V.S.C.C. affairs

Sir,

For some reason one or two people seem to have misconstrued your footnote last month regarding the possibility of the V.S.C.C. introducing a long-distance scratch race for sports/racing as distinct from historic pure-racing cars. If it should come off such a race would not be for post-war sports/racing cars as has erroneously been suggested, but would be for vintage and pre-war sports cars only. As our events for vintage and pre-war sports cars are always over-subscribed it is not possible to accept postwar sports or sports/racing cars in the V.S.C.C. [Good!—ED.]

Your notes on the Fiat 500D achieving 124.32 m.p.g. on Silverstone and 96.59 m.p.g. on the road make an interesting contrast with the achievements of a vintage 1 1/2 litre 4-cylinder A.C. which, on July 29th, 1925, achieved 116.88 miles on exactly one gallon of fuel on the London-Coventry road between Barnet and a point three miles beyond Towcester and back. This was achieved by accelerating to 25 m.p.h., de-clutching and letting the engine stop, and then letting in the clutch and restarting when the speed had dropped to about 55 m.p.h. This was repeated throughout the whole trial, and at the turning points the car was reversed by hand. The running time average speed was 20 m.p.h. The car was a special racing chassis with two bucket seats and without mudguards, windscreen or differential gear. Although the engine had four valves per cylinder only one inlet valve in each cylinder was in operation, the rocker arms of the others having been removed. There were two plugs per cylinder, a single Stromberg carburetter, the gear ratios were: top, 2.47; 3rd, 3.2; 2nd, 4.2; and bottom. 6.57 to 1, and the unladen weight was 1,024 lb. The driver could control a radiator blind and extra air to the carburetter.

S. F. Edge, as might be expected, was behind the project for which R.A.C. certificate No. 629 was issued.

Peter Hutt, Kingsclere.
Assistant Secretary, V.S.C.C.

[I regret any confusion—but surely the V.S.C.C. rules relating to classification of the cars it fosters make it clear that only racing cars made after the war are eligible?—ED.]