24 replies to this topic

[Doug Nye]

Yesterday I enjoyed a quiet wander around the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu - revisiting some old friends. Segrave's Sunbeam 'Slug' LSR car is of course undergoing a well-publicised restoration to runnable order and the chance to study its part-dismantled chassis is too good to pass up.

 

It really is MASSIVE:

 

 

 

 

The Slug's frame display includes all manner of component parts, plus the sub-frames into which the front and rear engines nestled.

 

 

The second of the Slug's 22.4-litre 4-cam V12 engines, its sister being the one presently in rebuild

 

 

The Slug's gearbox and primary chain-drive output - one of its engine-mount subframes on the floor in the background

 

 

An old friend - the ex-Graham Hill Lotus 49 'R3' which upon its retrieval from many years in South Africa I stripped in the old corrugated iron, dirt-floored garage which once occupied the cuboid of air space that for 25 years now has been our living room extension...

 

 

And the ex-Piero Scotti Connaught B-Type - I think 'B6' - which is absolutely one of the most original, unspoiled F1 cars around, and which is displayed at Beaulieu on loan from its owner, the Science Museum, London.

 

 

If you haven't recently visited the NMM - or especially if you have never visited the NMM - it's always worth doing.  In addition to the 200mph Segrave 'Slug' the 350hp Sunbeam, his Napier Lion-engined 'Golden Arrow' and Donald Campbell's 400mph 'Bluebird CN7' in their dramatically-lit inner sanctum are alone worth the ticket price.  And as one of my grandsons replied when I asked him one day what had been the best part of our Beaulieu visit - "The lunch".  So pretty decent catering too...

 

DCN

Edited by Doug Nye, 30 January 2025 - 16:41.

[Bloggsworth]

It has got to be about 70 years since I was last at Beaulieu, I remember being curious as to why Fangio's Mercedes had a tartan seat, so I tried it out for size, it was a lot more relaxed in those days - I was eventually asked, very politely, to vacate the seat...

[Glengavel]

First went to Beaulieu about Summer 1976. Having only ever read about it, never having heard the name pronounced, and armed only with my newly-acquired O-Grade French, I assumed it was pronounced in the French manner, much to the bafflement of the locals when I told them where I was going.

 

Revisited it in late 1996 and I thought it seemed a bit faded and dejected compared to my twenty-year-old memories. Nearly thirty years on from that revisit I think I need to give it another try.

[BRG]

You need to visit Theydon Bois in Essex or maybe Chesham Bois in Buckinghamshire.  

 

I stayed in Beaulieu-sur-Mer (next door to Monaco) a few years back and struggled to decide how to pronounce it.  I opted for Frenchified version at the risk of losing my membership of UKIP.

[Glengavel]

At least in Scotland we made a proper attempt at, er, anglicisation of Beaulieu with Beauly.

[Doug Nye]

Some more NMM pix which might perhaps interest, intrigue or inform...and maybe even attract? 

 

More views of the Sunbeam 'Slug's second 22.45-litre 435bhp Matabele 4-cam V12 engine

 

 

 

 

 

Inside the 'Slug' frame's forward bay

 

 

"Offers invited - deep-section steel girders, suitable for bridging or high-load floor support..." - included with Lot one comfy chair (legless)

 

 

'Slug' engine mounting subframe

 

 

Perhaps my all-time favourite LSR car - the magnificent Napier Lion 'broad arrow' 12-cylinder-engined 'Golden Arrow'...

 

[

 

'Golden Arrow' was powered by a 23.9-litre Napier Lion Mk VIIA engine, output rated as 925bhp at 3,300rpm

 

 

So dramatically lit within the LSR display chamber - 'Bluebird' CN7

 

 

All Photos: GPL

 

DCN

Edited by Doug Nye, 29 January 2025 - 22:26.

[GreenMachine]

Things have changed since I visited in 2007, as I would hope would have been the case.  The comparison with Mulhouse did Bewley no favours at that time.

[Lee Nicolle]

I was in England in 17,, to me the best museum was the Haines museum then followed by NMM and the Lake District motor museum.

That Sunbeam I feel is a little over engineered Looks more like a 5 ton truck. And that is without the benefit of hindsight.

Just imagine how fast it would go with a modern spaceframe with those same engines

[Tim Murray]

Re Beaulieu pronunciation: in Guernsey (where I grew up) the old Hotel Beaulieu (since renamed) was known to locals as the Bowly-Oh.

[P.Dron]

In the late 1960s the distinguished Saint Pancras Coroner Dr Francis Milne, in one of his frequent but often interesting rambles, mentioned during an inquest into the death of an unfortunate tiler who had plummeted from a roof in De Beauvoir Town that there used to be a distinct class disnstiction in how the area was pronounced: at one end of the scale it was "De Beever", at the other "De Bovia". The French have just as much difficulty with British words and place names.

[BRG]

Hmm, maybe a little trip to the New Forest in the spring?

[marksixman]

I first visited Beaulieu in the early 1970s. We went four-up in a friend's Mini Cooper. I was on the maps and remember trying to get us back from the museum to East Sussex using only yellow or white roads (for those not familiar with OS Maps, that means the really small ones) for some reason. I was not popular !!

 

I now live in Somerset, next to the village of Hatch Beauchamp !!

[dmj]

I am curious about one thing. Bluebird CN7 is supposed to reside in Beaulieu since 1972, according to Wikipedia.

