Talking with The Hon Patrick Lindsay

Anyone who is at all conversant with VSCC or Historic motor racing will require no introduction to the subject of this profile, for he is one of the keenest and most consistent of competitors in these events. However, his motoring and av1at1on interests extend far further than this, so it seemed a good idea to talk to him about them, with the proviso that this necessarily brief account of the conversation cannot possibly cover all Patrick’s many successes in the field of motor racing that he enjoys best. A busy man, Lindsay obligingly fitted in our interview (DSJ joined me) so that a visit to London, where he is well-known as Christie’s Art Consultant and Auctioneer, wasn’t necessary. He arrived to meet us at his country house after a lunch-time flip in his Supermarine Spitfire at Booker Airfield, and any need to enquire as to his road car of the moment was rendered unnecessary when he stepped from a much travelled Porsche Carrera RS.

He was born into what might be described as a well-to-do aristocratic family, with houses near Wigan and in Scotland, of a mother who learned to fly at Heston. Incidentally Lord Ridley took her round Brooklands. Patrick never saw a motor race before the war, nor did his parents own particularly interesting cars. But the boy soon discovered that he liked driving, and driving fast, initial experience being gained at the age of 11 on the two miles and more of private roads within the Lancashire estate, in a “perpendicular” Ford Prefect and the Morris Commercial estate lorry, and later by taking his father’s Rover to and from the garages. He confesses to absolutely no mechanical aptitude, but thinks his love of machinery of all kinds may stem from his great-grandfather, who apart from being one of the great bibliophiles of his age was also an accomplished astronomer an engineer, and who was the first person to introduce electricity to London, at the Grosvenor Gallery and then adjacent houses. Here I will digress, to remark that among the many fine examples of· engineering now in Pat Lindsay’s possession is an immense single-cylinder Crossley gas-engine, rare because it is coupled directly by shaft to a big dynamo. The compressed air cylinder for starting it and the electrical control panel are just as they were when this engine was installed at the house in Fife, providing electricity for the house, farm and village until the war. Patrick remembered that if the “self-starting” failed, the butler and a footman would have the risky task of pulling round the enormous sunken flywheel until the thing fired. Needless to say, the installation is in immaculate condition, as were all Lindsay’s mechanical possessions.

The Hon Patrick Lindsay’s first car was a reliable Standard Flying Fourteen, in which half the Magdalen, Oxford, football team used to be conveyed to “away” matches. He then extended his. Jove of fast motoring by purchasing a Jaguar XK120. His awareness of the charm of vintage cars was fostered when he was on his honeymoon in India and encountered a Barker-bodied Rolls-Royce PII tourer, used mainly for Vice-Regal processions and the like. On his return home he enquired when this car, not much used, would be given to him (it had then run only 14,000 miles) but has now done nearer 50,000 miles) and when he was told by the Maharaja of Jaipur to come and fetch it, he drove it home via the Khyber Pass and Hindu Kush, for shipment for Abadan. It was an adventurous journey but apart from some Aurorae bothers, no troubles were experienced, although it was apparent that the Head of the Motor Garage at Jaipur had scarcely serviced the car since it was new. The only precaution prior to the long run across the Indian Continent had been to fit a set of new Dunlop tyres.

This is to anticipate, however, and it should be explained that after leaving Eton Lindsay went to Oxford, which is where his aviation interests were nurtured, as he was taught to fly, in Chipmunks, while in the Oxford University Air Squadron following a spell in the Scots Guards. Motor racing commenced for Lindsay when he began driving at Goodwood in the early 1950s in Ewen Howard’s F2 HWM-Alta, by then road-equipped, a suggestion made to him during a cocktail party. Its Amals lit up and it was badly damaged in the fire but was rebuilt, although ever inflammable. Nevertheless Patrick thoroughly enjoyed his racing with it, although he remembers “looping it” on the last lap of his last race in it, coming out of the chicane at Woodcote, demolishing the Duke of Richmond’s prized rosebed in the process … Marriage forced Lindsay to give up this sort of racing and the wreckage of the HWM was sold for the same price as its trailer!

