16 replies to this topic

[Doug Nye]

1 - The Mercedes World building stands today on the old infield of the Brooklands Outer Circuit.  

 

 

2 - What a viewpoint the modern building would have provided for racing on the pre-war Brooklands Campbell Circuit, its infield road loop surviving, below, as that crumbling, yellow concrete (foreground), and the the old straight leading (right) into a left-hander before the return bridge over the river Wey.

 

 

3 - Not only does Mercedes World provide good-fun driving experience courses for kids, amongst its marque displays is this wonderful 'exploded'  Formula 1 AMG-Merc

 

 

4 - ...and then within the Brooklands Museum we encountered our old mate...with his actual Clemons-engined Indy 'Duesenberg' crankshaft...

 

 

5 - Start 'em young (or youngish) - grandson in a Mika McLaren - the little red F3 Cooper in the background is a memorial to its late owner, Cooper Car Co welder/fabricator Terry Kitson...for long years a great mate of 'Big Mike', the late Mike Barney, team mechanic. The car is on loan from Terry's widow...a touching tribute...

 

 

6 - Amongst the multiple Brooklands Museum displays I took more photos of aircraft than cars... Grandsons pre-flight on the former Sultan of Oman's luxurious Vickers VC10

 

 

7 - Eery solitude in the bowl of the Members' (or Home) Banking.  Wartime air-raid shelter inserted at left.  Just around here Percy Lambert - the first driver to cover 100 miles in an hour - lost his life in 1913...and Clive Dunfee his in 1932...

 

 

8 - Below the banking lies the former entrance tunnel - now firmly closed off...

 

 

9 - A Bugatti emerges from the end of the Finishing Straight, onto the Members' Banking...  Just to the right where the banking is broken by demolition of the old Hennebique banking bridge over the River Wey, is where I thought I was about to destroy the perpetual lap record-holding Napier-Railton, during runs for photography. I got my foot trapped on the centre throttle, beneath the brake pedal - and 24-litres of 12-cylinder broad-arrow Napier Lion kept pounding me on around the rippled concrete...towards that tree-filled chasm.

 

 

10 - Top of the Test Hill, remains of the Finishing Straight beyond.  The Test Hill's lower stretch is 1-in-8 before it spoons up into 1-in-5, then finally into 1-in-4...

 

 

DCN

Edited by Doug Nye, 17 June 2019 - 21:07.

[Vitesse2]

I've been meaning to post this for some time. Movietone News, January 1946. Those of you who possess copies of WB's Brooklands book and/or John Bolster's autobiography might like to compare what they wrote with the reality. And Earl Howe's pronouncements about testing were surely no more than wishful thinking and obfuscation. During - and indeed before - the war years the manufacturers had had plenty of time to consider what to do about it and just a month before that film was made the SMMT had set up a new organisation called MIRA ...

 

Google Earth also has historical air photos which show just what a mess the place was. Not to mention the two enormous breaches in the banking and the buildings on the Railway Straight.

 

Equally, Doug's photos show how well the site has been restored. We'll never see the whole circuit in use again, of course, but at least the spirit is still there.

 

 

[Odseybod]

And while Milord was swanning about indoors, us lot in the p.b.i. were braving the chill breeze outside to cover the first day of the Double 12 ...

 

 

 

Actually I must confess that like you, I spent far too much time looking at the aircraft, especially those in the relocated hangar. I think this is the beautiful hull of a Southampton flying boat but am happy to be corrected.

 

 

I was particularly impressed by all the hands-on items for junior visitors to try - that's real things, with very few screens (but I'm not sure how their teachers will cope). I spent far too long experimenting with the small wind tunnel that lets you balance airspeed and an aerofoil's  angle of attack, until some blasted kids said they wanted to have a go, too ...

 

Sorry I missed you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Richard Jenkins]

What amazing photos all. I'm mightily impressed by so much of it, but that exploded Mercedes is a remarkable piece of art.

[Doug Nye]

"Milord"?  "Milord"?   I will have you know that we got rained on and windswept as well.  I must confess that I was so much up to speed that I was actually astonished to find that event going on around us there.  I didn't even know what it was...  But the point is that Brooklands really  has expanded its displays and public attractiveness (for all ages of visitor) beyond all measure in recent years.  Lottery grants have helped.  But they have done a really good job...and their volunteer guides and specialists are superb in dealing with the public and imparting their enthusiasm and considerable knowledge.  

