March 11 2001 Austin and Morris day at Brooklands

Not a bright start to the day, as the picture taken soon after the museum opened shows. There are just two pre-war Minors and an Austin Ten running chassis in front of the clubhouse. Yes, the Austin had been driven there but as it is located in the museum that was not as difficult as it sounds.

The museum is still recovering from the floods last November and the clubhouse was still closed at the time of the event. Water damage was evident in the whole of the ground floor with everything, including the plaster on the walls and the woodwork stripped out ready for the refurbishment.

There was a good tun out of pre-war cars with about a dozen each of Austin and Morris cars and commercial vehicles. The most unusual were the Morris commercials including a couple of J type vans (one in GPO livery), an Eight van and the unique commercial Bullnose traveller. Click on the thumbnails for bigger pictures of these vehicles.

Although the rain threatened most of the day it stayed reasonably dry most of the time. The cavalcade down the runway was the usual chaos as the stream of vehicles had to double back on itself before assembling on the banking. Some of the flooded roads were only wide eough for one way traffic which meant that the leaders had to wait for the end before we could all return.

The picture on the banking shows that Austin Healysare much faster than their parents and reached the front of the queue. Despite the appearance of a fairly flat section of the banking the cars at the highest level were at such an angle that petrol was leaking from the overflow pipes.