3 replies to this topic

[marshal12uk]

Percy Lambert was the first driver to cover 100 miles in an hour, driving a Talbot at Brooklands.Does anyone know whether the car still exists, and if so, where? It may be that the car was also the one in which Lambert was killed, and the wreckage subsequently destroyed. Any information on this would be much appreciated.

[Vitesse2]

I assume it was broken up some time after the crash. According to Ian Nickols and Kent Karslake in 'Motoring Entente', the car which GA (Tony) Vandervell entered in the Georges Boillot Cup - a touring car race - at Boulogne in September 1923 was "a Talbot 'in which is the greater portion of the engine belonging to the late Percy Lambert's Talbot racer which first covered "100" in the hour'".

 

The bit I've italicised seems to be a quote from a magazine of the time,

 

Vandervell failed to arrive for that event and there are no other references to him in the book.

Edited by Vitesse2, 20 October 2013 - 12:11.

[Roger Clark]

"Vanwall" by Jenkinson and Posthumus describes Tony Vandervell's racing with the Talbot.  He had some success in hill climbs and at Brooklands.  They way "..with a well-tuned 4 1/2 litre four-cylinder side-valve engine, basically of the type used by Percy Lambert when he set the first 100 miles in the hour record..." but later: "In the conflicting reprts of the day, there is some doubt whether Tony's big Talbot was actually fitted with the engine from Lambert's 'hour record' car, or whether it simply used parts from that unit".

 

Boddy, in various places, says that Lambert was using the "100 miles in the hour" car when he was killed, trying to recapture the record from Jules Goux's Peugeot.

[Perruqueporte]

On 16th February this year the Sunbeam Talbot Darracq Register organised a centenary celebration of Percy Lambert's achievement at Brooklands, at which a part-constructed replica of Mr Lambert's machines was shown.  As I understand it, the original motor car was indeed that in which he lost his life later in 1913.

 

I was invited to accompany one of my cousins who has the old Talbot factory in Barlby Road, West London which is used these days as a photographic studio.  The assembled Talbots and Sunbeams and Darracqs took to the track at Mercedes Benz World, where they circulated with the objective of traveling a collective 103 miles within one hour, which was duly achieved, before everybody congregated on the Brooklands banking for a photograph, which is where I snapped this picture of the Percy Lambert replica: http://www.flickr.co...te/10538863545/

 

 

 

Christopher W