Valve Bounce

Goodwood Festival of Speed 2009

Some great stuff there this year;

• An incredible collection of cars again
• The Cartier Style et Luxe especially the Bugatti Type 57s and the The Hispano-Suiza H6C Xenia
• An interesting Bonhams auction
• Peter Fonda on his Easy Rider bike
• The Hot Rods
• The Silver Arrows
• The Red Arrows
• The 917s
• The Paddocks
• F1 dough-nuts
• The rally stage
• The noise
• The smell of Castrol R
• The drive down there over the downs

But there's no pleasing some people - here's some dislikes;

• Corporate motor trade stands
• The corporate Grandstands
• I’m sure it’s a great day out if you’re on some hospitality deal
• The walk from the public car park
• The cars in the public car park (why euro-boxes one and all?)
• The price of everything (it’s ridiculous)
• Too few interesting trade stands
• Too many modern cars. The ‘Super-cars’ are very boring
• There are too many people (!)
• Is the fabled atmosphere really that great if you’re not a driver or on some hospitality deal?
• You can’t see anything unless you’re in a grandstand
• Getting out the car park

It’s a fantastic event but overall I think I’d rather be at Le Mans Classic.

This tickled my fancy; two Aurelia B20 GTs in the auction one very rat-look and the other very shiny. Both seem to have failed to sell according to Bonhams.

Turnstudio

What a great idea this is from Turnstudio near the Ace Cafe in North London. Doesn't everyone want to put their car on a pedestal and film it?

£30 all in if you mention Classic and Sports Car magazine when you call them.

Classics in the Walled Garden 2009

This is the first year this event has been held and it was rather special. On a glorious July evening around 350 cars gathered inside the walled garden at Loton Hoo Estate. It was organised by Peter Madden of Classic on The Common fame so everything was immaculate. A great selection of cars and a very relaxed atmosphere.

Complete with a bar, hog roast, and brass band it was a memorable evening. Where else could you see a rat look Austin A35 next to a Ford Anglia next to a Type 43 Bugatti next to a 4 1/2 litre Bentley?

Now looking forward to this years Classic on the Common on the 29th July.

This is a view of the walled garden from Google. Quite an impressive space for a vegetable patch, maybe it's just visible from space.

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Nurburgring Nordschleife - Never been!

Well I have actually, several times, but this sticker made me laugh so it's gone on the back on the Volvo Amazon which has, quite literally, never been.

Ideal for your big bore Evo IV or Lotus E-whatever. Available from an enterprising company on ebay.

1961 Volvo Amazon vs. 2005 Lotus Exige

Great bit of footage here from a stage of the Targa Tasmania in 2008. A 1961 Volvo 122S closes on 2005 Lotus Exige putting the Lotus under pressure until the Lotus leaves the road, rolls through a fence, up the paddock on its roof and disappears into the farm shed.

An incredible demonstration of the power of a full house B20 engine and the Amazon chassis.

Nick Lowe in 3.5 coupe

All round good bloke, and a man of considerable musical talent, Nick Lowe has produced some great records over the years.

Here he is on the cover of a new box-set coming out this month called The Brentford Trilogy and he's driving what looks to me like a 3.5 coupe…the man’s got taste as well.

London to Brighton Classic Car Run 2009

The start of this years London to Brighton run was at Mercedes World in Brooklands - just as it was last year. We had an early start and after a run through torrential rain storms we arrived at Brooklands to have the privilege of being flagged off by Sir Stirling Moss who was on duty at the start.

The run was short and sweet this year with a stop at the Bluebell railway museum near Haywards Heath to take in some steam.

We spotted this very poorly looking TR4a driven by a chap from Belgium who said he had locked his brakes in the wet and gone sailing into a post. A nice introduction to English motoring…

Some nice sights on the sea front.

I’m not sure why but my favourite car of the day was a Daimler Conquest in rust and primer. It could start a new craze just like the Hot Rod communities who are going for a real lived in look with their Rat Rods. Apparently he was just a bit behind on his restoration schedule...

