October 2001
Here is a real treat for any of you guys and girls who are seriously into old cars. To see the picture of this one, either rescue Saturday's Telegraph from the chip wrapper bin or go to Latest IDs at www.mysterymotors.com
Bill Roberts of London W11 sent us this photo of an Alfa Romeo taken at Donington Park in 1939, asking which Alfa Romeo, and does 'JML 1' still exist? After the photo appeared in the paper on 6th October 2001 I got the full story. This is the top supercar of the 1930s, the Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B Corto (short wheelbase), which had a twin-supercharged 180bhp or 220bhp 2,905cc straight eight engine in two blocks of four with the superchargers in between and fully independent suspension front and rear. They were all easily capable of 125mph. The 2900A first appeared in 1936 when three finished first, second and third in the 1936 Mille Miglia. A 2900A won the race again in 1937. And three 2900Bs finished first, second and third in the 1938 Mille Miglia, the lead driver Clemente Biondetti averaging a then incredible 83.13mph over the thousand miles of fairly dodgy roads and no less than 110mph on the leg from Brescia to Bologna. Nearly ten years later, in 1947, Biondetti won the Mille Miglia yet again in a 2900B Lungo (long wheelbase) coupe. Only twenty Cortos and ten Lungos were built and survivors routinely make well over £2,000,000 at auction.
Between them, Nicholas Lancaster, Simon Moore D.C. Orgles, Michael Hall and Tony Crook filled in the history of 'JML 1' in the picture. This is one of the 1938 Mille Miglia team cars and is thought by all its owners to be the actual 220bhp 8C 2900B, chassis number 412031, engine number 422025 which won the race driven by Biondetti. Because the race was run in daylight, the car ran on its normal pair of headlights (the two lower lights were added for the 1938 Spa 24 hour race). The car was displayed on the Thompson and Taylor stand at the 1938 Motor Show, apparently not for sale. Nevertheless, Hugh Hunter managed to buy it, part-exchanging his English Alta single seater. He won a lot of races in it, leading John Dugdale of 'The Autocar' to write an article about it in which he dubbed the Alfa "the world's fastest road car." His article sparked a debate over which really was the fastest road car. This led to a competition at Brooklands on Whit Monday 1939 involving Arthur Dobson driving Rob Walker's 3.5 litre Delahaye, A.F.P. Fane in a works 2.0 litre BMW 328, Ian Connell in a 4.0 litre Darracq, P. Aitken in a 3.0 litre Delage, Dorndof in a 2.0 litre Peugeot, Cowell in a 2.0 litre supercharged Alta and Templar in a 2.5 litre supercharged Alfa Romeo. Hunter won the first race: three and a half laps of the shorter Campbell circuit but didn't complete a lap of the second race on the high speed outer circuit due to transmission failure. The overall winner was Dobson in the Delahaye.
Meanwhile, Tony Crook, then still a schoolboy, part-exchanged his MG Magnette team car 'BLL 492' with car dealer Robert Arbuthnott for an ex-works 1936 8C 2900A, UK registered 'DLY 163' (now owned by Simon Moore). He later proposed a wartime race with Hugh Hunter, but this never happened, and he ended up purchasing JML 1 in 1943 or 1944 for the then enormous sum of £4,000. He was clocked in JML 1 on Fosse Way by RAF timing equipment at an incredible 138.8mph over the flying kilometre.
After the war, Tony Crook broke records at the Brighton Speed Trials in the car and also won one of the first races held at Silverstone in 1949. In 1950, he decided to concentrate on Bristol Cars and sold JML 1 for £2,750 to Major Thompson, the founder of the Ecurie Ecosse racing team, whose Jaguar D Types won Le Mans in 1956 and 1957. Major Thompson rose to the rank of Brigadier and on his death in 1970 JML 1 was bequeathed to the RNLI which sold it by Sothebys auction to Bill Serri in the USA for £7,000. It was later re-sold to neurosurgeon Fred Simeone of Philadelphia who still owns JML 1 and has attended Mille Miglia retrospectives with it. In the 63 years since it left the hands of Alfa Romeo the car has only had five owners.
The history of JML 1 is covered over 13 pages in Simon Moore's book, 'The Immortal 2.9' which is out of print but can sometimes be found at specialist bookshops. His other Alfa Romeo book, 'The Legendary 2.3' is still available from Chater's Motoring Bookshop in Isleworth.
This is the sort of response that makes the whole thing worthwhile even if it doesn't make any money.
