In the towns and villages the cars clattered through, the streets were lined with spectators, and local police often held back the crowds because people were totally unaccustomed to cars and judging their closing speeds.
Finally, on the last day of press-on motoring, the cars slogged on down to London, threading their way through Northampton, Newport Pagnell and St Albans. The finishing post was at Marble Arch and on 13 May a mere 35 drivers variously roared or limped home.
Among those cars with enough stamina, or adequate en-route rebuilding, to complete the 1,000 Mile Trial were 13 Daimlers – giving this marque,
Breakfast at Calcot Park, home of Harmsworth, on 23 April 1900.
Austin in his 1899 Wolseley 3.5hp Voiturette. soon to be a favourite with the Royal Family, a real shot in the arm with a slew of prizes and cups. One of them was Montagu’ s and another belonged to JD Siddeley who would later found carmaker Armstrong Siddeley, and had survived a collision with a horse.
Other notable finishers were Edward Iliffe, publisher of The Autocar magazine, Lord Herbert Austin in the first four-wheeled Wolseley that he designed and built( see page 32), and a Mrs Bazalgette, who drove the entire event in her Benz. Plus, blessedly, the Club’ s Claude Johnson.
Gold medal for the‘ most meritorious vehicle to be accompanied throughout by its owner, and driven by him or her for at least half the distance of the Trial’ was scooped by Charles Rolls and his ever-eager Panhard 12hp. It was, for the time, a true supercar with Rolls at the helm; at the Welbeck Park speed tests the car managed almost 38mph over a two-mile course, easily beating the next fastest, Mr Kennard’ s Napier 8hp, at 29mph.
This was the very first production Napier, driven by SF Edge and attended to mechanically by St John Nixon, who later recounted:‘ It gave no trouble from start to finish except for a broken governor hammer.’
The Trial was an adventure for its entrants, but importantly it proved British-built cars were as capable as their much more commonplace European equivalents. Technical aspects that proved troublesome on the event, such as solid tyres, tube ignition and tiller steering, were soon discarded by the industry.‘ Not a toy, dangerous and troublesome to the public and the owner,’ declared The Times afterwards of the machine that had been introduced to hundreds of thousands of people by the Trial,‘ but a vehicle under as perfect control as a bath chair’. The British car industry, suddenly, was on its way.-
Exhibition of cars at Drill Hall in Bristol on 24 April 1900.
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