Britain’s oldest chargers to do Brighton run

Question: what was the first-ever British victory recorded in international motor racing? Clue: it’s not Stirling Moss’s British GP glory of 1955, nor even Frank Clement’s win in the second-ever Le Mans 24 Hours in 1924 (alongside Canadian John Duff in a Bentley 3-litre).

The answer pre-dates both substantially, all the way back to 1902 when Selwyn Francis Edge won the illustrious Gordon Bennett Cup, racing a 6.5-litre Napier from Paris to Innsbruck in Austria. The car, RAC-rated at 40hp, took the fight to the then-dominant French cars and set the trend for British Racing Green, due to its dark shade of Britain’s allocated racing colour.

To commemorate 120 years since this groundbreaking motoring milestone, the actual Napier that Edge drove to victory will be reunited with its two surviving sister cars during this year’s Veteran Car Run from London to Brighton on November 6. The two siblings both date from 1903, and feature 7.7-litre (50hp) and 11.1-litre (110hp) engines respectively. The three cars have only appeared together on the event once before, in 2013, but will once again gather for the ceremonial start in London’s Hyde Park before heading off for the 54-mile run to Brighton.