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Interviews and Members' Cars

An interview with Graham Currie

An interview with Robin Deacon

The Coulters

The Weeks

The Normans

An interview with Graham Currie

Ex-Austin Seven 750 Formula racer Graham Currie talks about

50 years of varied sporting life

Graham Currie has gone full circle. After racing bicycles in the early fifties, he is back on his pushbike 50 years later, after enjoying 30 years of racing karts, sail boats and Austin Sevens. Graham thought he had given up cycle racing when he joined the army at 18 years old to do national service in REME as a vehicle mechanic, but he was soon back on the bike to avoid the army’s obsession with football. A posting to Egypt led to mechanicing on tanks and riding in amateur motor cycle trials. When he finished in 1953, he returned to Cheshire where he met his future wife Betty, and bought his first car, a 1934 Austin 7 Opal 2 Seater for £70. It was the only car he could afford then, as he was only earning £8 a week as a salesman, but this car led him to the North West Centre of the 750 Club. Shortly after, he swapped the Opal for a fast but brakeless Ford 10 engined Special, swiftly followed by a Buckler (an early kit car) in which he took part in his first race at Oulton Park. Hooked, he decided to try 750 formula racing. In 1956 he sold the Buckler and built an Austin special from a heap of bits bought from a Club member and about three Austin 7 saloons, bought for 50 bob (£2.50) each. Graham then spent many winter months in the garage building the Special while Betty sat on an oil drum polishing heads, manifolds and even the carburetor butterflies (so the car would go faster!). Once the Special was roadworthy, it only cost £1/2/11d to tax every quarter. (Graham still has the original logbook!) An RAC Racing Licence cost 7/6, the same as a dog licence, and you didn’t need a medical certificate in those days, you just had to be able to breath.

The Special boasts twin SU carburetors with an alloy head and Bowden independent front suspension. The body is made of aluminum and the rear is, believe it or not, a nosecone from a De Haviland Venom jet fighter plane! Graham and a friend Guy Martin bought three 9 ft long nosecones for 7/6d each from a sale at an RAF maintenance unit in Cheshire. The rear of a Special is the most difficult part to make as a good panel beater is required, but Graham thought the jet nosecone, when cut down, was ideal. In 1957 Graham raced a whole season with no wins, but it was a good learning curve for him. After spending the winter modifying the car, he finished one Friday evening at 6pm. The following day was to be the first race of the season at Silverstone (180 miles away). But the car, with new pistons and bearings, had to be run in before racing, so a group of friends rallied round and took turns in driving the car round all night – waking each other up when it was their turn. The next morning Graham and Betty drove to Silverstone, a four hour journey on hardboard seats, to complete the running in process. All was worthwhile in the end as he took his first race win and still has the article from the May 15th 1958 edition of the County Express to prove it! Uncannily, the article next to it is about the closing-down of the RAF maintenance unit in Cheshire… where Graham bought the nosecone!

Graham went on to win other races at Silverstone and Brands Hatch, and with other placings and several “blow Ups” came second in the Goodacre Trophy national 750 Championship. Also that year, he took part in the 750 Motor Club 6 Hour relay race at Silverstone, as a member of the NW Centre team with Dave Rees, Lionel Hockney and Guy Martin. In the event three of the cars couldn’t stay the course, and the race was completed with all four drivers sharing the ultra reliable Rees Special. It’s still fast and reliable to this day! The programme shows that other teams that day featured a Mr.Jim Clark and a Mr.Graham Hill in their lineup. Does such talent lurk among today’s 750 Club entries?

Due to the club’s practice of arranging racing for the impecunious enthusiast, a policy that continues today, these events attracted people with the talent to design and build their own cars, often on a shoestring. Many of these personalities went on to form the mainstay of Formula One and other top classes of racing of later years. Colin Chapman of Lotus, Eric Broadley of Lola, Mike Costin and Kieth Duckworth who became Cosworth, Derrick Bennett of Chevron, and Len Terry, one of the most successful designers of all, were to be found in the paddock at 750 Motor Club Meetings in the ‘50s. Graham and Betty made great friends over the racing years, and Betty, when not timekeeping, was often seen happily cooking for the racers and helpers over a small gas ring in the paddock. Some are still friends today so the food must have been OK. Graham finished racing his Special in 1958, and sold the car for £200 to finance his and Betty’s marriage. In 1995 (thirty-seven years later), Graham happened to be perusing a bookshop in Brands Hatch and found a copy of the November 1958 edition of Autosport where he had advertised his Special. It was advertised and sold for £200. For twice that, in the same edition, you could have had a Grand Prix Bugatti!

