‘We crept up The Mall towards Admiralty Arch, watching enviously as the big, quiet 20-40hp tourers surged past’
My veteran-car ambitions really only go as far as watching Genevieve on the TV every now and again. But former C&SC staffer Pete Wood has wanted to own one – and do the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run – ever since he can remember. This year, having captured himself a 1903 6.5hp Cadillac Runabout, Pete achieved his 50-year dream. He also kindly offered passenger seats in a virtually identical 1904 8hp car being driven by a young American called Brighton Dennison and his mother Bridget, who conceived her son on the Brighton run weekend 30 years ago, hence his name.
I have spectated a couple of times, but my knowledge of these (at least) 120-year-old ʻbrass eraʼ machines genuinely does extend only as far as that classic film. Still, I love the feel and flavour of this famous veteran car run and the gloriously English eccentricity of 350 or so of the worldʼs oldest vehicles setting off – from perhaps the least automobile-friendly capital city in Europe – to perpetuate the tradition of the worldʼs longest-running old-car event. Thank goodness it appears to carry on in the face of those alternatively enlightened folk with environmental and health-and-safety agendas, and who appear to be seeking only to sanitise our lives to the point where they are almost not worth living.
My wife Mia and I met up with Brighton – who works at the ex-Bill Harrah collection in the American city of Reno, Nevada – in the fume-filled underground car park of the Thistle Hotel in Kensington. We had already learned that our ride, the second car ever registered in Malta, was being a bit sulky. We managed to get it up the exit ramp, with four helpers pushing, then it puttered out on to the Bayswater Road in the direction of Hyde Park, with Mia and I in the rear seats. With a single 1500cc piston and two gears, you really need the advance and retard on the ignition to work. But it didnʼt and, just inside the gates of the park, all three riders had to jump out and let Brighton go off on his own to give the poor car a starting chance. We got over the line as the heavens opened (it turned out to be one of the wettest L2Bs ever) and crept up The Mall towards Admiralty Arch, watching enviously as the big, quiet 20hp or 40hp tourers (with roofs and dr
