanging from a parachute suspended from the ceiling. But then, this was part of what the Moke was initially envisioned to do. It was intended to be a small, light military taxi that could be dropped into any territory where it was needed. Of course, the front-wheel only drive and tiny wheels meant that it was at quite a disadvantage to more rugged and purpose-built 4x4s and it never really took off as a military workhorse. Its future would be as a beach buggy and leisure runabout... and not in the country of its birth, either. The famous British climate meant that the California lifestyle wasn't really an option for a vehicle with the most token of roofs and no side protection at all. Australia would prove to be the spiritual home of the Moke, and would take over manufacture as well.



Back in the main hall one can't help but be arrested by this ridiculous behemoth;



Upon reading the information board, it transpires that this is based on the chassis of a Manchester truck, produced between the World Wars by the Overland-Crossley factory in Stockport. Nope, I'd never heard of one either. However, whatever sidevalve old rattler this thing clattered out of the factory propelled by, it's long gone. Instead, some unsung eccentric genius took it upon themselves to modify the chassis in the style of the great Edwardian pioneers of speed record trials and wedge the most prodigious motor they could lay their hands on into a totally inappropriate vehicle. In this instance, it meant a 27-litre V12 Meteor engine from a Centurion tank. It puts its power through a robust Wilson pre-selector gearbox (because double de-clutching something this insane in a pressure situation was presumably something to be avoided) and a specially-manufactured centrifugal clutch rated to 1500 horsepower. That ought to hold, then. It appears that no record exists of anyone being brave enough, or mad enough - or both - to max out the speed on this frankly scary beast. Or if they have, no-one's lived to tell the tale!







Just around the corner is a most vibrant little corner of bright citrus British goodness. Lotuses.... errmm. Lotusses? Ahhh, Lotii? Whatever. Specifically, a slightly random selection of an early Elise, a groovy breadvan Europa, a gorgeous the-one-everyone-wants Elan, and a somewhat forgotten and overlooked Elite. All of them are excellent in their own leftfield way, all of them are in a colour that really fails to translate into PhotoBucket's cramped bandwidth very nicely, and all of them far too wedged in to take any very good photos of. Sorry

Oh dear. I've only found another annexe off the main hall here, haven't I? Maybe it was a mistake to go round the back of that Fairlane to take a photo of the back lights. This is the rather grandly-titled Hall of Motorsport. You can tell they're serious because the entrance has a black semi-circular doorway that mimics the tyre-brand bridges at many iconic circuits. Best take a look, then. Funnily enough, this features a few specimens from the world of powered, wheeled competition. But in keeping with the excellent variation in the Museum as a whole they're not all necessarily what you'd expect. Yeah, there's a D-Type (replica) and no-one's ever going to grumble about looking at one of the most successful - and prettiest - racing cars ever to emerge from Britain



but it's something of a surprise to see a 1936 Delahaye Type 135 here wedged in besides a modern tupperware Ferrari F360 from the GT Cup. The Delahayes had their own glorious motorsport history by the time the firm was able to buy out compatriots Delage, who added their own expertise from many hard-won races to remind the world that the French motor industry was still very much a force to be reckoned with. This very car was originally owned by no less a legendary figure than Prince Bira of Siam, who won the Twelve Hours of Donington with it in 1937. All but forgotten to the mainstream now, the seismic shifts in French culture away from power and speed would mean the glory days of French racing would not reappear in the Twentieth Century





Syndey Allard never gave too many damns about what a car looked like, as long as it was insanely powerful and stupidly fast. The legendary J2 was archetypally the least amount of car necessary to carry around the greatest amount of engine. With the K1, though, you feel at least some attempt was made at making the car look pretty, albeit not in exactly what could be termed a traditional manner. Anyway, this 1947 two-seater is a sort of steroid-enhanced precursor to the Lotus Seven, boasting a Ford V8 sidevalve power unit. It's the only K1 V8 known to remain in roadworthy state, and competed with honours in rallies such as the Alpine back in its prime



There's even one of these plastic things, as driven by someone a few people might have heard of



This Cosworth engine represents the end of a glorious era of F1 competition; the stupidly powerful turbo cars. It's surprisingly massive outside of the car, with a feeling of solidity and weight about it that you (or I, anyway) wouldn't really expect in a Grand Prix component. But then Ford, specifically Cosworth, knew a thing or two about what it took to make an engine last the course after the DFV became the winningest ever engine in Formula One.





