Veteran Car Run welcomes the famous Darracq and Spyker
AFTER LAST YEAR’S near-Arctic weather, the 350 entrants on the 2023 RM Sotheby’s London to Brighton Veteran Car Run were greeted with unseasonably mild conditions. Star attraction as the cars, crews and spectators gathered in Hyde Park in the dark on 5 November was the on-the-road reunion of the 1904 Darracq and 1905 Spyker that were the stars of 1953 British comedy film Genevieve.
Both cars usually live in the Louwman Museum in The Netherlands and went on something of a 70th anniversary publicity tour, including time at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu, before setting off from London. Of course, the slightly inconvenient truth is that neither the Spyker nor the Darracq (it’s a very long story in the case of the latter) should really be eligible for the event but, 127 years after the original Emancipation Run, the pair that ignited the classic car hobby in the UK have long-since been granted grandfather rights.
The flagging off was carried out by ex-F1 boss Ross Brawn OBE, Royal Automobile Club chairman Ben Cussons, and RM Sotheby’s UK chairman Peter Wallman. The horseless carriages were preceded by a pack of motor- and pedal-cycles on the road to the Madeira Drive finish. The cars were led away by a 1892 Peugeot vis-à-vis from Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile in Turin, and left in age order after the Genevieve stars.
Just past Big Ben, the event split into two routes to avoid congestion, half following he traditional A23 route via Kennington, Brixton and Streatham Common, the rest crossing Lambeth Bridge and travelling on through Vauxhall, Clapham Common and Tooting.
They merged again just before Croydon and headed on down to Brighton in a ca
