Autosport might well have made its reputation for reporting on the cutting edge of modern motorsport over these last 74 years, but that is not the full story.
Let’s go back to November 1960, where the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run is captured in its pages, which John Bolster records in loving prose.
“The occupants of veteran cars have so little protection that one can describe the sensation as ‘low flying on a garden seat’, and so the personal sufferings of a really wet commemoration run are only equalled by water in the wrong places.”
With the London to Brighton still basking in the post-‘Genevieve’ boom started by the move in 1953, Bolster joined plenty of entrants in his 1903 Panhard. Some 243 started, ‘ranging from 1896 to 1904 in date of manufacture.’ An incredible 223 finished by the four o’clock deadline. Presumably Kenneth More was among the 20 stuck in the countryside somewhere…
You can read Bolster’s brilliant account of the run, along with evocative photos by George Phillips here.
