Miscellany, July 1997

The Brooklands Museum is open for business conferences, promotion parties and even weddings, and now the Bugatti OC is offering similar facilities at their pleasant country site at Prescott. Details from Mrs. Sue Ward, at Prescott Hill, Gotherington, Glos GL52 4RD.

The Bugattis OC’s Bugantics recently contained a comparison between Types 40 and 40A Bugattis, a discussion about the Type 57G ‘Tank’ cars arising from Anthony Blight’s recent book, and reports of various tours, etc. Ernie Allen having relinquished the post of Bugatti Spares manager, the new manager is Peter Candy.

You need not to be a large organisation to have fun. The indomitable Gwynne 8 Register is going again in convoy to the West Country and the Rover 8 Register is hoping to join the Rover Sports Register’s activities at Knipton, E Midlands, on August 9/10.

The 500 owners Association had its 50th anniversary last year and there will be scope For these single-cylinder racing cars in this year’s sprint events.

It cheers me up when I see racing or rally successes by car manufacturers, a reminder that racing improves the breed, or should do. It used to be “The racing car of today is tomorrow’s touring car”. So I am glad to note that Skoda is aiming to dispel some of the endless jokes and snide remarks made about it by publicising its admirable rally achievements, and that Ford insists that the improvements to its new cars have benefited from such competitive activities. Also that Saab UK has been advertising its 180-hour day-and-night record-breaking run of 25,000 miles with a Saab Turbo, at Talladega Speedway, Alabama, when many new production-car records were set, at up to 140.7mph for thc full distance, (one hour at 142.522mph, 24 hours at 141.350mph) on Michelin Pilot tyres. A Saab 2.5 V6 broke the equivalent one-hour and 12-hour records at 140 and 139.233mph respectively, and a Saab 2.0 the equivalent class records for those durations, at 124.723 and 122.678mph, 40 new records in all.