Celebrating a Gordon Bennett – Part 3

You sit looking down at the wide and shapely radiator and bonnet. At knee-level are the eleven drip-feeds, a glass-reservoir hand oil-pump for starting up these lubricators until the engine takes over, a brass-cased 8-day Smith’s clock and, on the floorboard, four pedals, the small l.h. one for the clutch and the foot accelerator, to which the car has been converted, between the bigger pedals which put on the transmission brakes and throw out the clutch. Of this Mercedes scroll clutch, Lt.-Col. Clive Gallop once told me that Zborowski, Jun. retained it for his Chitty-Bang-Bangs because it never slipped unless a bump caused the chassis frame to distort, and although if misused it could stress transmission and tyres, it was acceptable on low-speed engines which would allow it to engage without stalling before opening-up.

I found it easy to use and when I came to change down with the enormous outside gear lever, which sits inboard of the equally-long brake lever, this, too, was unexpectedly simple, even getting from third to second “round the corner” of the gate, the positions being 1-2 and 3-4. As I drove along M4 after a splendid run on deserted roads in the evening sunshine from Chippenham, Collings borrowed my Breitling wrist stop watch to time our effortless, slightly wallowing, progress, which was, shall we say, at a good 70 m.p.h.? The steering, with the small 4-spoke wheel, is direct and, unless oiled, inclined to be heavy; significantly, the Harmsworth car has one of its oilers directed to the column.

All too soon this unique experience was over. In the chill of the evening, so that I was glad of my (now oil-spattered) Functional coat (and flying-hat!), some 12-1/2 hours after setting out, for there had been a number of refreshment stops, we were back. As E.K.H.K. wrote in Motor Sport in 1930, after he had been out in a 60, “. . . for a moment the (garage) walls echoed the thunder of the exhaust, then the motor gave a few dying gargles, and all was quiet. We descended, feeling that perhaps we had not after all been born a generation too late, as we had been privileged to travel in that veteran monster …”. Later Karslake said of another 60: “. . . when the throttle is opening, a series of giant impulses, smoothly delivered but each individually appreciable, give an impression of irresistible power and communicate an intoxicating sense of omnipotence to the driver. Now one can understand why the Sixty, although good drivers declared it to be the safest car that at that date had been built, was the death of so many less experienced owners. It is not good for the uninitiated to receive the impression that they walk—or motor —with the Gods”. Fortunately, Collings drives his 60 with verve and skill tempered with a sensible restraint . . . . The only remaining examples of this outstanding Mercedes of the veteran period seem to be in England—those of Harmsworth, Hampton and Collings. It is astonishing that the Daimler-Benz Museum in Stuttgart is without such a prize.

The Harmsworth car differs in small items from Collings. It has eight drip-feed oilers, Dunhill detachable wheel-rims, two hand pressure-pumps, smaller driving sprockets, a hand-throttle (although a foot accelerator is disconnected), and it sports a tall windscreen. Its equipment embraces an Oldfield Dependance oil rear lamp, Dunhill Duplex-Lens headlamps, Camelinat sidelamps, the bulb-horn is by Piel of New York—The “Long” Horn—it has a Daimler pressure gauge on the dash, and is on 920 x 120 Dunlops all round. Both cars have a vintage-type updraught Zenith carburetter more suited to modern traffic conditions than the original.

*************************************

As I drove home in the BMW 520i that evening my thoughts were very naturally with Jenatzy and Mercedes. Not many owners of a veteran, especially one on its original l.t. ignition and exhaust pressurising, would have so cheerfully entered into my suggestion of driving nearly 300 miles in a day, as Collings had. On the 1903 Mercedes this proved, however, a very pleasant, instead of a painful, experience.—W.B.