The Healey Silverstone is a good deal rarer than other flavours of Healey, but was conceived before Donald managed to secure the manufacturing might and financial backing of Austin in his later cars. The Silverstone was envisaged as the drive-to-a-track-win-drive-home sort of car still in use by the gentleman competitor in the late 1940s. Although hit by the luxury tax being levied by a bankrupt Government trying to pay for the War, it found a ready market in the comparatively affluent United States (export or die, remember?). Healey managed to bring it in under the £1000 sale price that meant a third was paid in tax rather than two thirds but even so sales were hit badly in Britain. Only 105 were sold in total but this at least convinced Healey that such vehicles were still desired and saleable in the tough times after the War. The car itself was built to win with little consideration to luxuries. It was built down to a weight and nothing not strictly necessary was allowed to remain; even the spare wheel was mounted horizontally in the tail and the protruding tyre double-dutied as a bumper. The lights were squeezed in behind the grille in search of better aerodynamics





The rear wall of this section boasts loads of period reproductions of advertisements (as do many of the museum's walls, plus old signage and suchlike), including this great piece of exuberant artwork promoting the first ever Motorshow in 1895. Surprisingly little of a car is depicted, maybe because pretty ladies have always sold more or less anything you'd like, and maybe because the organisers didn't want to upset potential customers by showing too much of how primitive, dirty, oily, complicated and generally unpleasant a device the pioneer motor-car actually was.



Alphonse Mucha has long been one of my favourite artists of the late Victorian and Art Nouveau periods. Czech-born, for the longest time he earned his corn in France, turning his indulgent and sumptuous curvaceous treatments of the natural form (especially ladies) into promotional backdrops to sell anything from biscuits to fag rolling papers ... and Sarah Bernhardt of course, the Marilyn Monroe of her day. Eventually, tired of relentless commercialism, he returned to his homeland to illustrate the Slavic epic legends he held dear to his heart. It's nice to see that before he did, he managed to illustrate something more dear to my heart than soapflakes, and knocked out this delightful poster advertising the 1902 Paris Auto Salon. Still not much of the actual car is allowed to creep into the picture though, you'll notice. Alors, just look at al those levers on the volant! Poor petit femme Véronique will never be able to surmonter such complexité



....and between the posters is yet another little room with random cars in it. For the life of me, I can't work out the theme here, if there is one, but I'm starting to feel like I'm meandering my way ever-deeper into Narnia and I might never find my way back to the wardrobe. If only I'd heeded Lucy's advice because like all sensible children, she knew that climbing into a wardrobe and closing the door behind you is a very foolish thing to do. Anyway, some randomness; a Riley RMA with a great ornithological mascot...



...A strangely see-through Cossie in a motorsport flava...



... and an early 2CV from the time when they were still ribbed for extra strength and featured more wrinkles than your Gran's stockings.



...and we're back in the room. Specifically the American room. here's something I reckon you'll not have seen before. I certainly hadn't, maybe because it's supposedly the only one of its kind in Europe. The display notes show that even more that this factoid, this Haynes (no relation) Light Twelve is a very interesting car. It was discovered rotting away in a wooden shed in Java, of all places, and is an extremely rare relic from a firm who can lay claim to being America's first ever car manufacturer. Certainly Elwood Haynes of Kokomo Indiana made the first car in America and turned to full production at more or less the same time as the Duryea Brothers, normally considered the first true American marque. Whatever his claim to originality, it is beyond argument that Elwood was an excellent scientist, who developed an alloy called Stellite that is still in use today, most famously in recent times on the Space Shuttle! Dunno about you, I'm a bit fed up with red cars, though





Something else I'd never heard of before is this Moon Model 642 Touring. No disgrace in that; before the Great Depression there were hundreds of tiny-volume manufacturers and Joseph Moon of Ohio seems no different... except for one small point. Having left the family agricultural business and set up in St Louis to make cars in 1905, Mr Moon cleverly appointed a British agent to sell his products; Northwest Motors of Liverpool. This Model 642 was sold new, in England, in 1920. I love the radiator cap mascot; hard to imagine Elf and Safe Tea letting such a pedestrian eviscerator pass type approval in this day and age!



Once upon a time, this alternative-fuel vehicle was considered not the way of the future, as we tend to look at anything nowadays that doesn't feature Otto Cycle internal combustion, but a solid and perfectly acceptable take on the issue of personal transportation.



