What have you done today with your Austin Seven

[Steve kay]

Any anorak will be unable to resist accompanying post breakfast coffee with WB’s book on Montlhery. Boddy  reports that in October “The 500cc category was exciting because Dore and Stanton contrived to dead heat, each driving a Sima-Violet, their mechanics holding hands as they crossed the line.” The subsequent note that Hall’s Seven had to run without a water pump sent me from the breakfast table to the library in search of further info. Canning Brown tells us that REO Hall was driving Gordon England’s  second streamlined car, the water pump of which failed before the start. Lacking a spare, the car depended on thermo syphoning, requiring a number of pit stops for water. Second place sounds even braver! Now down to the workshop to continue with a Seven, some, but certainly not all of which was already a year old in 1925.