By this time Lindsay was thoroughly aware of the beauty of line and thoroughbred qualities of the better pre-war cars, and he indulged this appreciation by purchasing from Jack Bartlett a very famous motor car indeed, the Alfa Romeo Monza with which the Hon Brian Lewis had won the Mannin Moar race in 1933 and which had afterwards been raced by Luis Fontes and John Cobb. Much later its owners had included Peter Hampton and Paul Fletcher. Bartlett was offered much more money than had been agreed but held to the sale, much to his credit. Lindsay saw the Monza as primarily an ideal road car. He still has FYE 7, now sports-equipped, although there is photographic evidence that on at least one occasion it ventured onto London streets in racing trim. However, this 2.6 Alfa was also raced occasionally, in appropriate events, Patrick’s wife accepting that there could be little harm in him messing about with an old car on a Club circuit! Anyway, at the time Lindsay had broken his leg ski-ing, so maybe a “sitting” sport seemed a good thing…

Having seen Bill Moss in full flight in an ERA, Lindsay realised th.is was for him and when “Remus” was advertised for sale by Kieft Sports Cars for £695 in 1959 he bought it. It proved satisfactorily fast and also reliable, running for two or three seasons of VSCC racing without requiring a re-build, until crankshaft fatigue caused this essential component to break, as was then occurring on other ERAs. There is no space here to list all the very many successes which the Hon. Patrick Lindsay has had with “Remus”, but those who attend VSCC race meetings will need no reminding of how quickly the old car is driven and how frequently it has won, often putting up highly commendble performances against post-war historic racing cars of greater engine capacity, although, of course, not supercharged; this in spite of bedevilment by magneto maladies. This got us on to discussing whether the faster ERAs are being driven more quickly and more furiously today than was the situation when, they were new. Lindsay thinks not, or not all that much, unless the smoother circuits suit them better, or maybe they are put together that much better. He also made the point that, pre-war, they were sold in 1,100 cc, 1,500 cc and 2,000 cc form and most purchasers went for the 1½-litre engine for voiturette racing, but that these cars really needed the power of the larger engine to do them justice – as “Remus” has had for some time. The fact remains that “Remus” has been timed through the Paul Ricard speed-trap at 152 mph, whereas at Brooklands the top speed of a 1½-litre ERA was around 135 mph, so I think perhaps vintage racing is that much more intense than most of the pre-war classic contests, or that something like the “four-minute-mile” in athletics enters into the matter…

When Lindsay saw the 24-litre Napier-Railton he regarded it as highly desirable though he had never seen it in action. He asked Ken Taylor, of T & T’s, how much? A price was named, which Pat cut by a sixth. No deal, it seemed! But not long afterwards Taylor kindly rang h.im, saying “When are you going to try the car?”. Taylor was clearly glad that the Monza Alfa Romeo he had looked after for Cobb and the Napier-Railton would again be in the same stable. Lindsay found it good fun, but it was in a rather sad condition, the porous cylinder blocks causing overheating, which was the cause of the classic spin at Oulton Park, so he sold it to Bob Roberts after Dick Crosthwaite and John Gardiner had brilliantly rebuilt its engine before Pat stopped using it. It has since been further restored and is now one of the Midland Motor Museum’s most prized exhibits.

It now seemed time to taste post-war Historic racing, and when a pair of 250F Maseratis became available in Italy for £1,000 the chance was taken to purchase them – cars 2526 and 2527. The latter had been crashed, so had to be rebuilt. Richard Berge was in on the deal. Lindsay did quite a lot of racing in his 250F 2527 but found it not that much faster than “Remus”, although a fantastic car, lovely to drive. Bergel found Maserati 2526 “frightfully twitchy”, and it was discovered that the wheelbase was longer on one side than on the other! It was sold to Bobby Bell. Lindsay had two accidents in h.is Maserati, at Oulton Park through wearing a shoe that jammed the pedals and at the Thruxton chicane after the throttle was thought to have stuck open. The car was badly damaged and sold to Innes Ireland, but Patrick later, bought it back from Neil Corner, to whom Innes had sold it, and continued to race it, until he exchanged it for an ex-Ecurie Ecosse D-type Jaguar. However, he already had one of these delectable cars, and still has. Pat eventually found he had insufficient time to devote to racing properly Historic cars like these Maseratis, just as he has too many other interests and business commitments to cope with modern motor-racing, although there were thoughts of driving for Aston Martin and he has appeared in the entry list as No. 2 driver for Lord Hesketh’s team, more or less as a joke, as he never had a ride.

Apart from these varied racing cars Lindsay drove the 4-litre Vl2 Sunbeam “Tiger” when Sir Ralph Millais owned it, winning the 1968 VSCC Boulogne Trophy Race at Silverstone in it, lapping at 79.08 mph – he found it very manageable, with good handling qualities that reminded h.im of the Napier-Railton, but he was conscious of being very close to the machinery in the hot cockpit. (In 1982 “Remus” lapped Silverstone Club circuit at 87.69 mph- the existing class record.) Then there were drives in Sir Ralph’s Type 59 GP Bugatti, which nearly had a serious “prang” when Patrick was practising in it at Brands Hatch, a modern racer cutting across it at a corner and touching a tyre, which sent the Bugatti off, to scythe through a long metal advertising hoarding like a tin-opener, fortunately without serious damage to the car. Another fine car raced for a time by Lindsay was the P3 Alfa Romeo, bought in Australia. It proved not as fast as “Remus”, so was eventually sold. In all, Patrick has driven six ERAs, “Remus”, Peter Waller’s, Syd Day’s, Martin Morris’s, R1A and R4D. This is obviously his favourite racing car and he praised warmly Bill Moss, the late Douglas Hull, Jim Fitzgerald, and Geoffrey Squirrel, who have successively administered to “Remus’s” mechanical needs, including a painstaking rebuild after its crash at Oulton Park last year, and, of course, Dick Crossthwaite and John Gardner.