Still bitten by the racing bug, but with no money to take part, luck came Graham’s way when two ex-racing friends started a business manufacturing Go-Karts when Karting first arrived in this country from the States. They offered him a free Kart to drive in exchange for him tuning and maintaining the three works machines. These Maykarts quickly became front runners and the team enjoyed many successes during the next three or four years. The best part was that in the first year of British Karting, prize money was allowed and he found it was not unusual to be able to win more money racing on Saturday than a week’s wages at the day job. Being paid to enjoy yourself is surely everyone’s dream. Graham then, in the early sixties, went on to sail and race all kinds of boats, from his own dinghies to other peoples yachts and he continued this passion on and off for 20 years, with the singular distinction of never winning a race! He has also enjoyed, if that’s the word, a couple of trips crewing in tall ships. Then in 1982 he discovered a passion for skiing, and he and Betty have been enjoying this sport ever since!

Other forms of motoring fun have included navigating in night rallies in open cars in North Wales, made no easier by the fact that most of the signs start Llan…. , and bouncing up long muddy rocky hills in a friends Dellow in M.C.C. classic trials like the Edinburgh and the Exeter.

In 1984, out of the blue, he had a phonecall from Dave Rees, veteran Cheshire racer from 25 years back, who had been scouring ball-bearing companies in the Yellow Pages in the hope of finding him. (Graham was in the bearing business for over 30 years) Dave had found Graham’s old Special in a barn in Bolton, Lancashire! Graham went to visit the car and his children, who had never seen it, persuaded him to buy it back. He bought the car, in a semi-derelict state for £400 and re-joined the club. Since then, Graham and Betty have been enjoying trialling in the Special and going on rallies and local club events. Every year they host the much-loved Buttercup Bounce in their garden, where Brooklands members barbecue lunch, drink wine, then spend the afternoon racing around the buttercups with buckets on their heads! Graham’s grandchildren can be heard yelping with delight as their Grandad whizzes them round the field in the Special.

Graham has been a member of Brooklands Centre for 20 years. His first club-night meeting and first outing in the rebuilt Special was at the Hand and Spear Pub near Weybridge, and it turned out to be a rather memorable event. While he was chatting with fellow members over a beer, his Austin was seen to be ablaze in the car park. The electric fuel pump had caught fire, but in line with the generosity to be found in this Club one of the members sacrificed his pint of bitter to quench the fire, another produced a spare piece of petrol pipe and some wire and the car was road worthy again in no time.

Graham had an unfortunate brush with prostrate cancer recently but fought back, and went on to cycle 500 miles through France from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean for charity. He raised an incredible £14,000, all from personal donations from friends and relatives, including many 750 Club members. The money was used by Blazer, the prostate cancer charity, to purchase a centrifuge for use in cancer research at Guildford Cancer Centre.

Graham says he’s been a member of the 750 Club for both ends of the last fifty years, starting in the North West Centre and finishing (but not yet!) in the Brooklands Centre. Nothing has changed. You meet, and always did meet, good, practical, down to earth, genuine friends, who will lend you a hand, lend you a spanner or even lend you their prized car.

The next event to savour will be the “Robin’s holiday” a tour through the Pico’s de Europa, this time in Graham and Betty’s “other car” a Marlin Roadster.

Graham’s motto; - The one who dies with the most toys, wins!

Claire Norman - Brooklands Centre
January 2005
Copyright

An interview with Robin Deacon

New member Robin Deacon talks about filming for Top Gear

and his grandfather Freddie Henry

(former president and chairman of the 750 motor club)

Robin Deacon’s grandfather Freddie Henry was former president and chairman of the 750 Motor Club and used to judge all the entries at Beaulieu every year. After Freddie passed away, Beaulieu named one of the trophies after him and every year Robin’s mother is invited to present the trophy to the winner of the class, and the family make it a day out. Ever since, the family, especially Robin and his sister, have had a keen interest in Austins and Robin decided to continue the tradition of Austin ownership in the family and bought a replica Red Austin Ulster 1932 (chassis with a new aluminium body) in July 2003. He took the car to Beaulieu for the first time in 2004.

