Guinness with Rosie
YOU CAN SENSE the doubletake before it even happens. A middle-aged chap is crossing the road in front of us, our Tiger temporarily snared in an Irish small-town traffic jam. He glances at the car, and at the driver. Then, as he passes by on the pavement, he looks at the driver again. ‘It’s you, isn’t it!’ he exclaims in cheerful surprise. And Rosemary Smith agrees that, yes, it is indeed her. Turns out the chap saw her racing a Mk1 Escort at Phoenix Park in the early ’70s.
This kind of thing happens a lot when you’re co-driving with Rosemary in Ireland. Everyone recognises her; everyone wants to say hello and remind her of how they once met, 20 or 30 years ago or more. ‘Yes, of course!’ she’ll respond enthusiastically, even though she’s no idea who they are. But they are her fans, and Rosemary Smith likes to send them away happy.
I’m a fan of Rosemary, too. We first rallied a Tiger together back in 1994 on one of the late Philip Young’s Classic Marathons, and most recently did the 2016 Circuit Déjà Vu in Rosemary’s ex-works Hillman Imp (see Octane 156). That was in Killarney, spiritual home of the old Circuit of Ireland endurance rally, and this time we’re in another Irish county, Laois (pronounced, approximately, ‘Leash’), to celebrate another Irish motor racing endurance event that’s rather older: the 1903 Gordon Bennett Trophy.
In 1903, Ireland was still part of the UK, and the Gordon Bennett race was held there because racing was illegal on mainland British roads. Backed by newspaper magnate James Gordon Bennett, the Coupe Internationale, as it was more properly known – in other years, races were held on the Continent – took place on Irish country roads where, it was predicted by the of 11 April 1903, ‘the sight of two leviathans each travelling at the rate of 70 miles an hour within a few inches of one another will be a sight worth seeing’.
Attracting works entries from Mercedes and Napier, among others, the 1903 race was a carnival of an event, marshalled by thousands of policemen plus troops and club officials. The increased emphasis on public safety, following the carnage of the 1901 Paris-Bordeaux and 1903 Paris-Madrid, paid off and there were no fatalities this time, the race being won by Camille Jenatzy in a Mercedes. He took home an incredible £8000 prize money.
Today’s Gordon Bennett Irish Classic Car Run is a more leisurely affair, run over a long weekend, although it’s claimed that the route differs by only 4.3 miles in two places from the 1903 original. I’m here courtesy of Rosemary and the Sunbeam Tiger Owners Club, and Dublin-based owner Andy Hennessy has very kindly lent us his 1965 Tiger.
The rally route is easy to get to from the mainland; rather than fly, I drove to the end of the M4 and took an overnight boat with Irish Ferries from Pembroke to Rosslare. If you haven’t taken the ferry in recent years, I’d urge you to give it a try; the experience was remarkably civilised and laid-back – so much less stressful than flying with a well-known budget airline, and from Rosslare it’s only a couple of hours’ drive on empty roads to Portlaoise, near the start of the Gordon Bennett.
As befits an Irish event, the official start is at a pub – well,
more a roadside diner – owned by a prominent local family just outside Portlaoise. With nearly 180 entries, the car park is soon rammed and there’s plenty of time to do some metaphorical tyrekicking. What’s immediately apparent is how inclusive an event it is: there’s everything from a 1910 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost to an absolutely immaculate 1970s Toyota Corolla. I’ll bet the latter is now the rarer car.
Although Irish country roads are legendarily lightly trafficked, they are just that – country roads, with the attendant hazards of farm machinery and hidden sideturnings – so today’s Gordon Bennett is effectively a tour. As with most competitive drivers, Rosemary is not at her happiest unless going flat-out, but that’s definitely not an option here. So we spend the time on the road sections chatting. I tease her about her friendship with film star Oliver Reed, as mentioned in her recent autobiography Driven (published by Harper Collins and reviewed in Octane 186), and encounters with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
Rally stops typically take place in villages or small towns, which are rich sources of Irish rural culture. The pub in Ballitore, for example – intimate, dark, lowceilinged, like a warm, smoky cave – is the kind of pub that makes you want to move to the village just so you can call it your local, while the community theatre in Kilcullen is fitted out with the most comfortable leather recliners you’ll ever lounge in: a local Volvo dealer was at a presentation for the then-new S80 in Gothenburg, which featured a theatre specially equipped with S80 driver’s seats, and he persuaded Volvo to donate them after the event. And I’ll never forget the outdoor serenade of a love song to the crowd by a village policeman in full Garda uniform. Only in Ireland.
After three days of meandering around the counties of Laois, Carlow and Kildare, I finally persuade Rosemary to relinquish the wheel so I can have a short drive in the Tiger – not an easy task, because by her own admission she is a reluctant passenger. And it’s drizzling, so the roads are greasy, and this ‘V8powered Alpine’ is on originalspec 13in rims… unusual, now, since the limited tyre choice in this size means that most owners switch to 14 or even 15in wheels.
Immediate impressions are: nice car, great engine, shame about the steering. Andy’s Tiger has been retro-fitted with electric power steering and, while it complements the smaller Moto-Lita wheel nicely, it has no self-centring action. Maybe it’s to do with how the steering geometry has been set-up rather than the PAS itself, but it’s not confidence-inspiring and gives almost zero feedback, which is not what you want on damp roads with 200bhp being delivered to a lightly loaded rear axle. No wonder Rosemary is looking nervous.
That engine, though… What a pleasure! A Ford 289 rather than the 260 originally fitted, it’s effortlessly powerful and torquey, such that in normal driving you can dispense with using third gear between second and fourth. It also makes a great Yank-tank V8 sound, but without being too obtrusively aggressive thanks to a relatively mild exhaust system. The brakes work well, the gearchange is slick, the ride quality acceptable (unless you hit a pothole, at which point the suspension just gives up) – I’ve owned a couple of Alpines in the past but could never afford a Tiger, and driving this one reminds me just how much fun they can be. The wipers are crap, of course, but that’s old cars for you.
As I head back to the ferry in the morning, listening to a morning radio show from Dublin, there’s a phone-in about the TV show Love
Island. One of the contestants, the younger brother of heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, is very good looking and proving popular with the listeners. ‘Ah, if I came home from work and found him in bed with the wife, I’d tuck ’em both in!’ says one of the callers. What a wonderful country.
THANKS TO Andy Hennessy, Rosemary Smith, the Sunbeam Tiger Owners Club and IrishFerries.com.