Engine Punk

A Le Mans start at Le Mans. Rolling starts are much safer but don't create the same spectacle. After a false start, I still went to this year's Le Mans Classic, the false start courtesy of a burst top radiator hose on a forthcoming Vintage Thing wot I own ( watch this space ). It happened on the way to the ferry in Plymouth and fortunately not on the other side of the channel so if it was going to happen that's the way it should've happened. A quick regrouping and assessment of the amount of stuff we proposed taking and the available vehicles at our disposal resulted in us choosing my neighbour's Land Rover Defender as fallback transport. Andrew the tractor man said it handled better loaded down with all our gear and was surprisingly economical on such a long run. Now is not the time to forget your Jag is left hand drive. Or to put your leg through the steering wheel. Fortunately, Alex Buncombe, in the C Type and Peter Mulder in the Gullwing Merc don'...

We'd only just parked up when we spotted this fire engine red Guzzi The annual pilgrimage to Wiscombe got off to a good start. We hadn't even got out of the carpark when Pete Low and I spotted this bacon slicer Moto Guzzi that had turned up to watch. Funnily enough, Pete and I just been saying that one of the unmissable experiences at Wiscombe was the breakfast bap in the morning after camping under canvas. For greatest effect the egg should be slightly runny and ooze all the way down your forearm. This year I surpassed myself and managed to get egg all down my trousers and on my boots. High performance breakfast baps are indeed something "special" at Wiscombe. Must be the critical mass of all those vintage specials And here is one of those vintage specials - Wasp II (check?) - on opposite lock with cylinder heads akimbo at the recently resurfaced Martini Hairpin The weather was good, too, despite being wet for days on end beforehand. The car park and paddo...

The RA Special as advertised on Ebay earlier this year. Photo : Oxford Dreamers I don't often feature machines I haven't clapped eyes on as Vintage Things but make an exception for this device. I discovered the RA Special on a web search backalong as one of my friends - who hasn't quite got the hang of being another scrap buddy for me - suggested I check out some Austin 7 specials he'd seen. In addition to those I found this. I did. As well as the car Brett suggested was this RA Special for sale on Ebay and after 61 bids the auction ended at £9,400. I don't know if it sold but, when you consider that it's full of new or reconditioned parts, that doesn't sound too step to me, although way out of my price range. I reckon it looks great and the performance sounds serious fun. All photos are from The Oxford Dreamers website, which includes some very interesting images of the car's construction. Just the job for tooling around the backroads of Blight...