Club column: Marcus Pye
It’s only been revived for four years, but the eclectic pleasures of the Chateau Impney Hill Climb are making it a must-see, family-friendly event
“IT WAS FANTASTIC TO SEE AUSTIN TWIN-CAM GP RACERS OF THE 1930s RUN ABREAST”
Just back from the fourth Chateau Impney Hill Climb of the Spollon family era where – but for last Saturday’s hot-rod aerobatics (see Jeff Bloxham’s dramatic images, left) – a jolly good time was had by all on the hottest weekend of the year. Reflecting huge effort by the landowners, supporting hotel/conference centre staff and a legion of contractors, it gets better and better by the year.
As a devoted fan of speed hillclimbing since I spent several happy days at Great Auclum, near Burghfield Common outside Reading, in my youth, my principal on-event focus is the competitive element of ‘chimpney’, backdrop to short sprints with a slight incline offered by the local Hagley & District
Light Car Club from 1957-67.
Top guns back then included David Good, the remarkable onearmed 1961 RAC British champion who I, along with a thousand others, watched heart-in-mouth as he wrestled sports-racers and mighty Mclaren-chevrolet M10 and Cosworth Dfv-powered Lyncar single-seaters on my local course, with its tricky downhill start in a tunnel of trees a few seasons later.
That Lotus collector Malcolm Thorne (2016’s sports-racing winner in the 3.5-litre Buick V8-engined ‘addicott’ 15 clone now handled with gusto by wife Sarah) should set BTD on Sunday was as well deserved as it was appropriate. Thorne’s family scrap metal recycling business is based in Oldbury, Birmingham, barely three miles from where 1950s hillclimb king Ken Wharton kept his garage in Hume Street, Smethwick. Perhaps there’s something in the water?
There was definitely something for everybody at the Chateau, with the remarkable breadth of machinery taking part ranging from Hicky Hickling’s 1904 Pope Toledo Gordon Bennett racer in the Edwardian class to Graham Wynn’s modern Gould-cosworth HB GR55 on demo duty. Unseen since the early ’20s, Hickling’s multi-year labour of love returned the old warhorse, powered by the throbbing 10-litre four-cylinder Nordyke & Marmon-built Hall-scott aero engine with which it last ran, to action.
In England’s industrial heartland it was fantastic to see the surviving 750cc Austin twin-cam GP and side-valve racers of the 1930s demonstrated, running abreast on Chateau Pass, A7 nut Andy Storer in the former, raced in period by Longbridge apprentice Bert Hadley. Plenty of pre-war Rileys and later
Jaguars from nearby Coventry, including C-types representing those that won at Le Mans in ’51 and ’53, performed briskly too in the immortal XK engine’s 70th year.
Iconic Worcestershire manufacturer Morgan was very much in the thick of things too. Super Aero ‘trikes’, four-wheeled specials and +4s competed strongly, local Bromsgrove GP David Pryke breaking his rapid Morgan Riley hybrid. Celebrating 50 years of the +8, the prototype Rover-engined car went up the half-mile hill with the monstrous Donovan Chevrolet-powered ‘Big Blue’ racer and one of the latest hand-built BMW V8-motivated models from Malvern.
The National Motor Museum brought its shrill BRM V16, which Doug Hill took up to enthusiasts’ delight. Equally wild was drag racer Lee Gallimore’s Red Mist, a 1200-1400bhp beast that has cut 7.3-second quarter miles with 185mph terminal velocity. Alas, a flat battery thwarted nine years of graft to finish lawyer Andrew Komosa’s Ford GT40, an amalgam of the rebuilt monocoque of 1042, 1001’s original bodywork and many other genuine parts, down to the ignition key fob!
Rally cars featured again this year, with demos and some drivers taking part in the ‘ralli 22’competition. Quickest in this was not one of the more powerful cars but Tony Shields, who fairly threw his Dutch championship Opel Astra to the top, downing Tom Delaney’s Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 9 and David Wright’s ex-carlos Sainz 2000 M-sport Ford Focus WRC on his second ascent.
Obscurati included the 1950 RA4 Vanguard, an Auto Unioninspired single-seater built in New Zealand around a 2.1-litre Standard-triumph engine by Hec Green and owned by Kiwis Rob Whitehouse – who also brought his stunning ex-fabrizio Tabaton Olio Fiat Lancia 037 Rallye – and touring car ace Paul Radisich. Sadly it didn’t run, but other monoposti included a bizarre cyclecar and the vast ex-terry Sanger F5000 Harrier, now with a Rover V8 engine and modern road-car transaxle in place of period Boss Ford and Chevrolet/hewland set-ups.
Variety aside, passionate petrolhead promoters Rod and Guy Spollon score highly at Chateau Impney by offering the event’s growing number of vital commercial partners, sponsors and traders excellent value for money, and looking after them. Their gathering is not going to topple Goodwood’s Festival of Speed – the 25th anniversary edition of which starts today (Thursday) – but offers family-friendly motorsport entertainment a mile from the M5 in the midlands, traditionally on British GP day. They even showed the England v Sweden World Cup football quarter-final on Saturday afternoon. The roars from spectators when England scored were heard above the cars!