To list all the more sober cars Patrick has owned would be a considerable feat of memory but there was an Edwardian Napier bought in 1958 as an amusing possession and now in the NMM, a Wensum-bodied 30/98 Vauxhall remembered as “one I should never have sold”, and a very pretty 2.3 Alfa Romeo coupe. In the motor house at the time of our visit Patrick’s Fowler Tiger traction engine stood beside a Ferrari Daytona, the line-up being completed by the D-type Jaguar, the ex-Stanley Sears, ex-Neil Corner 1914 GP Opel; the Monza Alfa Romeo and the aforesaid Rolls-Royce. All were immaculate, as if they had never been out, although they are used in rotation, as it were.

Lindsay’s love of steam is reflected in ownership of this Fowler traction-engine, which must have set something of a record for its kind when it was steamed 115 miles in a day, from Hungerford to Brighton. He also has an enviable collection of 5 inch-gauge steam locomotives and a “steam room” devoted, among other engineering artifacts, to a vast horizontal sream-engine, a replica beam-engine and a very large scale model traction engine, etc, all with adjacent boiler room for setting them quickly in motion.

On the aviation side, Lindsay’s desire to own an interesting aeroplane was hampered at first because, after leaving Oxford, he broke his neck ski-ing over precipice. But he soon afterwards acquired his Morane Saulnier 230 with big, lusty Salmson motor, a machine very difficult to fly, with a speed of 80 knots, which was very aerobatic. Then there was the Fieseler Storch with its short landing run, the Harvard, which cruised at 130 / 140 mph, seeming very noisy to those on the ground because the tips of its propeller exceeded the speed of sound, the clean-outlined fast Fiat G46 ex-trainer which performed like a fighter, and of course, the Sopwith Triplane replica which Pat brought to VSCC Colerne last year, looping it tightly as he left, and the Spitfire. I tried to draw him into saying whether the Spitfire exceeded even his racing cars for excitement, in the power of its engine and exciting take-off, but he refused to be drawn. “The best thing is when I fly to a race meeting and compete there”, he said, as, for example, when he flew the Spitfire to Donington for the 50th Anniversary Meeting there this year and then demonstrated Tom Wheatcroft’s £160,000 Mk II V16 BRM, finding that car’s cockpit difficult to get into, so that at first he trod on the wrong pedal and nearly spun off, but the tremendous, characteristic exhaust note of which and the acceleration, are clearly recalled. The Spitfire is a Mk IA with slightly later Merlin engine driving a useful four-bladed propeller. Future aerial plans embrace an SE5 with V8 Hispano-Suiza engine and replica Hawker Fury biplane to be built round a correct R-R Kestrel engine. Offsetting the real aeroplanes is a case full of large scale models of old aeroplanes which have taken Pat’s fancy, including his own, with correct markings, and I admired a large painting depicting all the aeroplanes he has so far owned -”Lindsay’s Air Force” – shown in imagination flying above his house, with its hangar and private airstrip – beside the tennis court. Not to mention a static Rolls-Royce Merlin engine with stub exhausts which Pat intends to run up in one of the out-buildings for his friend’s edification…!

Even now we have not exhausted the subject, for there were memories of going on the London-to-Sydney World Cup Rally in Keith Schellenberg’s 8-litre Bentley, which had a nasty time when the road collapsed under it, causing injury, and attack by bandits, with the J:urkish Militia coming to the crew’s rescue. And there were other interesting vintage racing cars, like the ERA-Delage which won a VSCC five-lap handicap last year and the Multi-Union with which Pat had less good fortune, the latter being sold to Chris Mann. Before he turned to flying the older aeroplanes the Hon Patrick Lindsay twice took part in cross-Atlantic ocean races, beginning in 1952 and before that he was very keen on sailing. That his auctioneering interests centre very closely around fine motor cars is well known; in terms of V16 BRMs, for instance, he was responsible for the sale at Christie’s of the previously-mentioned £160,000 Mk2 BRM and the £100,000 Mkl car which is now in the National Motor Museum. A very versatile and active gentleman, one can truthfully say! -W.B.