Clash of the Titans by Colin Shaw
Richard Nash on the hill at Goodwood in VCIII.
late entry to the 2016 Goodwood Festival of Speed was the Lorraine-Dietrich, ‘Vieux Charles III’ (VCIII), owned by the Nash family. The car is on permanent display at Brooklands and has only been ready for action again this year after big-end trouble.
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This was Richard Nash’s first invitation to the Festival of Speed so on the Moving Motor Show day we were at Goodwood preparing for the long weekend. First was signing-on for the drivers, then checking over VCIII so that he would be ready for the first batch up the hill at 8.30am on Friday.
VCIII was one of four Lorraine Dietrich team cars entered for the 1912 Dieppe Grand Prix and although 104 years old, was not the oldest Grand Prix car at Goodwood. This honour fell to a Renault Type AK, winner of the first Grand Prix,
Colin Shaw tackles the hill.
in 1906, that was fought over two days! Other cars in the group, ‘01 Clash of the Titans’, included the Sunbeam 350hp (18.3 litres), Benz 200hp ‘Blitzen Benz’ (21.5 litres), Fiat S76 (28.3 litres), Mercedes GP (11.1 litres) and the youngest car, the Napier-Railton Special (23.9 litres), to name just a few of the large-engine-capacity ‘Titans’. VCIII has 15.1 litres.
We were up early on Friday to drive to Goodwood in time to assemble with the first batch at 8.00am. Oil and water checks done, we then waited for the marshals’ call for the cars to assemble, ready to motor from the paddock to the start. VCIII has to be pushed or tow-started as the 15 litre engine is somewhat difficult to turn over with the handle even in its ‘decompression’ camshaft setting. A self-start arrangement is yet to be tried for the magneto ignition engine. The sump oil level is very critical. Too high and oil passes the pistons and oils the plugs and issues from the exhaust ports. Too low and the connecting rod dippers would not pick up enough oil to splash feed the big-ends. Filling to a ‘tell-tale’ plug on the crank case was found to be the high level. One of the idiosyncrasies of the fuel system is that after standing for a week or two, the float needle binds open and needs some engine vibration to free itself. Fortunately the fuel valve is easily reached from sitting inside the car and can be operated whenever required to stop the little fountain of fuel issuing from the vent on the float chamber.
The Brooklands team attempted a push-start, aided by marshals. Nearly, but not quite enough down slope to push-start this time. After a tow-start Richard Nash drove to the start. We had to park at the side of the track near the start due to a bit of oil incontinence. Cylinder one and two were the worst and oil had migrated past the
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