Your Golden Epoch?

Here's a long-forgotten car. Made at Brooklands the Multi-Union was the idea of test pilot, Chris Staniland, and built as a special around mainly Alfa Tipo B parts. I saw it arrive in the paddock on a few occasions at VSCC events, but it rarely got much further.

I'm told it was rebuilt as a Tipo B a few years ago because, as a pre War Alfa, it's worth lots more money. A pity. Another bit of British history down the pan.

Leslie Johnson with ERA GP2 at Goodwood, 1949.

A pic below of an old chum, Ted Widgery, taken on the VSCC's Welsh Trial some 20 years ago. He was competing with Hamish Moffatt in the latter's Brescia Bugatti during dreadful weather.

Car and occupants were plastered in thick mud for two days, so I delighted in telling Widge and Moffatt they they looked like a pair of idiots but of course, everything's relative. Two days later Widgery arrived at my house wearing a gas mask. I've still no idea what he had to say because he left without having removed it.

From The Autocar, 1960, a fairly early example of Sir Christopher Cockerell's hovercraft - referred to as a Cushioncraft. Cockerell's first successful outing with this exciting new invention came a year earlier with a flight across the English Channel exactly 50 years after Bleriot made the first successful attempt by aircraft.

I did some work on the SeaSpeed SRN4s in the 70s, as well as riding aboard them, SRN5s and 6s, and on the singular SRN 2 once.

Riding back and forth across the Channel while taking hydraulic oil samples in a windowless APU bay right next to a 300 hp turbine APU wasn't the most comfortable job I ever did.......

De Tomaso's stylish Mangusta. Never seen one as a slot car.

W196 detail. Beautiful mechanical engineering from the mid 1950s.

Days long ago when it was still possible to enjoy driving on the European continent.

As it's F1 weekend....

Two flying Scots

and a quote from a team mate of both

Despite the hype surrounding the race, in his position as title favourite Hill wrote of the camaraderie among the drivers on the day before the grand prix.

"I have known and raced against Jim Clark and John Surtees for five years," he wrote in the Daily Express. "Although we may give the appearance of being deadly enemies once the flag has dropped, we are in fact good friends.

"There is a very high sporting code in grand prix racing. We, all of us, at some time or another, put our lives in the other chap's hands: In any tight situation our life will depend on the other man's skill and this knowledge means there has to be a rigid code of chivalry among us."

That said, Hill admitted that: "The world championship is worth far more than money: to win it is the ambition of every grand prix driver."

I haven't seen a marshal wearing one of these flameproof suits in ages.

Cars on the same corner at the Nurburgring 30 years apart.