Year: 2023

Observe the Sons of Ulster: Paris-Madrid 1903

County Down, Ireland: September 1916 Responding to deft touch, the Sopwith Strutter prescribes a shallow arc from Carnalea. Barely above the telegraph wires. No conscious check of bearing – instinctively the pilot dips a wing, and there… K and the children are at the homestead. Waves, and kisses blown. Banking right over Helen’s Bay. Swinging […]

Racing Daydreams - Colin Johnston - Ards TT - BBC

Featured Northern Ireland Sports Car Racing

Race to Disaster – The Ards TT

The phone vibrated on my office desk. A glance to see the notification… email… subject line, “TT Film”. Curious, I locked the work laptop and read the message… it was about the Ards TT. Dear Colin, I came across your website in the course of doing some research for a film I am making for the BBC […]

Featured France Sports Car Racing

Elliott Zborowski – Death on the Corniche

1 April 1903, the motoring greats were set for the literal high-point of Nice Week – the hillclimb from Nice to La Turbie. 1903 was planned and expected to be a huge year for the sport, and Mercédès in particular. There were 12 of their 60hp machines in Nice, including a brand-new one for Count […]

Featured France Myths & Curios

Avenues & Alleyways – The 1903 Mercédès Limousine

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then what value a location? To stand on a street corner and watch the world scurry past. To stop and smile at the thought of the excitement, innovation, history that once filled a space, so mundane today. The Mercedes-Benz entry for the 1952 Rallye Automobile Monte Carlo […]

Featured France Grands Prix

Ici Repose Jean Behra

Follow tramline 1 in Nice towards its northern extremity – until it is just you and some shoppers heading to Saint-Sylvestre. Hop off at Gorbella – walk past Lidl & Monoprix. Take a left, up the hill – to Mont Claire Virenque – and there opposite the lycée you will find Cimetière Saint Barthélémy… and […]

Featured France Myths & Curios Rallying

Friderich, Père et Fille – Bugatti, Nice

It’s 24 February 1932 – the event is the Rally Paris-St Raphaël Féminin – the woman is Renée Friderich. She is 20 years-old, and today – as her friend & mentor Hellé Nice sets fastest time – she will lose her life at the wheel of this Delage D8-S. It was a bad accident, perhaps […]

Racing Daydreams - Lautenschlager 1914 ACF

Grands Prix

Bill Mason’s Finest – Racing Mercedes

How lucky we are that film-maker Bill Mason shared our passion, and used his talent & time to leave a legacy for future generations. From the outset, that first Shell film of the 1949 British Grand Prix, Bill’s work attracted & inspired followers of motor racing. Increasingly, as the decades have passed, the films have […]

Northern Ireland Rallying

25 Good Fridays

Early morning, car packed with coats, and boots, and maps. “Any word?” CB turned down to hear the morning news No word. Laughs, and songs, and cigarettes And roads, and friends, and craic. Tape, and crowds, and whistles And the cars. King Fisher Blue. No word. Break it down, pack it up and enroute, FAST […]