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Eoin Young's Collector's Column no. 12
Selling at Goodwood and Buying at Beaulieu
I
now have a fresh respect for the energies and abilities of Murray
Walker, a man in his 80th year, who went round the world recently
promoting his autobiography and signing copies. So what’s
so special about getting a free trip round the globe and signing
a few books, I hear your cry. It’s like this. I’ve
just spent the weekend at the Goodwood Revival signing 500 copies
of my new book "Forza Amon!" and I ended up absolutely knackered
by Sunday evening. This might have been in some measure the
result of the efforts of Ted Walker and Laurence Edscer in maintaining
by fluid levels, but the absurd concentration required in signing
your name so many times was mind numbing. I’m not
complaining, mind. I’m just mentioning that the mental
effort needed, amazed me and gave me fresh respect for Murray,
him being a year or three older than me.
I
also applaude Murray’s tribute to the late and great Barry Sheene, a
sportsman like Martin Brundle, who turned to the microphone on retirement and
was so effortlessly polished at the art of stand-up off-the-cuff commentating,
that it made you wonder why they’d ever wasted all that time in the saddle. Or
at the wheel in Martin’s case. Murray said the Sheene tribute was
hard to do because he had been very fond of him and he felt very emotional.
Goodwood
was glorious as always and it seemed the only person who stayed away was the
weather. There had been dire forecasts but we saw only a few vague showers
from time to time. Crowds were up again, a measure of this being that
all the lavish programmes had sold out by noon Sunday. Last year I swept
down from Bookham to Goodwood in a Jaguar XJ in exactly an hour, but this year
in the stop-start queues we were nearly two and a half hours for the trip. But
we did have the consolation of cosseting in a new 3-litre X-Type Jaguar, a
performer with such style that I felt the only gilding to this lily would have
been automatic transmission. I must be getting older than I thought. Jaguars
are also getting smaller. Remember the Jaguar ads in the 1950s and ‘60s
for ‘Grace, Pace and Space’? The grace and the pace are still
with the X-Type but Michael Clark and Peter Renn were both over six foot and
they almost had to have the car surgically removed from their shoulders when
we arrived at Goodwood.
High point of the Amon book
signing came when this bloke came up and stood there, looking
at the book and then at me, and furrowed his brow for a few considered
moments before he said "’ere… This Forza Amon
bloke? Is ‘e Chris’s cousin, then?" Made
the weekend worthwhile!
We
were having a Pitpass.com sort of weekend. Michael Clark and wife Sandy
were over from New Zealand and Dr Michael Lawrence was Michael’s Goodwood
mentor on the Saturday. He arranged for us to be chauffered (if
that’s not too grand a word) in a Fiat Multipla (!) around the outside
of the circuit and dropped off at the exact spot where Sir Stirling crashed
his Lotus on Easter Monday, 1962. I’d never been there before. I’ve
driven around the course heaps of times, but I’ve never been on the outside
and had a spectator’s eye-view of the crash scene. Sent a cold
shiver down my spine. And in modern terms, you were so close to the action. We
watched the motorcycle race and then realised we were running out of day and
the option was walking back around the circuit (Me? Walk any meagre distance
if there wasn’t a sustaining drink at the other end? You should
know that my local, The Royal Oak in Great Bookham, is just 47sec from my front
door!) or flagging down a ride. A WW2 Jeep came bumping around with a
driver and two pretty ladies on board. Dr Lawrence Lawrence stepped in
front of the jeep and it stopped. Did he have room for three exhausted
journos? The driver said they didn’t. So we climbed on board
anyway and crushed three of us large blokes into what might have been one spare
seat. They turned out to be congenial company but then I suppose they’d
have to have been at such close quarters in the Pitpass capture of what was
nominally a fighting vehicle.
Adding
to Pitpass ranks, Bob Constanduros turned up on Sunday, fresh (well, sort of)
from Brno that morning where he had been commentating at a West-McLaren promotion. He
was endeavouring to hide the modern silver-grey West team shirt under his ‘sixties
Goodwood-style hacking jacket, trying not to be Tomorrow Man in the glory of
yesterday’s racing weekend. We decided that the 1962 stack-pipe
BRM couldn’t have been authentic because the exhausts on Irvine Laidlaw’s
car had stayed resolutely attached to the 1.5-litre V8 engine throughout the
race. When the car made its debut at Zandvoort in ’62 there were
broken exhausts bouncing all over the place. Just kidding, Irvine. It
sounded fantastic. Bring back stack-pipe exhausts…
Bob,
who will celebrate 20 years in the commentary box next season, can lay claim
to be the only Grand Prix commentator in the world with not one but three Facel-Vegas
in his motorhouse.
