STILL FLYING 125 YEARS ON
A rare survivor of the original 1,000 Mile Trial,“ OWL” will join this year’ s Run marking 125 years since Britain’ s earliest motoring epic. Simon Hucknall explains
It hardly seems possible that, in the century before last, a company originally founded to manufacture sheep-shearing equipment produced a motor car capable of travelling nearly 1,000 miles around the British mainland. But that is precisely what the Wolseley Sheep Shearing Machine Co. Ltd achieved with its prototype 3.5hp Voiturette – now better known as“ OWL”— in 1899, before entering it in the following year’ s landmark 1,000 Mile Trial.
Organised by the Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland( renamed the Royal Automobile Club in 1907), the 1900 Trial was conceived to garner wider awareness of the motor car throughout Britain.
Just five years before, in 1895, only 30“ horseless carriages” were known to exist in this country, and while that figure had grown to nearer 700-800 by the time of the Trial, there were still huge swathes of the population that had never seen a motorised vehicle. That was all set to change, with the Trial bringing together around 10 % of Britain’ s motor cars and allowing them to compete across a timed tour of the nation, starting in London, and taking in Bath, Bristol, Birmingham, Derby, Manchester, Kendal, Carlisle and Edinburgh, before returning to the capital via Newcastle-upon-Tyne, York, Leeds, Sheffield, Lincoln, Nottingham, Leicester and Northampton.
32 The London to Brighton Veteran Car Run