In fact, it ran on a means of propulsion much more acceptable and mainstream at the time than the newfangled petrol engines those ce-razee Germans were foisting on the world. After all, steam engines had powered the railways, driven the Industrial Revolution and run the mines for a considerable time already. Missionary Father Verbiest had designed the first self-propelled steam-powered transport back in 1670 in China so it was hardly a new thing by the turn of the Twentieth Century. Back in the pioneer days of motoring, no-one knew which method of self-powered driving would prove enduring, rather like all those people who bought Betamax had no idea they would be the laughing stock of eBay within a few short years. At the turn of the Twentieth Century, no real distinction was made between steam, electric or petrol power; no-one was going to bet which would survive, or indeed if all would. Even one of the most respected automotive engineers of all time, Ferdinand Porsche's first attempts at car production were the electric-powered Löhner machines.

Even after petrol had shown it probably had the trump hand after the First World War, steam-powered vehicles continued to feature and such superbly-engineered examples as this 1920s Stanley Steamer were if anything more reliable than many petrol-powered equivalents with their oil-fired boilers doing away with the need for coal bunkers. Where the gasoline engine really started to score was in the ease of use. There was no need to fire a boiler to make steam half an hour before you actually wanted to drive anywhere, the gallons of water a steamer required were not ballasting down a petrol car's performance, and the passengers were not being scared off by the need to sit on top of a potential bomb of a boiler running at several bar of pressure. The adoption of electric starters by Cadillac on petrol-engined cars from 1912 onwards was really the death knell for alternative fuels. Regardless, forward-thinking firms like Stanley strove to keep their cars attractive to the average Joe. It's only when you look under the bonnet that you realise its engine still ran on fire and steam rather than exploding oil fractions. Even the steam condenser was styled like a normal car radiator so as to blend into the scenery of the day. Eventually, progress would kill and eat all these evolutionary dead end dinosaurs, more through convenience and greater useful range than any true deficiencies of steam power. And as for electrics, well, that's a whole other story that's still being written.





Just as I was starting to lament the lack of "proper" American cars in this section; i.e. muscle cars, or course, I find an area sort of sectioned off behind a set of pillars. Ooh, it claims to be the supercar gallery. Now we're talking. And somewhat incongruously, here are some proper muscle cars. A Charger ('69 though, a year too late to be ideal), an el Camino (several years too late). Hang on though, what's this? Ahh, a '67 Camaro. Now, that's more like it. An SS, too, and even better, she's got the RS package with the headlight doors and dress stripes. Just about perfect. Looks stunning in white.





And by contrast, a '78 Camaro. Yeah, so it's a Z28 but I've never been a massive fan of second generation Camaros, and the latter years of the 70s were kind of a nadir for almost all cars. The colour is... well, I don't really know what it is. It isn't really yellow, it's not exactly cream. It's kind of... hmmmm. It's the American equivalent of British Leyland NHS Hearing Aid Beige. Not nice. It only seems to be here to prove what a nice shape the earlier generation was in contrast





speaking of unusual colours... but in a good way... how about this GT40? You wouldn't have thought deep pearl blue with dusky lilac pink stripes would be a winning colourscheme if someone were to describe it to you, but here with the spotlights drawing out liquid smooth highlights and the sensual curves merging into the shadows, it looks positively voluptuous. I like the idea of a car that was only ever built to be a weapon rocking a showcar-quality paintjob





Separated at birth is the car next door, the spiritual twin to the GT40. Bereft of the motorsport icon status of the Ford, the Pantera is nonetheless cut from the same cloth. A beefy Ford V8 in an arrestingly pretty box, they both fall into the same category as the Allard we looked at earlier; how little car can I get away with for the greatest amount of engine? A car that's stayed with me in my heart from the first time I was even aware of cars. I had the Matchbox one proudly ranked alongside other defining miniatures of my youth; the Monterverdi Hai, the Pininfarina Modulo, the Mazda RX500. Even after proof was made positive that the Pantera really wasn't all that great a car in many ways, De Tomaso continued to make them waayyyy past their sell-by date because they realised, like many discerning owners, that just because it couldn't outperform a Ferrari on the track or out-Top-Trump a Countach, it didn't mean it was an irrelevance. Far from it, if ever a car was more than the sum of its parts, if ever one managed to tap into the visceral, animal urges that make you go WOW when you see it.. hear it... smell it... this is the one.



