MEMBERS’ MATTERS T
he Brooklands Trust Members’ Classic Car Show and Jumble was a great success,
the best so far. Our aim was to increase this to a 3,000-person event and we exceeded this number by nearly 400, which was brilliant. The only problem is that we now need to better that in 2018! This is a members-organised event and I would like to thank those who volunteered for marshalling duties. This year was a first step towards a bigger event, with the trade village separated from the cars and bikes, radio controlled cars and a showcase interview arena added, but we’ll be looking for some more ideas to expand the show even further next year. It was a pleasure to see so many of our members at the event and many brought their own classics along to display. It is always good to see the wide range of interests that the membership has – now if only we could have an aircraft fly-in as well! I enjoyed handing out the trophies in the Paddock and was pleased to see that most of the winners were members. This year the ‘Best Club’ award went to... my own MGF club... it wasn’t a fix, honestly and, even though there were seven this year, we hope to see more clubs enter next year to provide some more competition! The membership has breached the 6,000 mark! Membership, particularly at this time of year, is very fluid and is never quite the same from one day to the next as new members join and drop out on a daily basis. The snapshot we took in July showed 6,080 current memberships, so we are crossing our fingers that the figure will hold up into the autumn. The end of August has a traditionally high attrition rate as families drop out after a year or two with us, having joined during the summer holidays. All the feedback we get is that they had a great time, but it’s time to move on to another attraction or to take a year or two off from Brooklands.
The talks I give to outside groups
are always interesting for me but my talk to the National Trust group at Bourne Hall in July proved more so. In my talk ‘Fast Women, Fast Track’ there is a section on the Ladies Society Race of 1931, which I wrote about in a previous Bulletin. There is quite a well-known photo which was published in newspapers of the day
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News
Tim Morris (right) presenting the Best Club award to Paul Bridgman and David Koskela from the MGF Register at the Brooklands Classic Car Show.
featuring Barbara Cartland and a group of her so- ciety ‘friends’. I managed to track down details on most of them but a couple remained resolutely anonymous – until this talk. As I came to that pic- ture on screen a gentleman in the audience put his hand up and said, “That’s my mum!” His mother was to the far left of the photo and I found out that she was called Hilda Banks. She was one of those anonymous ladies I could find nothing about but thankfully her son filled in the gaps. It turns out that his mother was a very good bridge player and he believes she played in the bridge clubs in London where she was acquainted with Barbara Cartland. She was also a keen motorist
Epsom National Trust group at Bourne Hall waiting for the ‘Fast Women’, unfortunately they just got Tim..
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