The 110th anniversary of the 1896 run from London to Brighton held to celebrate the emancipation of the motor car was run on November 5th.
The raising of the overall road speed limit in Great Britain from 5 mph to 12 mph has been remembered every year since and the number of participants has grown to nearly 500 cars.
For 2006, the event was expanded by the organizers to include on the Thursday, a veteran car auction at Bonhams in Bond Street. This was followed on the Saturday by a Concours d’Elegance held in the center of London in Regents Street. Over 130 veterans were lined up and the overall winner was Philip Oldman with his 1900 MMC Tonneau.
On the Sunday, unseasonably beautiful weather greeted the veterans before dawn in Hyde Park. The minute it was light, at 07.07 hours, the first and oldest cars were flagged away on their 60-mile marathon to the seafront Madiera Drive at Brighton. By 08.30 the last was away and huge crowds watched along the route as the prehistoric machines huffed and, in some cases, literally puffed their way to the coast.
There is a maximum speed limit of an average of 20 mph and the first car to arrive, after taking 3 hours and 40 minutes, was the 1903 Berliet, Closed, swing-seat Tonneau of John Bentley from Mexico City.
By Peter Collins