However, in late 1975. there was a big exhibition in Zagreb, Croatia (then Yugoslavia) called “Niki Lauda presents the fastest cars of the world.” There were several F1 cars, I clearly remember Ferrari 312T and a Beta-liveried March, several endurance racers (a 312 PB, IIRC) and Bluebird CN7. Bluebird definitely left a lasting impression on five years old me.

Now I wander was it the real deal, on loan from Beaulieu, or it was a showcar/replica? I never saw any mentioning of a showcar/replica Bluebird being made.

 

I found just one photo of that exhibition online, unfortunately, without Bluebird:

https://www.reddit.c...75_for_all_the/

[Vitesse2]

I am curious about one thing. Bluebird CN7 is supposed to reside in Beaulieu since 1972, according to Wikipedia.

However, in late 1975. there was a big exhibition in Zagreb, Croatia (then Yugoslavia) called “Niki Lauda presents the fastest cars of the world.” There were several F1 cars, I clearly remember Ferrari 312T and a Beta-liveried March, several endurance racers (a 312 PB, IIRC) and Bluebird CN7. Bluebird definitely left a lasting impression on five years old me.

Now I wander was it the real deal, on loan from Beaulieu, or it was a showcar/replica? I never saw any mentioning of a showcar/replica Bluebird being made.

 

I found just one photo of that exhibition online, unfortunately, without Bluebird:

https://www.reddit.c...75_for_all_the/

Beaulieu do regularly loan out cars from their collection to other museums and exhibitions. Zagreb is a bit of a way from Britain for a one-off trip, but maybe it had also been shown in one or more of the European motor shows that autumn?

[Charlieman]

Beaulieu do regularly loan out cars from their collection to other museums and exhibitions. Zagreb is a bit of a way from Britain for a one-off trip, but maybe it had also been shown in one or more of the European motor shows that autumn?

Bluebird was at the Jochen Rindt Show, Nov 1975. Programme image at link below:

 

index.php

[ensign14]

One of the sad things about it is the World of Top Gear exhibition has closed, so no chance of seeing Geoff or the P45 any more.

 

And there never will be, because, despite me (and some others here) paying for them, the BBC has unilaterally decided that these bits of history should be destroyed, to stop them ending up in third party hands.

 

An act of cultural destruction of which the Nazis would have been proud.

[LittleChris]

Rather than "The BBC" we should aim our ire at the individuals who are responsible for making questionable decisions within those organisations ? Perhaps a bit of name and shame wouldn't go amiss

[ensign14]

And open up to a claim for defamation?  No ta.

[BRG]

One of the sad things about it is the World of Top Gear exhibition has closed, so no chance of seeing Geoff or the P45 any more.

 

And there never will be, because, despite me (and some others here) paying for them, the BBC has unilaterally decided that these bits of history should be destroyed, to stop them ending up in third party hands.

 

An act of cultural destruction of which the Nazis would have been proud.

 

Rather than "The BBC" we should aim our ire at the individuals who are responsible for making questionable decisions within those organisations ? Perhaps a bit of name and shame wouldn't go amiss

Maybe all a bit over the top, chaps?

 

Especially as the cars will be on display at the Grampian Motor Museum which has acquired them.  So instead of them being in the remote deep south of the country, they will be in the remote heart of bonny Scotland.  Thanks to the BBC not scrapping them.

[Doug Nye]

Forgive my ignorance - but Geoff who? - and whatever did he do to deserve a P45???        Seriously.

 

DCN

[ensign14]

Top Gear vehicles.  Geoff was a hybrid - looking surprisingly prescient given the current vogue - and the P45, based on an obesity scooter, was so-called because it was smaller than a Peel P50.

[Doug Nye]

Oh.  Thank you.  As a Top Gear-phobic - never having watched an edition - this was way beyond my understanding.

 

DCN

[BRG]

Oh.  Thank you.  As a Top Gear-phobic - never having watched an edition - this was way beyond my understanding.

 

DCN

Oh, come on , Doug.  Surely you were glued to the screen in the halcyon days of Angela Rippon and William Woollard back in 1977?

[Doug Nye]

I must confess I did (and do) find Ms Rippon very easy on the eye but I wasn't very impressed by Mr Woollard when he presented a programme on the Donington Collection which involved me.  Rather pleased with himself, it seemed.  I never dreamed that his successors would demonstrate the same apparent self-satisfaction in zillion-horsepower turbocharged form...

 

I was turned off TV 'motoring' programmes by the dull earnestness of 'Wheelbase', and especially by the medium's prime and so-earnest interest in grey porridge everyday road cars of no interest to a proper chap.

 

That morphed into zero interest in 'Top Gear' and it then became an unshakeable habit - even before I encountered the appalling (with one notable exception) presenters whose ill-fated reign made it such an international success amongst a certain audience - of which I was not one.

 

Clear?     

 

DCN 

Edited by Doug Nye, 18 February 2025 - 14:01.

[Tom Glowacki]

Re Beaulieu pronunciation: in Guernsey (where I grew up) the old Hotel Beaulieu (since renamed) was known to locals as the Bowly-Oh.

When I was in High School I had a summer job at the McKinley Marina in Milwaukee. The hightlight of the summer was the arrival of Ralph Evinrude, his wife, Frances Langford, the movie star, and their yacht, the Chanticleer. The yacht was a 118 foot long converted WWII minesweeeper, and was enormous in the context of the marina. Evinrude and his entourage were very particular about the pronunciation of "Chanticleer". Except for the Captain, who would walk in the administration building and say he was from the "Shantyclear".