Vintage Wiscombe
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The VSCC moved to Wiscombe in Devon on May 12 for its annual event on that interesting, twisting speed hillclimb course. Here a compact car is a good bet and Dr Gray, having got the s/c 996cc Hardy Special running properly, made FTD in 48.65sec, and was only 0.11sec slower on his second run. That was in the up to the 1100cc racing-car class, in which M Fitzmaurice’s sic A7 won the vintage section on a solo appearance, beating the class record with a climb in 51.47sec. Moving up to the 1 1/2-litre class, Stephens driving ERA R12B was the winner, in 49.59sec. A very consistent Caroline in the Morgan was the only vintage contender here (51.58 sec). The Richard Bolster Special had run the ERA close (50.25sec).
The two classes for the bigger and big racing cars had to be combined with the historics due to paucity of entries; Jon Giles scored in both pre-1931 and the general category in the AC/GN (48.98sec), and second place went to the Lovell-Elkhart of L Leston who set a new class-record of 49.1sec. That was the best pre-war showing. So it was mostly sports cars, of which in the 1100cc class Baxter’s sic A7 was on fine song, breaking both vintage and general class records, the latter by 2.33sec with a climb in 53.14sec. It was that much quicker than Barry Clarke had gone previously, and too much for the notably consistent Reg Nice, the runner up (56.02sec in his non-s/c 1931 A7). A big 1 1/2-litre line-up saw Mullett’s Morgan hybrid beat them all, with a record climb in 50.61sec, and Roberts’s 1927 Frazer Nash make the vintage best time in 52.37sec. There was equally good support for the three-litre class, won by Spollon’s 2 1/2-litre Riley in a record 51.62sec, from MacMasters’s FN-BMW, fastest vintage car P Bullett’s Frazer Nash (54.05sec), and a Diatto beat a Delage by 3.23sec, but had a bigger power plant…
In the over-3000cc sports car class, the outright winner was Sparrowhawk’s 4.3 Alvis in a record 49.73sec from Bronson’s s/c Riley. Of the “handicapped” Edwardians, Pipkin’s tiny 1913 Singer Ten was best. But Ben Collings held the Mercedes Maybach, a large car for the course, to a 56.20sec ascent, which smashed the aero-engineed record of the Monarch by 1.29sec, and also was fastest Edwardian, with Bendell’s six-litre Stutz a mere 0.06 of a second slower. Now for Prescott… W B