HJ Read more
1. What about the "spruce a BMW" slot? The only bit we didn't see was the engine no. being removed and the VIN plate changed. How back street can they get.
2. VBH...perhaps it didn't in the Lexus but it did in those jeans.
3. What is the title music? I remember having it on a rock compilation tape, over 25 years ago!
4. Golf economy test interesting. About 5mpg better than my old XUD Xantia when thrashed but 10MPG better then I've ever seen at the best. Then I do like to convert some fuel to heat via the brakes.
David Read more
Thanks for the tip on the Walkman. I will have a peep at that.
cheers
Given the amount of good press that showroom4cars get from this site, I'd like to post a warning that their description of "In Stock" cars is highly dubious and I'm currently over 3 months waiting for a car that they assured me was ready to be delivered back in July.
Hope your mileage varies.... Read more
Showroom4cars sends me its offers. I post them. Simple as that. I do it for anyone with a decent enough offer. But since we're making public accusations, lets be specific shall we? If you are, I'll take it up with showroom4cars.
HJ
Just reading a Land Rover magazine as a substitute for actually getting mine finished.
There was a comment about a Brazillian owner and they referred to the Land Rover "having a tremendous reputation" in Brazil.
Now then Mark I thought you were all Japanese monster truck guys out there.
David Read more
Taxi to Rio Airport, shuttle down to Sao Paulo, Lan Chile to Santiago, 4wd into the Andes. - 9 hrs door to door.
Does any modern car have a really accurate fuel guage that can tell you, say, when you have 1 litre left in your tank?
My Golf(Mk4) is supposed to have 55L capacity with the low warning light coming on with 7L left. I can always put in 51-52L if I fill as soon as it comes on. On the other hand I once drove 60 miles with the light on, (with can in boot) without running out, at according to the computer 34mpg.
The figures don't add up.
Bob H Read more
An interesting point has been made by someone in this thread that when they brim their tank, the needle reads above "Full" and takes 30 miles or more before it starts to creep back. Every car/truck/petrol or diesel I have ever owned, rented, borrowed or otherwise driven regardless of make or country made/driven in, has had this feature. The converse seems to be needle progression actually accelerates once it gets below half-full.
Can someone throw any light on this? Not that it matters in the least, but since so many motoring brains I am beginning sincerely to respect here are able to debate fuel gauges (even if not all can spell the word) at such length and in the context of interesting backgrounds from their personal experience (sleeping outside pubs :-)), surely there must be some views on why fuel gauges behave in this fashion?
Personally, I tank the damn thing up at a quarter full, whatever. The reason I do this no one is going to believe when I explain why, especially when I say it happened in Afghanistan - in those days alas a rather happier country than now. The following story however is 100% true. My companion and I were driving from London to Kathmandu, Nepal. We left Herat, in W, Afghanistan, for Kandahar, in the south. The AA maps we had (this was 1965) showed a mainly dirt highway for the 300 plus miles, dotted with various towns. This was born out by the then few available accounts of Westerners who had made the trip before us.
I must tell you Afghanistan is seriously inhospitable desert, and I have driven through many a desert in my time. Companion pointed out should we get fuel at Herat (we showed about half a tank). Since it was 4 a.m. (to beat the heat) waking up the local gas station for low grade stuff from the USSR which burnt with a tarry smell (anyone remember that from motoring in the Eastern Bloc pre Berlin Wall?) didn't seem appetising, yours truly says oh let's not bother, there are plenty of towns shown on the road, anyway we've got 4 galls spare in the jerry.
Well, we drove and drove, the sun came up, and the heat climbed into the 40's, as it does in those parts in May. The Bedford CA Van boiled a few times but nothing unusual. Weeks before when crossing Iran we had got used to driving with the red temp light on all day, it didn't seem to matter. Mile after mile of very narrow but unexpectedly pleasantly smooth concrete 2-lane unrolled beneath the wheels, with not another vehicle anywhere. A blisteringly hot wind blew. Meanwhile the fuel needle slipped lower and lower, and none of the advertised towns or indeed so much a hut, appeared over the shimmering horizon. Yours truly meanwhile pontificating that tanks always held more than you thought they did, etc etc. When the jerry's reserve had been all but used up such assertions began to take on a somewhat less convinced note. After some hours and probably 250 miles, the inevitable happened and the van spluttered to a halt. Now what? Hadn't seen another vehicle in hours, most of our water had gone into the radiator and we began to realise we were in fairly serious doo-doo. As the book said, we stayed with the vehicle, and didn't go walkabout. After 8 hours and just as the sun went down, a car appeared. It was as luck would have it a USAID vehicle driven by an American, based at the town of Bost, which the map said was nearby. Turned out it was 2 miles nearby (!). In those days the USSR and the Americans competed for influence in this strategic country via peacful projects...... What had happened was Russian aid had built this nice new road, which totally bypassed all the map's towns and villages, hence why we hadn't seen any. No gas stations however had been built. THe American said the Afghans hated the new road anyway, it didn't have any tea-shops or places to eat, so they stayed on the old tracks with their rickety Russian trucks.