 

DCN

Edited by Doug Nye, 18 June 2019 - 06:58.

[Roy C]

The old concrete straight between the MB World building and the (Vickers) bridge across the Wey is the Sahara Straight on the Campbell Circuit, leading down to Howe's Corner, just before bridge.

Shortly after the Campbell Circuit opened, Earl Howe had a serious accident in R8B, crashing into Vickers Bridge during the 1937 Campbell Trophy (won by Bira).

[Charlieman]

And Earl Howe's pronouncements about testing were surely no more than wishful thinking and obfuscation. During - and indeed before - the war years the manufacturers had had plenty of time to consider what to do about it and just a month before that film was made the SMMT had set up a new organisation called MIRA ...

The "preparedness" of the UK motor industry for sustained high speed motoring was demonstrated when the M1 opened in 1959. I daresay that garages operating vehicle recovery services did well and Mr Vandervell sold a lot of bearings.

[Vitesse2]

The "preparedness" of the UK motor industry for sustained high speed motoring was demonstrated when the M1 opened in 1959. I daresay that garages operating vehicle recovery services did well and Mr Vandervell sold a lot of bearings.

Oh, indeed. But although you can find high-flown plans for British motorways in the 1930s specialist press they were still a fantasy in 1945, so they were building cars to fit the roads they had. And really, Brooklands was always much more convenient for the London-based press than it ever was for the Midlands factories; if they were going to take a car and a bunch of people for testing it made just as much sense to hop across the Channel to Montlhéry, where they could run 24/7 rather than the noise-restricted/no Sundays/no night running Brooklands. And that's without considering its increasingly poor surface ...

[Odseybod]

Without straying too far off topic, the specialist press really missed Brooklands in the immediate post-war years, despite its bumpy surface and other limitations. Even in the early 50s, when the motor industry had their shiny new MIRA facility near Nuneaton, the press weren't allowed to use it, in case they spilled the beans on some lightly revised Hillman Minx or whatever being tested there and so had to resort to a straight stretch of public road - usually at Barton Mills - for taking performance figures (unless it was a seriously quick car, in which case the Management grumpily shelled out for a trip to the Continong, usually Belgium. 

[Charlieman]

When I started to read Motor Sport as a teenager in the north west of England, WB's enthusiasm for Brooklands was a mystery. I found many of the cars to be fascinating but everything else seemed so distant and irrelevant to racing as I understood it elsewhere. I still devoured most of the words in the magazine and I learned why handicap racing is such fun...

 

Now, with the benefit of age, hindsight and a lot of reading I understand the context of Brooklands better. Post WW1, Brooklands initially put on the same sort of events as in its founding years. Many of the older goliath cars were forced to retire, replaced by even crazier monsters, and some new events provided manufacturers opportunities to embarrass themselves. By the mid 1930s however, Brooklands was an anachronism -- the new circuits at Donington Park and Crystal Palace were closer to continental-style racing for which new manufacturers were preparing. Post WW2 competition -- airfield racing, short hill climbs and sprints, excursions to non-mainland Britain road circuits, 500cc F3, a more egalitarian social ethos -- would have brought Brooklands to an end anyway. It's just sad, historically unappreciative, that the place became a mess for so long.

 

Doug and Tony -- thanks for the photos. As Arthur Daley once said, "Whatever happened to the flying boat?"

[Vitesse2]

When I started to read Motor Sport as a teenager in the north west of England, WB's enthusiasm for Brooklands was a mystery. I found many of the cars to be fascinating but everything else seemed so distant and irrelevant to racing as I understood it elsewhere. I still devoured most of the words in the magazine and I learned why handicap racing is such fun...

 

Now, with the benefit of age, hindsight and a lot of reading I understand the context of Brooklands better. Post WW1, Brooklands initially put on the same sort of events as in its founding years. Many of the older goliath cars were forced to retire, replaced by even crazier monsters, and some new events provided manufacturers opportunities to embarrass themselves. By the mid 1930s however, Brooklands was an anachronism -- the new circuits at Donington Park and Crystal Palace were closer to continental-style racing for which new manufacturers were preparing. Post WW2 competition -- airfield racing, short hill climbs and sprints, excursions to non-mainland Britain road circuits, 500cc F3, a more egalitarian social ethos -- would have brought Brooklands to an end anyway. It's just sad, historically unappreciative, that the place became a mess for so long.