Freddie Henry was interested in cars from an early age and was driving from the age of seven! When he was 8 years old, he was out driving his parents one day but they were suddenly pulled over by the police, who asked them to give a drunk man in a pub a lift home! Robin’s granddad’s interest in Austins started when he was walking past a pub in Hammersmith one day and saw a couple of chummies outside. He went inside the pub and started chatting to some members who were holding a club meeting. Freddie then applied to be an Austin apprentice at Longbridge, and later became president and chairman of the 750 Motor Club.

As for Freddie's grandson, Robin is a cameraman and works with a specialist camera company who mount cameras on go kart drivers, cars and aeroplanes etc! Robin took part in filming two Top Gear programmes. Last summer the producers of Top Gear performed a stunt by getting a parachutist to jump out of an aeroplane and land in an open-top Mercedes which was driving at 40mph along the runway under the plane! A camera was mounted on the parachutist’s head and other cameras were mounted on various parts on the exterior of the car. A camera was even mounted on the bonnet of the car which looked back so you could see him dropping into the car as he landed! During another Top Gear programme, a jumbo jet was parked on the runway at Prestwick (in Scotland). The brakes were applied and the engine turned on at full blast, and catapulted (by a hydraulic ram) cars across the runway behind the engines as Top Gear fancied seeing how a Mondeo and a 2 CV compared, which one would be trashed the most (going into the slipstream and getting blown down the runway! Cameras were mounted in the cars, and on various parts of the aeroplane looking back. (Large industrial suckers that are lever-operated attach the cameras onto cars.)

Last year, Richard Branson attempted to break the world record (by time) by crossing the channel in an amphibious car. He drove dover to Calais in 1 hr 40 mins (previous record 6 hours) in a Gibs Acuardo, a purpose-built sports car/boat. Robin attached cameras to the car, and Robin was supposed to go in a Press Boat to see all the action, but missed this boat, so ended up in the RIB boat (big orange lifeboat) instead going alongside Branson! On arrival at the beach, Robin got a slap-up meal paid by Virgin, and then was bundled on a ferry back to Dover!

Robin has also worked with cameras on a children’s Saturday morning TV show, and mounted cameras on go-karts and radio-controlled helicopters etc. Robin has also worked for programmes 'Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway' and ‘You’ve Been Framed’ by fitting hidden cameras in various places. And he once had to fit five cameras to Gerry Halliwell's (Spice Girls) Mercedes and but this was such a fiddly job (installing fake speakers with cameras mounted inside), it took him and his colleague 14 hours to finish the job!

Robin has been a member of the 750 Motor Club for 2 years, and joined Brooklands 750 Motor Club at the beginning of last year.

Claire Norman - Brooklands Centre
February 2005
Copyright

Click here to see tribute to Freddie Henry.

The Coulters

Val Biro is the author of the famous “Gumdrop” stories. Gumdrop is a 1927 Austin Heavy 12 tourer and in some of the stories adopts magical powers.

We bought our A7 Box in 1982 when daughter Wendy was 3 ½.

Familiar with the Gumdrop stories she christened our A7 Box “Gumdrop” because of the colour. When she was at primary school in Clandon, Val Biro paid one of his visits to the school in the real life Gumdrop and told the children stories. I was fortunate to be asked to entertain Val over lunch and took the opportunity to take a photo of the real Gumdrop and our “Gumdrop”. Val autographed one of Wendy’s Gumdrop books “to the little Gumdrop”.

20 years later Val took part in the “Ups and Downs” rally and outside the Devil’s Punchbowl café he kindly allowed me to take a photo with both “Gumdrops”. As he said the real Gumdrop’s hood has faded over the years along with his own hair.

On 25th November Nigel and Wendy entered the VSCC Cotswold trial, run for the first time since 1938. This was their first VSCC trial and so we were in the Newcomers class. They borrowed Peter Flood's Ulster (which Nigel had modified for trials for him) which performed absolutely fabulously and as a result Nigel and Wendy won the Cotswold Cup for best Newcomer performance with a score that would have given them at least a 3rd class award had they been in the "big boys" class. Well done Nigel and Wendy!