Happy Christmas!

Firstly a happy Christmas and a great New Year to you all,I hope Santa brings you what you wished for!

My Christmas present came early this year in the shape of another Spitfire! You may remember a Blog or two ago me mentioning the possibility of an 'interesting' Spitfire coming to light locally after many years in hiding. Well a week or two ago it arrived on a trailer and is now ensconced in the museum. It's none other than 'the' Richard Lloyd (team Gold Seal Racing) plastic Spitfire! Richard brought his car along personally aided by former 'works', and Gold Seal, and latterly 412 VC's mechanic Peter Clarke. What a fantastic surprise. The car itself is in need of much restoration, but with the history inbedded in this car it wil be worth the effort. For those of you who don't know Gold Seal Racing consisted of three Spitfires and drivers, Richard Lloyd, Chris Marshal, and Pete Cox. The car's were extreemly modified decendants of 412 VC (prototype Spitfire), ADU 467B (works rally car), and another. Richard still campaigns a restored 412 VC at Goodwood and other such events. The car we have aquired is pictured on the front cover of the 1970's book 'Tuning Standard Triumph's up to 1300cc' written by Richard Hudson-Evans, I got Richard (Lloyd) to autograph the front cover of my copy!

Interesting afternoon!

I spent yesterday afternoon in the company of Peter Clarke, he needs no introduction if you know anything at all about the Le Mans/Rally Spitfires and their subsequent history. If you don't then here's a very brief summary. Peter was a very active member of the experimental/racing department at Triumph throughout the Spitfire period. He helped build and maintain all of the 'works' cars but in particular his involvement was with the circuit cars. Peter went to both the '64 and '65 Le Mans, and Sebring, in fact he was working in the paddock virtually every time the circuit cars appeared, he is pictured more times in the many books on the subject than any of the drivers! After the works effort closed Peter went on to build and maintain Spitfires with firstly his old Triumph team mate Peter Cox, and then for the Richard Lloyd Gold Seal Racing effort. It didn't stop there as Peter has continued to work on Spitfires right up to the present day. This is the reason for this short piece from me, because yesterday I was helping Peter empty his lock-up of the years of racing Spitfire parts and memorabilia, as he has finally hung up his spanners and retired. Some real jems were unearthed, including the remnants of a 70X engine, a strut type rear suspension Spit chassis (as in the 1966 ADU 1B/ERW 412C Bradley racer), this was rescued by Karl who came along with me to help, and will probably end up under his race car. Another mystery was solved for me with the strange PI inlet manifold I found (pictured below). I have most of a 4 cyl PI set from the Spitfire racing days, but not the inlet manifolds, well I do now! We filled Peter's van to the roof, one of the last things to go in was a 70X tubular exhaust manufacturing jig, and we then baide our fairwell's and headed back to Canleys in Karl's Volvo and trailor combination loaded with our bit of treasure! Good luck in your retirement Pete, I'm sure the people of Wales may still hear the occasional clatter of forged pistons in a 70X on full chat yet!

Dream ticket!

As someone who has nurtured a lifelong passion for all things Triumph and more than a passing interest in Triumph's Le Mans and rallying Spitfire history I find myself more than ideally placed to talk to those that were there when it happened on a regular basis. Coventry might not be the most attractive of Cities but it's where our cars were built and developed, and still home to many of the guys who worked there. You can't pull into a petrol station in Cov without some old guy running over and wanting to share his story of working at the Standard. My wife drives a 2500 on a daily basis, this makes her a target for the stories too, I've lost count of the number of times she's used it as an excuse for being late into work!

I make no apologies for name dropping, but in the past couple of weeks we have had visits or I have spoken to Fred Nicklin (Triumph test driver, did most of the development driving on works Spitfires), Pete Clarke (put them together, and fixed them when they got broke), David Lloyd (experimental design and building), Bill Bradley (works driver, Le Mans and rally). Over the past couple of years I have been fortunate to make the aquaitance of Ray Henderson before his untimely death, he both visited us and I used to bother him on a regular basis about his recollections of things Triumph. Once the word got out locally that we had a Museum dedicated to Triumph, a steady stream of ex Triumph guys visit us and share their memories, fantastic! It's time to preserve this for the future before people forget, or worse history is re-written by those with a self interest.