Miscellani

The Riley Register is another club with an excellent Bulletin. The September edition has an article on the rare 17/30hp car, Riley’s Greatest Gamble by Dr David G Stiles, the editor, and a nostalgic piece by the late Johnny Clough about his experiences in trials with Riley and Singer cars, the latter also in the VSCC’s Bulletinedited by John Warburton — great editors think alike! The awards for the Riley Coventry Rally are too numerous to list in full, but the vintage closed and open 1926 and 1929 cars, of F Hodson and M McGuire, PVT ditto of M Mitchell and B Shepherd with 1936 Kestrel and 1937 Lynx, won their classes and the most original Riley was judged to be B Cassidy’s 1932 Mentone. The long distance award went to a 1937 Continental and the overall winner was Hodson’s saloon. The only Edwardian, A Tedder’s 1911 V-twin Riley, naturally won its division.

At the MAC’s August Shelsley Walsh hillclimb the fastest pre-war car was David Leigh’s GN ‘Spider’ (41.79sec), the next quickest vintage car Westie Mitchell’s GN-AC (43.61sec).

Anyone who remembers the Shell films of the pre-war GPs, edited and produced by Bill Mason, with those great shots of the Mercedes-Benz and Auto Unions in action, should be delighted to learn that videos of them are now available in a set of three, covering the entire Mercedes racing activities from 18941936, 1937-1939 and 1945-1955. Total running time is approx three hours. The cassettes come in a neat carrying case and the set is priced at £45, from Motorfilms, as a David Weguelin Productions product, under Mason’s copyright. Highly recommended.