From that day to this I have never played mental one upmanship with a gas gauge, nor passed a gas station on a low tank and said never mind there'll be another one in a minute.
I see in today's Telegraph that a government minister's chauffeur has escaped a ban after being caught doing 106mph on the M4 because of "The importance of his job". Good to see that with only 30 million licence holders in the UK the courts recognise the difficulty in finding people to drive MP's up and down the country. Read more
I have a 1999 VW Polo 1.4 cl. It's only done 24000 miles and has been dealer serviced at the correct intervals. I am now experiencing a problem with the engine sometimes cutting out when changing to a lower gear particularly when cornering.
I don't think it's my driving technique, so what's causing it? Is it just a matter of adjusting the idle speed or what? I'd be grateful for any comments or advice. Read more
Mick,
Have a good look on "Search", I think this has come up loads over the past few months. Remember to change to "all dates".
David
i have just seen a bright orange speed camera, its near morpeth, i thought that all speed cameras were dark so you dont see them, but i was amazed to see this one. i will try to find out the name of the road, so that other people can go along and see it. Read more
Oh dear, it's all got rather out of hand - they were only a success while it was being conducted at the 'sneaky shooting-fish-in-a-barrel level' - now with all this political correctness, the damn things are going to cost more in manpower and finances than they will ever actually earn - game over.
This might be old hat to people who live south of Preston but last week on a journey from Cumbria to London, I drove through some heavy rain on the M6 and M1.
I was very surprised to find that on newer stretches motorway, the road surface seemed to 'soak up' the spray to the extent that it was like driving in dry conditions, other than the rain hitting the windscreen. i.e. there was no spray at all from the wheels of other vehicles.
I am very curious as to how this works. Can anyone shed any light?
Thanks
Dave. Read more
Brian. I don't doubt that you will still have the danger in freezing weather but when above freezing it clears water more quickly.
Andrew. Sorry but I take issue over the cost. It is cheaper because it involves only the resources to lay a single wearing course and not in the case of hot rolled asphalt, as second crew to lay and roll pre coated chippings into the surface.
I have been charged by the police and have a court hearing
regarding a crash i had earlier on this year. The reason for the
crash was that my Peugeot 306 1.6 Virant engine cut out while
driving and somehow i lost control of the car as my power steering
was stiff (no pun please) :-) and therefore i hit a tree. There was
a lot of damage on the driver side so the fire services had to cut
part of the car just to get me out (how embbrassing). At the moment
i want to gather some information (proof) to u guys that if u have
had similar situation with their pug 306 whether the car is new or
old. I have got myself a solictor and i want to present him with
information that it is not a one off thing in my car and that is
may have happen to other peoples cars as well.
The history of my car was that i bought it from new 'R' reg and the
first month of driving the engine cut out while changing down in to
3rd gear, boy was i scared!!!. i took it to the dealer , he said it
could be a software problem in the chip of the gear , he said it
was fixed , but a couple of months later it happened
again!!!...this happened 5th time but by the 6th time i wasn't that
lucky as i crashed the car and its been written off. :-(
I would like to hear from u guys please so i can pass this on to my
solictors.
Like i said, i am going to court and fight my case , i could plead
guilty as the police said i could have been speeding (yeah right!)
or plead not guilty with some proof.
Cheers all,
William Chiu Read more
I know what you are saying but i feel justice is not done till i've at least go to court and see what they have to say about it, at the end of the day its only money and i should be grateful that i am still alive...
Browse
Is on next Sunday, running from London to Brighton. You can get real close to the action anywhere along the way. It's good to see they even had electric cars in those days.
Good viewing places are Crawley town centre, and Clayton Hill, just before they rejoin the A23 for the final hurlong into Brighton. I'll be with the All Wheel Drive Club on Clayton Hill to give the old timers a tow if they need it.