Oh, speak of the devil... here's a Countach. Y'know what, I really don't think I need to write anything else here









The Mercedes SL 190 was a pauper's machine. Well, relatively... Designed as an affordable version of the iconic 300 SL Gullwing, no-one even then would have gone so far as to actually describe it as "cheap". What it did was take the astonishing styling of the Gullwing and place it on a modified saloon underpinning, thus avoiding the cost of making the fearsomely complex and expensive 300 birdcage chassis. The motor was a (admittedly new) four-pot rather than bigger sister's inline six, and ran off twin Solex carbs rather than space-age injection. It was still blighted by the Gullwing's wayward swing rear axles though, even if the front were independent double wishbones. This was probably the start of Mercedes-Benz beginning to make cars to be seen in and that were perfectly capable (perhaps more able than many contemporaries) but without the zealous, almost obsessive drive towards excellence in every aspect that had led the marque to dominate the tracks and rallies of the world for so long. And you'd have to say, she is easy to look at



In strict contrast, the Jaguar XKSS is not only heart-stoppingly gorgeous, but is the real deal, the genuine article. No watered-down racer-for-the-more-sedentary-gentleman styling exercise this. In 1956 Jaguar made the decision to withdraw the factory racing team from competition; after all, they'd just won Le Mans twice in succession with the D-Type (and were about to monster it again in 1957 when D-Types took five of the top six places). There were plenty of unused D-Type components lying around Browns Lane, however, and the decision was made to offer them as a limited run of road cars. Thus was born the XKSS. Twenty five cars only were built, and were genuinely a road-going Le Mans racer. The changes were minimal; a windscreen was fixed to replace the separate screens, the aerodynamic fin was removed from the rear deck, and the divider between driving and passenger seats. Oh, and in a nod to usability, a passenger door was added! The most token of folding fabric roofs was nailed on, and that was it. Jaguar realised that winning the premier road race in the world three years running couldn't hurt in terms of saleability, and indeed it wasn't hard to find buyers for the XKSS. This was made even easier by the fact that a fire at the factory destroyed nine of the finished cars, so only sixteen ever made it out into the world. To me, this is easily the most beautiful of all Jaguars. Steve McQueen had one (in BRG, of course) and that's good enough endorsement for me. Given the rarity and stupendous price they command, I'm guessing this one might well be a replica, but I just don't care. It's so lovely, I find it hard to stop licking the monitor





This is a Ferrari. A 250GT of some kind. I'd love to tell you which exact flavour, but as is normal with Ferrari's infuriatingly bewildering and obfuscatory "naming" strategy, it could be anything. I know the 250 refers to the displacement of a single cylinder and because the factory used that rubric on twelve-pots, that makes it the 3-litre Colombo engine. But then add in the bewildering number of model designations dropped on two different lengths of chassis by various coachbuilders and altered slightly by customer order or the whim of the Boss... well, it's a 250GT. Spyder. Pinifarina. More than that, work it out your damned self, I've already lost too many hours of my life staring at pages of Google Images trying to fluke the one photo that resembles the car in question the most.







And this is a Bentley Fourandanarf. I'm not sure I'd strictly agree with the display notes that this represents the first ever true supercar. That accolade is almost always given to the Lamborghini Miura as being the first road car to really go the extra mile in both looks and performance beyond not only what was required but what was sensible. I kinda see where the museum are coming from; the Bentleys of the late Twenties were winners on the track, excessive on the road, looked phenomenal and cost the same as a terraced street in the suburbs but were they really a Supercar as we think of it now? I guess this discussion could run and run, but if you allow the Bentley, then why not the equivalent Bugatti, or Delage, or Invicta, or Darraq, or Benz, Alfa, Itala, Hispano-Suiza... where will it end? Discuss, lol

Right, so I've checked out the car park, I've had me fag (and I can't have another even if I wanted to cos the guy with the lighter and the GT-Four has sodded off) so it's probably about time to head back inside. The time has ticked by, I've only had one coffee, the RR ceremony thing is due soon... and the guide book insists that there's this Chaika lurking in there somewhere and that needs to be photographed. Oh yeah...



...how the hell did I miss that, then? Another car I knew nothing about what it actually looked like the first time I "saw" one. Just like the Armstrong Siddeley that was soooooo unlike how I'd imagined it, the Chaika first entered my foggy awareness via the medium of Martin Cruz Smith's sequel to the superb Gorky Park (also one of the best films ever, despite the plot diverging massively from the novel. And the rather preposterous sight of Ricky Fulton as a KGB honcho). Polar Star was the equally superb sequel, and one of the large, bucolic Russian ladies that shared the factory ship with an unfortunate Renko was nicknamed "the Chaika" because of her resemblance to the huge "square-shouldered" limousine beloved of high-ranking KGB officials. My mind conjured up a vehicle as linear and foreboding as the bleak Soviet architecture of a million Cold War era tenement blocks.

