| MG ERA DAY - Brooklands
7th April
The annual Brooklands MG Era day was jointly organised between the two
main clubs this year in conjunction with Brooklands Museum. Unlike last
year the sun was out and the wind of the previous day had died down making
for a glorious day out at the historical race track. Once again the cars
were parked according to class along similar lines to last year except
that the A's were in a nice grassy square behind the Campbell sheds and
the magnettes and other saloons were relegated to behind the portakabins.
The F's were again lined up along the members banking and I just managed
to avoid being put in the dark shadows of members hill ending up first in
line on the concrete banking itself and basking in the sunshine. A few
more traders were here this year which was a pleasant surprise along with
both clubs merchandising stalls and an MGCC South East tent. It was also
good to see the first smattering of Z Cars turning up at this type
of MG event. Strangely enough most of them were ZT's and nearly all in
Trophy blue with owners obviously as proud of them as any owner of an
older car. The clubs are going to have to live more easily with newer cars
in the future - there were at least 40 F's at today's event and their
numbers seem to increase as the years go on but when you consider that
there are some 70,000 in circulation this is still a fairly small
percentage. It was also good to see a fairly large number of A's at the
event outnumbering the V8's and C's. The pre war cars still took pride of
place in front of the clubhouse - I think it will be a good number of
years before A, B , C , F or Z get to this hallowed place !
There was a competitive element to this years event with a Gymkhana and
Driving Tests being held on the flatter bit of the banking. There was a
also a small concours competition with four prizes and a Pride of
Ownership. Now what a strange thing that was - previous years there has
been a self judged competition with the visitors voting for their
favourite car. This year it was judged BUT instead of allowing owners to
enter their cars they decided to judge EVERY car at the show which ran
into hundreds. There is no way they could properly examine every car and
I'm quite sure they didn't even bother to get as far as the F's - If any
judge is reading this then let me know if that was not the case. There
were only two categories as well - pre and post war !! With this amount of
vehicles that was quite ridiculous they could easily have made class
prizes - needless to say the prizes were heavily weighted to the older
vehicles and several disgruntled mutterings were heard amongst the F'ers,
who had spent a lot of time and effort on preparing their cars, and no
doubt the same could be heard amongst some of the other classes.
Nonetheless personal congratulations go to Runnymede MGOC member Bob
Borchaldt for winning the post war prize with his pristine black MGA which
was deserved in his class.
Having had that complaint I will say that the day as a whole was very
good and it was good to see so many MG's together at the home of British
Motor Sport. as always the museum itself was an interesting place and I
was pleased to see that all the damage done by the 2000 floods has now
been repaired and the museum functioning as normal. There is still a good
deal of work to be done here including restoration of the Wellington
hanger and some of the aircraft appear a little derelict as does the old
restaurant and gun tower on top of Members Hill - if they're not careful
this will fall down before they get around to restoration.
We had a picnic on the banking above the line of F's looking down the
finishing straight across four rows of B's and one of midgets towards the
back of the Wellington Hanger. It was also good to note that at least two
modern TF's turned up - not bad seeing as they have only been released for
a couple of months now.
The Bluebird Electric speed tewm were also present trying to raise
funds for their attempts on the World Electric car speed records. They
brought along two of their support vehicles including a heavily modified
MG ZT "fire engine" complete with Ejector Seat and reportedly
the most expensive car at the show - costing some £200,000 to convert and
equip.
This year the age limit for cars using the Test Hill was reduced to pre
1940 and for "selected" vehicles only - to some extent this avoided
the chaos of previous occasions but ended up looking a little elitist and
only lasted half an hour or so.
We finally left Brooklands in late afternoon and drove the long journey
of two miles back home with hood down and the afternoon sun glistening on
JayPeG's freshly polished paintwork.
|