In
the Sussex Trophy on Sunday afternoon, Bob was speculating on the size of the
repair bill for Sporting & Historic Cars if their two cars started swapping
paint. Peter Hardman topped the weekend for me, watching him lead the
early laps in a glorious power-slide through Woodcote in the 1957 Aston Martin
DBR1. Tony Dron had been swallowed up from pole in the S&HC team’s
splendid Ferrari Dino 246S and it took him a few laps to get on to Hardman’s
tail. They may have been grandstanding as they swept into Woodcote side
by side in the braking area, but they did it damned well! The Ferrari
was three years younger than the Aston which was probably a year or two old
when it was new in ’57, but it was a race to remember. Just the
sort of wheel to wheel excitement that Goodwood used to dish up when the races
? and the racers ? were for real.
The
autojumble at Beaulieu is the granddaddy of them all, a mammoth
gathering of the rusty and the rare ? sometimes both combined
? but always a personal challenge to find a treasure. The
great thing about Beaulieu is the sheer scale of the event and
the fact that every one of the tens of thousands that come through
the gate each day of the weekend has a different goal, a different
item that they’re out to find. Finding it is only
the start. Then there is the ritual haggling endemic in
autojumbling which really seems like a waste of time when you
consider that the trader knows as well as you do that there will
be a lot of calculated verbal before the price is settled…the
fact that the trader has already added on the estimated amount
of haggle, never seems to be taken into account. But I
suppose there is a feel-good factor involved somewhere. The
buyer inevitably goes away with a secret smile knowing that’s
he’s had a result and managed to get the price down as
well. The trader ? or at least the bloke on the other side
of the counter ? has got a secret smile as well because he’s
been trying to shift whatever it was, for years.
It
reminds me of Mike Hallowes, Nick Mason’s Right-Hand-Man at Ten Tenths,
despairing of selling stuff he’d been taking to Beaulieu year after year
and finally on the Sunday afternoon he laid dozens of items out with a notice
that said ALL ITEMS ON THE TARPAULIN ARE FREE. No sooner had he set out
his wares than a bloke stepped in, picked out an old suitcase and gave Hallowes
what had been on the original price-tag. Another prospective punter asked
Hallowes why he was standing over his de-priced display. "To make sure
that nobody nicks anything…"
You
hear every language and accent and at Beaulieu. It’s a fully international
happening. American collectors Bob Ames and Dale La Follette were making
a professional approach, armed with walkie-talkies. Reminded me of American
dealer, Charlie Schalebaum, a big, comfortable older chap who I was with at
an earlier Beaulieu when he asked a dealer the price of an item that had taken
his fancy. The guy said he was asking such-and-such a price. Charlie
put his arm around the startled vendor’s shoulders and said "Son, where
ah come from, when you ask what something costs you want to know how much it
costs…" The vendor blurted out a price somewhat south of what he
was asking, and Charlie peeled off the required number of notes… Simple
as that.
My
favourite dealer at Beaulieu is a Frenchman who offers a wide range
of early motor racing material gathered at gallic fairs during the
year. I won’t tell you who
he is or I’ll find myself in a queue next year. Like
Henry N. Manney III, writing for Road & Track in the 1960s
and listing the hotels he preferred staying at during the season. The
next year he couldn’t get a booking because they were all
Complet with Americans who had read his guide…
Suffice
to say that this year I bought a beautiful illustrated Michelin successes book
devoted to the 1903 Paris-Madrid. The cover art shows the French Bibendum
riding a Spanish bull with a huge PARIS-MADRID 1903 flag. The race, as
you should know, was stopped at Bordeaux because of the carnage to man and
motorcar. Motor racing was banned in France and it’s a miracle
that motorsport didn’t stop right there. And you wouldn’t
be reading this. And Bernie would still be selling second hand cars.
I
also found the British Intelligence illustrated report on the German Motor
Industry during the war years. This included photographs and details
of the Grand Prix cars that included the Italian Cisitalia because it was designed
by Dr Porsche. It was also this learned publication that professionally
suggested that the Volkswagen Beetle would probably never be a commercial success. Yeah,
right. In fact this book is as rare as the companion report on the German
Grand Prix and Speed Record cars. So it was a good Beaulieu visit for
me, one way and another.
