Engine Punk

Among my photos of the 2009 Le Mans 24 Heures (Part 3 of Endurance Spectating coming soon) I found this Lea-Francis . I've always been a bit partial to LeaFs and was fascinated to learn that they were built in penny numbers in the Coventry streets that I knew as a student. Much Park Street was just a few streets away from where I lived and Lower Ford Street was where my mates hung out for a while, in a house that had survived not only The Blitz but possibly also the plague - Coventry being a great medieval city. Two gangs of us had houses in Vine Street that backed onto a factory still known as the Singer Works and at certain times of the day and night a great whir would begin as the shifts changed over. This brought home to me what it must have been like to be in the motor city during the inter war years. I can visualise everyone making engines and bikes and cars and then staggering next door from the blackened, stone-walled foundries to crash out afterwards. The city must've ...