Mercedes-Benz W111 Coupes in the press

We have a subscription to Elle Decoration magazine in this house and I do admit to flicking through it when it arrives. Imagine my surprise when I saw this image in the June edition. A north London mews house with an interesting ornament out front.

Then imagine my even greater surprise when this picture appeared in the July edition

There was no connection between the articles, and the cars aren't mentioned, but the 1960s Mercedes w111 coupe obviously has a hold over interior designers. They do add a certain something to the exterior of a house...and there was a time when every photographer in Notting Hill floated around in one but I thought that recently they had migrated to the car enthusiasts.

With looks like this they attract the more style conscious elements of society. Just don't let them convert the garage to a living space.

TR Register North London Group – Rolling Road Shootout

What a great idea for a day out this was…bring a group of cars along to a local rolling road, we were at Enginuity (the TR and TVR specialist), and run them through the rev range to see what they’ve got. Rolling road shootouts are a new thing to me but apparently they are quite common in the hot-hatch community. From this experience I’m sure they would go down well with the classic crowd just as well.

All you need to do is find a suitable and willing rolling road owner, and get the owners to run it, then gather a few like minded car club members with their cars. Each car is put through its paces and the results noted and collated, it's that easy. We had 23 TRs attending, there was a good mixture of engine types; fifteen six cylinder cars, seven early four cylinder cars plus a four cylinder TR7; all in various states of tune, and it was wonderful to see 4 VC in the four cylinder group. To add a little spice there was a sweep-stake organised to see who could guess their cars ‘at-the-wheels’ bhp most accurately.

I took my TR4 to get its MOT recently and was embarrassed to see that we had only done 50 miles in the last year so was hoping to stretch its legs, it can’t be a good thing for the car to get out so little. The MOT did result in a couple of new Avon CR6ZZ tyres and I needed a little excuse to run the stickers off.

The interesting thing about a shootout like this is that you are comparing cars under the same conditions. It’s very surprising how different the results can be when you take the same car on different rolling roads. Everyone seemed to think that the Enginuity rolling road was giving low results, which I’m sure is normal! Here's the range of results;

I’m please to say the 7455 KX managed to record the top bhp figure of all the club cars on the day with133 bhp. This was way down on previous sessions but in line with everyone's experience on this set-up. It was certainly good to see a 4 cylinder  car coming out on top for a change, even though I’m sure some 6 cylinder cars were being conservative with their red line. It took the newly restored Enginuity project car to bring back the 6 cylinder pride! It managed a very health 142 bhp - it has a new cam profile that they have been working on recently and this was it's first time on the rolling road. They are hoping for more power in the future with some further development and tweaks.

The range of outputs was large with considerable overlap between 4 and 6 cylinders. Overall the average for the 6 cylinders came out on top if you include the Enginuity car.

	Max	Min	Average
6 Cylinder	142	93	116
4 Cylinder	133	76	104

But, of course, just remember that a good flat, and wide, torque curve is the thing you want for a drivable road car not just maximum bhp. Here's the chart for 7455 KX, not too bad I think (click for a full view).

Many thanks to everyone at Enginuity for letting us us their facilities for free, providing refreshments, and running the day, and also to Mike North from TR Register North London Group for organising the day. Overall it was a great day out and certainly a very good excuse to get the TR out the garage for a little shakedown.

Enfield Pagent of Motoring 2009

The Enfield Pagent of Motoring was hot and sunny this year for the fist time for quite a few years! We enjoyed the hospitality of the Mercedes-Benz Club who had a very civilised stand with shelter from the sun and endless tea and coffee. Car clubs and steam engines seemed a little low on numbers but there was still a large amount to see and the traditional fair ground for the children.

But it was all marred considerably by finding out that a member of the TR Register who had his Valencia blue TR4a (an unusual colour) MCH 723D stolen from the car park despite a number of security devices. Here’s hoping that someone saw something or it turns up somewhere…

My favourite car was this Citroen ID Tissier Transporter from 1970; completely bonkers.