In fact, the original GAZ (Gorkovsky Avtomobilny Zavod) M13 Chaika limousine was a plagiarisation of the mid-1950s Packard Patrician, and a sculptural be-chromed extravagance much at odds with the grimness of the times. It would appear given how frosty relationships were between America and the USSR in 1958 when the Chaika emerged from the Nizhny Novgorod factory, the Russian firm felt pretty secure from the threat of lawsuits for design theft. Chaikas (meaning "Gull" and named for the ornate fretwork shapes of the grille metal) were a rare item of luxury and even rarer piece of conspicuous status allowed in the Communist state. And "allowed" is the correct word rather than "available" because they weren't... well, only to senior Party figureheads and the aforementioned KGB top rankers. Ordinary citizens could get a glimpse of how those who were their equals... only slightly more equal in the best Orwellian idiom... got about because they were allowed to hire Chaikas from the State as wedding cars for their most special day. They fact that such rental was well beyond the means of most Soviet workers is neither here nor there.

So did I get it wrong again, in that pre-Google age when I first read that mysterious Russian word naming an even more mysterious car? Not exactly. The superbly at-odds M13 was superseded by the M14 Chaika from 1977 onwards, and that resembled the worst kind of ruler-straight style-vacuum American sedan of the era.. think of something utterly wretched like a stretched Cadillac Cimarron and you're kinda there. The M14 was a car so horrible that it was probably for the best when Gorbachev symbolically had all the tooling and blueprints destroyed as part of perestroika in a gesture of tearing down the inequality of privilege that had perverted the original egalitarian ideal of communism. So I guess that Renko's accomplice was probably named after the more modern (and hateful) Chaika. Poor girl.





While we're talking about cars copied shamelessly from other cars, the ultimate would have to be the Hindustan Ambassador. Based on the series III Morris Oxford of 1956, the Ambassador almost unbelievably only went out of production in 2014, a production run that even rivals the VW Beetle and makes all other cars look like ephemeral bits of fluff. Kolkata's emission standards regulation in 2011 essentially sealed the fate of the "Amby" which had remained more or less unchanged throughout its lifespan. As it was thereafter technically illegal to sell one for use as a taxi (it's most usual purpose) the car only lasted another three years before succumbing to the inevitable after a mere 58 years, the same as the production Beetle. The one in the Haynes museum is furnished in a wonderfully Bollywood style





To find the Chaika, I'd wandered into the section of the museum I'd bypassed whilst doing my elaborate loop through the backroom annexes. Damn that guide book, I could have lived in ignorance! Now I've found there's a whole load of stuff that it definitely would be a shame to have missed out on. And some of it is surprisingly humble. But rare. After all, when was the last time you saw a DAF out in the wild? Dutch automakers are almost as rare as Swiss ones and mostly DAF loved trucks, so cars like the little 44 weren't exactly common even in their 1970s "heyday". Or maybe that had something to do with the tiny 750cc twin cylinder engine that even with the innovative continuously variable transmission, struggled to get out of it's own way. This '71 car is awesome for also being in that gorgeous shade of Seventies Brown. Everything was brown in the 70s



In fact, this whole section has some groovy motors from around the world. Here's another Delahaye from that French France, and possibly more in keeping with the image of the firm that most would have. They were successful racers, yeah, albeit much more so with the input of the Delage expertise, but mostly what they were best at was building exotically sculpted automotive objets d'art. Like this 1939 135M with its definitive "fencer's mask" grille. The original 135 was unofficially named Coupe des Alpes after it proved efficient in rally racing, especially the Alpine. The later 135M update re-started production after the War and continued to be offered in one form or another until Delahaye's demise. The 135S we saw earlier was derived from the same source as this later tourer-bodied car, and proved that its truck-derived engine was no bar to competing with honours.





