The couple on a mission to recreate Briggs Cunningham’s Le Mans Cadillacs

The originals are in a museum, but these cult-hero privateer Cadillacs are now running again thanks to a diligent enthusiast

There aren’t enough people like Derek Drinkwater in historic racing any more. Now the grids are made up either of the offspring of wealthy enthusiasts or pros who look upon vintage as another formula with which to bolster their CVS.

Both groups want to run the most competitive cars possible, which, aided and abetted by the powers that be, has created a situation where the building of replicas is actually encouraged. The pace might be fast and furious, but the races tend to lack authenticity or variety – the upshot being that you can’t look at a Shelby Cobra or a Ford GT40 without questioning its origins.

It’s therefore refreshing to find a chap not in his first flush of youth, and with a reasonable but not huge budget, wanting to recreate not only an ugly car, but an uncompetitive one to boot.

“I really wanted to race at Le Mans,” Drinkwater explains. “Looking at all the cars we couldn’t afford, we decided on a Cadillac like the first Cunningham entries.” We being Derek and wife Pat, who is undoubtedly his equal where the passion for big American vehicles is concerned. “We also wanted something unusual that organisers would look on favourably,” she adds.

The Drinkwaters are no strangers to unusually large, attention-grabbing American automobiles. Their catering business has featured a number of strange converted vehicles over the years, most memorably a Peterbilthauled petrol tanker turned into a bar, all dreamt up and executed by Derek: “My folks were in mobile catering – Mum food, Dad vehicles – so I got involved early. I was welding by the age of 14, and driving trucks long before I should have.”