London to Brighton

The last time I saw him he sat me down and told me how lucky he’d been, how happy he was and that I probably ought to know he’d be dead by Christmas. He then went back to designing a new windscreen surround for one of his many elderly cars, a surround he would have known at the time he would never get to see. Some people are just made from different material to the rest of us.

But let’s spool back many years to that Brighton Run. Why was I even trying to get out of doing it? Because while I love old cars, even those that are today 100 years old, I’d never really coveted absolutely ancient cars. To the young churl that was me back then, these were Heath Robinson contraptions: mind-numbingly slow and wholly unreliable. I simply didn’t see where the fun came from, even in perfect road and weather conditions. But this was neither: this was the middle of London in November and that kind of all-pervading damp chill that feels colder than the dry cool you find 20 degrees further down the scale when north of the Arctic Circle.

‘We’ll take the little Napier,’ he announced, as if to imply that closeted away somewhere inside one of his multitudinous outbuildings there lurked a big Napier which, indeed, there did.

The little Napier. We had already made our acquaintance a few years earlier. I’d gone over and driven all manner of cars he possessed: the 3-litre Bentley that had belonged to Archie Birkin, his magnificent Lagonda M45 Rapide, an Hispano Suiza, a Lancia Theta and others. But through it all I knew the Napier was coming and I was dreading it.

Its claim to fame then and now was that it was the oldest Napier in existence, dating from 1900. It had a two-cylinder engine displacing about 2.5-litres but it also had a U-shaped crankshaft so both pistons went up and down together creating, it is fair to say, somewhat suboptimal levels of noise, vibration and harshness. Though I could not swear to it now, I think its lubrication system involved dripping oil into the top end of the engine and letting it fall out of the bottom.

But such matters paled to nothing relative to its two real drawbacks. The first of which was that the brakes were so bad that if there was a junction at the bottom of a hill, the car would be unable to stop. At that stage your options were limited, especially if someone was already parked there. ‘We try to avoid those sorts of junctions,’ was the godfather’s sage advice.

But there was no way of mitigating the second problem, which was that the little Napier had a throttle operated not by foot, but hand. Motorcyclists reading this will now be wondering what the fuss is all about, so I’ll explain. Let us say you wish to slow and change down a gear. One foot on the clutch, the other on the brake, one hand on the steering wheel, the other on the gear lever. So far, so very normal. Except that if you don’t also rev the engine to the speed required for the lower gear, the gearbox will simply decline the shift. The simple but quite extraordinary truth was that this car was designed to be driven by humans with more than the conventional quota of limbs.

When my turn came, I realised there were three options, none in the least appetising. The first was to brake to a halt and start again, the second to somehow ignore the hideous noises and quietly appalled expression of my godfather and somehow bang it through anyway or… well you could always take your hand off the wheel and use that to blip the throttle. The steering was so imprecise it probably wouldn’t make much difference anyway. Which is what I duly did. And only nearly crashed once. And that was on flat, sunny, deserted roads in summer.

Now it was London in November. I’d worn my entire wardrobe but was still chilled to the marrow as my godfather expertly pointed the little Napier over Westminster Bridge and headed south. ‘Done a lot of work,’ he called over the din of its twinned pistons pounding away in unison, ‘she’s going like a dream.’ A dream with a top speed of 25mph.

Presently we reached a hill up which we started to churn, getting slower and slower by the yard. Other similarly elderly machines were grinding away in front of us. After a bit he yelled, ‘it’s no good, you’ll have to use the chock,’ the chock being a wedge-shaped block of wood you jammed behind a wheel to stop the car rolling backwards. As we stopped I leapt out and started to run to the back of the car before I heard his yell, ‘NOT US, HIM!’ Looking round I saw the car in front slowly sliding back towards the Napier. I only just got there in time.

And that’s how it went. Once as many veteran cars as the hill could accommodate had all failed to proceed, an entire army of drivers and chock men and women ascended to the lead car and pushed it to the top, then the one behind and so on until the queue was cleared. For my efforts I was rewarded with a short turn at the wheel with a much longer one promised after we stopped somewhere for refreshments. But I made such a pig’s breakfast of driving the thing I could see my godfather wincing in almost physical pain with each botched gearshift. I was dreading my second stint.

But it never happened. Something inside the car broke while it was parked, not serious, but not repairable before we had to leave; we finished our trip to Brighton in his Land Rover Discovery tow car. I never did find out what went wrong, though I’d have understood if it had been caused by my godfather sneaking out with a sledgehammer and rendering his car inoperable in preference to letting the blithering idiot drive it again.

So my respect, admiration and best wishes to all those taking part in the 125th anniversary London to Brighton Veteran Car Run this weekend. I’d like to say how much I wish I was there too, but the truth is I don’t. It is too hardcore for me, I am too lily-livered; the incompetence of the little Napier that weekend was dwarfed by that of its feckless, part-time pilot.

In truth, while it was an event I was glad to do, it was as nothing compared to how glad I was never to have to do it again. It says everything about me and nothing about veteran cars that, if I’m honest, I just couldn’t cope.

Happily there are some people made of sterner stuff than I, which is why this year as every year, the little Napier will be once more chugging its way southward, now with my godfather’s brilliant daughter at its helm. Truly she is a chip off the block in every way; or perhaps, in the circumstances, that should be chock.