Of course, even after the demise of Delahaye there were French firms to continue the job of bonkers innovation and extravagant styling. Glass bumpers? Hell, why not? The Citroën SM really deserved more recognition in its lifetime.. and a longer lifetime, come to think of it. Sad that Joni Mitchell should be proved right time and time again. You don't know what you've got ‘til it's gone





It's not as though André's boys were newcomers to the concept of shaking up the established order. The world collectively scratched its head at the zany Traction Avant in 1934. With the exception of oddities like Cord's front-drive 812, few cars were front-wheel drive and the only other volume production had come from DKW (remember them?) from 1930. So people mocked and asserted the FWD phenomena would never catch on, and 780 000 TAs later Citroën could safely laugh back. Of course, most cars now are FWD and have been for decades, but very few look as stylish and louche as a TA



Fred Lanchester would no doubt have been outraged by the appearance of this frisky minx mascot on the radiator cowl of this 1929 Lanchester 30hp. He might have left the firm that bore his name long before this, but as the man who lays claim to building the first true English automobile and a purist engineer, he despised frippery and unnecessary adornments. He'd designed the very company badge to be as austere, symmetrical and clean as possible so popping a wheel-riding flapper on top would certainly have had him grinding his teeth with pique





If ever there was a car to not commemorate, honour or indeed celebrate in any way the British car industry, then surely it must be this little Rover 8. Or is it? Yes, there were plenty of deficiencies throughout the car's design; the original engine was a truly feeble single cylinder of a hardly stump-pulling 8hp; there was a trip up the blind alley of Daimler-Knight sleeve valves; the body was mounted to the underpinnings by only three points and would move alarmingly independent from the chassis... BUT! there's always a but. In this case, several. The case for the defence would point out several salient strengths; it was the first production Rover and therefore is worthy of honouring; it had an innovative backbone chassis structure formed from the engine, gearbox, prop shaft and rear axle (something Colin Chapman would be lauded for several decades later); it had a unique method of switching the cams to reduce valve lift and thus increase engine braking for descents. Admittedly by the time of this 1922 model the second generation Rover 8 had a conventional chassis and a twin-cylinder engine, but it still innovated, being suspended on unusual quarter-elliptic cantilever springs at all four corners and had even improved engine lubrication from the original splash method to pressure. The "radiator" was a dummy simply for aesthetics, and a popular folk tale of the day was that you could recognise a Rover 8 in the dark by the glow of its super-hot heads through the "radiator". But it was cheap as the proverbial deep-fried potato product, would perpetrate over 40mph if the pilot were brave enough, return over 40mpg and run all day and night with minimal maintenance (there wasn't much to maintain!). The car had a 19 year production lifespan, sold 18 000 units and provided Rover with a grounding to go on and become one of Britain's great marques. So try not to mock it's awkward, upright, brown Noddy car looks. This as much as any coachbuilt grand tourer or race-winning sportscar truly represents the best of British!





From the wee brown Rover I return to the American annexe. There are a few cars in here that I want to make sure I've properly documented. There are some cars in here that are truly world-beating. There are some that I've never seen before and will likely never see again. But before I can get to them, I stumble across a Plymouth Prowler I'd completely missed before. I love these things. I know they attract a lot of derision, but I've never quite understood why. They represent the resurrection of the American performance car, for a start. For decades lost in the wilderness when the only performance options were Corvettes, IROC Camaros and wretched Firebirds... or even *shudder* that most hatefully beige of cars, the Fox-body Mustang... Chrysler suddenly went bonkers and thrust the Viper out, blinking hooded slit eyes into the sunlight. Hot on the heels of that now-iconic venomous reptile came the concept-car-made-flesh of the Plymouth (later Chrysler) Prowler. And honestly, what's not to like? Coming from a design by Chip Foose (his mom calls him "Douglas") for the excellent Hemisfear hotrod, the Prowler somehow managed to squeeze through regulations and make production remarkably unchanged. Albeit with a v6 engine rather than anything Hemi in origin, it was still a breath of fresh air in the awful style vacuum of the early 1990s and more importantly, opened the door to a host of funky re-boots of old muscle cars and performance identities.

That must have taken flippin' ages to write (took me ages to read and I just skimmed through bits of it), thanks.

I realise my thanks seem a bit flimsy after that, but I cant really think of anything else to write. so.... ...thanks.

Amazing. Absolutely the best post on RR for eons: excellent photos, superb write-up. Thank you for taking the time to do this.

Did the Power That Be in RR Towers not post you an award, georgeb ? Or did it just get absorbed into the Philippines postal system, never to be seen again?

excellent read, super photos.

Cheers

That'd explain a lot, mikeymk . The car is dressed up in the black Texaco livery, where it's not see-through