 

Doug and Tony -- thanks for the photos. As Arthur Daley once said, "Whatever happened to the flying boat?"

My feeling is that WB only finally accepted that Brooklands would never re-open when the Hennebique Bridge fell into the river in 1968. Astonishingly, in 2010, he claimed in Motor Sport (January 2010, p136) that the military had demolished it during WW2!

 

Here, incidentally, are some photos taken nearly two decades ago, including one at almost exactly the same spot as Doug's seventh picture above.

 

http://www.peterrenn...k/archive3.html

[Doug Nye]

Very interesting thoughts.  I first trespassed on Brooklands around 1957-58, by boat on the Wey - but we schoolboys got bawled at and chased off.  It was, after all, a live aerodrome then.

 

The Bod was of course Brooklands brainwashed, utterly conditioned by memories of his younger years spent there and such - for him - happy escape from boredom at home.

 

Jenks's assessment - after years of exposure to real road racing throughout Europe - was better balanced and less rose-tinted.  I remember him once telling a Brooklands nostalgist who was bewailing its demise "Can you imagine a field of Formula Fords racing around that 100-foot-wide strip of concrete?".  Not a pretty image.

 

As for "more egalitarian social ethos' - I assume this dismissive line derives from "The Right Crowd, and No Crowding".  This is too often interpreted through a modern lens of inverse-snobbery.  

 

Certain individuals there would certainly behave in an intolerably toffee-nosed manner - and it was common for the car brigade to dismiss the leather-clad common soldiery on their motor-cycles, while in turn being dismissed by the devil-may-care aviators as people who "just grub about on the ground".  But Brooklands' 'Right Crowd' was for most just their fellow enthusiasts - it was a place where Earl Howe could cheerfully be told to go forth and multiply by Freddie Dixon, and where an exasperated mechanic could touch his cap, before severely rollicking a gentleman driver...though he might have to choose his gentleman driver before daring to do so.  For many the real world was left outside Brooklands' gates - and I can well understand how Bill Boddy and Cyril Posthumus and Rivers Fletcher and so many other contemporary habitués just loved being there.

 

In effect Brooklands' contribution to the development of the racing car was limited beyond its earliest years, when the high-speed nature of its Outer Circuit fostered development of wind-cheating body shapes, long tails and carefully-cooled, resilient engines.  After WW1 the frost-heaved, part-settled roughness of the bankings perverted Brooklands car development towards massively strong, hefty chassis more in search of simply surviving the battering than meeting more pressing racing requirements such as minimised weight, nimble handling, etc.  

 

Generally I believe that Brooklands deserves greater credit for its role in the successful development of British aviation than it ever does for the successful development of the British competition car or motor-cycle. Regardless, the site's fleeting 32-years of active frontline competition is a crucial part of our motoring history.  And it's a wonderfully evocative place to visit today.

 

DCN

[Charlieman]

As for "more egalitarian social ethos' - I assume this dismissive line derives from "The Right Crowd, and No Crowding".  This is too often interpreted through a modern lens of inverse-snobbery.  

Not my intent. I was thinking more about Bristol aircraft workers at the motor club dreaming about building a racing car of their own, Austin 7 special builders at the 750MC, hill climbers challenging factory built pre-war cars, mad caps like Allard and Butterworth pursuing their ambitions.

[BRG]

What amazing photos all. I'm mightily impressed by so much of it, but that exploded Mercedes is a remarkable piece of art.

I don't know if they have updated it, but when the MB World first opened the exploded car was a trifle suspect.  Close inspection of the bag tank revealed the words 'British-American Racing' which made we wonder if it was in fact a BAR car with a Merc V8 substituted for the Honda.  Not even a Brawn....

[Paul Taylor]

Great!!! I don't live in the UK anymore, but I'm paying a visit in September. Last time I was at Brooklands was 10+ years ago. I'm glad to see they removed that old hangar AND they are maintaining the banking. There were all weeds growing through the cracks last time.

[Gary C]

That old hangar has simply been moved, it's still on site and is now jam packed with aircraft exhibits.

[Gary C]

these taken this very afternoon.

 

 

 

 

 This is RML3, the third of four prototype Routemasters.