A
glass or two of toothsome rose with Laurence Edscer and Ted Walker on their
joint stand in E Field. Ted Walker, a.k.a. Ferret Photographic, was Ted
the Metal Man at Beaulieu with nary a photograph in sight and a table of rare
hardware that included a pair of incredible aluminium manifolds for an 8C/35
8-cylinder Grand Prix Alfa Romeo as fielded by Scuderia Ferrari in 1935. The
Ferret had priced these museum pieces at £800 for the pair and scoffed
at my suggestion that there were probably more punters in E Field looking for
Austin A35 bits than Alfa 8C/35 bits. He also had a beautiful polished
metal sculpture in the form of twin-choke SU carburettors on a manifold and
linkages for bolting on to an FPF Coventry Climax racing engine. These
were said to be bargain, by folk who didn’t show much sign of reaching
for their wallets, at £700. Or you could have a long manifolding
with three Dell Orto carburettors that might have been from an XK or an E-Type
Jaguar, at £450. There was a string of experts passing by and offering
conflicting advice or information. You could have had a pair of uprights
for a Lotus 41 at £100, rear uprights that might or might not have fitted
a Chevron B24 at £400, a diff for a Lister-Bristol at £700, a Manx
Norton gearbox at £100 and a complicated cushion-mounted rev counter
for the same Manx was £275. I couldn’t get my head around
the gearbox being cheaper than the rev counter, but my mentor Peter Renn observed
that the gearbox might have been full of neutrals… Then there was
a pair of Lister Jaguar rear callipers at £250. Or how about a
Ford GT40 illustrated glossy colour fold-out publicity brochure. Was
it original? For twenty quid, Ferret figured it wasn’t worth arguing
about…
And
how were his prices reflected in sales? On the Friday ‘setting
up’ day he sold the Coventry Climax SUs, the Jaguar Dell Ortos and the
Lister Bristol diff.
Meanwhile down at Monza Nigel Roebuck always has his loyalties
split between the wailing Grand Prix cars and Mario Acquati’s
emporium of motor racing books and memorabilia. Roebuck
phones for an opinion on a delectable and incredibly rare packet
of Achille Varzi documentation that includes a hand-written letter
from the stormy Varzi, a hand-written entry form and a receipt
for the entry. Varzi raced a Bugatti that summer, scoring
just a singleton victory at Tripoli. The price does not
bear banter in a public place like this, but suffice to say that
the Roebuck homestead may be mortgaged and Nige will come back
on Monday with an incredibly valuable piece of kit. Varzi
stuff is extremely thin on the ground, to the point where I can’t
remember ever seeing anything with his signature and The Buck
has just scored a pair of signatures! Makes the Grand
Prix seem almost irrelevant. And of course it was to all
the punters at Beaulieu…
We
drove down to Lord Montagu’s packed paddocks in a Peugeot 206 CC, a little
whizzer with the initials standing for Convertible Coupe, I presume. I
could not open the boot. I even scorned the habit of a lifetime and consulted
the handbook. Peter Renn knows about things mechanical. He supercharged
his Spridget which must mean something. It gave me a huge amount of satisfaction
to see that he couldn’t open the boot either. The delivery driver
had advised that the pull-out luggage cover in the boot had to be pulled across
before the coupe lid would crank itself down and hide and he also warned not
to interrupt the controlled-collapse of the hardtop or it would all end in
tears. Peter said we’d give it a go anyway and all the whirring
and lifting and cranking began…at which point the boot miraculously lifted
itself in a mechanically orchestrated fashion…showing that it was actually
hinged at the rear which explained our inability to open the boot in a normal
fashion!
Eoin Young.
To read previous columns click on the links below:
1. SCRAPBOOKS and THE EDDIE HALL PHOTO ALBUM MYSTERY
2. GOODWOOD CIRCUIT REVIVAL 2001
3. SPRING RACING IN NEW ZEALAND
5. "CHASING THE TITLE"- A 'must-read' book...
8. NEW BOOKS, PRESCOTT AND GOODWOOD 2002
10. CLASSIC RACERS, FORZA AMON! and COLIN CHAPMAN
11. MY NEW BOOK... & BERNIE'S NEW BOOK
12. SELLING AT GOODWOOD AND BUYING AT BEAULIEU
13. TARGA NEW ZEALAND, BRABHAM ON SCHUMACHER, AMON ON CLARK
15. PUSHING BUTTONS; F1 DRIVER SHUFFLES
17. EXCITING COLLECTION OF PHOTOGRAPHS IN WARSAW
20. "FORZA AMON" COLLECTOR'S EDITION
21. DURANT RECORD BREAKING RUN
29. FRANK GARDNER LIVE ON STAGE!
Eoin Young is a
New Zealander
who left a bank job to join Bruce McLaren and help set up his racing
team.
More or less. He arrived in the UK in 1961 as a freelance journalist,
covered
the Formula Junior season with Denny Hulme, joined McLaren in 1962.
Founder
director of team. Established Motormedia 1966. Started weekly "Autocar" diary
page in 1967 -- it ran until 1998. Covered CanAm, Indy and GP series.
In 1979 established as a dealer in rare motoring and motor racing books
and ephemera. Still trading with regular lists. Autobiography "It
Beats Working" published in 1996. with its sequel "It Still beats
Working"
in 2003. After more than three decades based in the UK he has now returned
to his native New Zealand.
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