10-12-2023, 10:27 AM
Thanks to Chris Garner for comments, Chris has added to captions in the Austin Harris/LAT archive. I don’t know where Cowbourne found his history of the event. There is agreement that Gunnar Poppe had problems climbing Bwlch y Groes earlier in the trial, but so did numbers of entrants. For those of you yet to climb it, it is not the highest in Wales, rather less so than Gospel Pass, and does not have the steepest parts, with no double chevron, but if climbing in an easterly direction it is a long and relentless climb. From about 160m at the bridge at Pont Pennant to spot height of 545m at the summit. The savage hairpin marked Blaen Pennant wholly defeats any attempts to gather and maintain momentum.
The Autocar report says of Poppe’s final failure, “Fate unkindly disposed of poor Poppe at the last moment, the Austin failing on the 1 in 5 portion on its run up. There followed an epic struggle, during which a heroic observer made frantic attempts to push the car or turn the rear wheels by the spokes. Thirteen times the little car was persuaded to move a yard or so, then volumes of smoke filled the driving compartment, and the much ill-used clutch gave up its job completely. Thereafter the little Austin disappeared, pushed up by spectators and officials, and was withdrawn after a gallant fight.”
History does not record whether the car free wheeled all the way down the other side to Llanuwchllyn station, there to be loaded up to be retuned to Llandod or straight back to Longbridge.
This climb on that day had the benefit of a Westerly wind giving a helpful push, but adding the handicap of seriously reducing intake of cooling air as cars made a very slow pace up the hill. Numbers of cars were seen having “water flowing from their vent pipes.” The Trojans emitted steam at one end and smoke from the other.
The archive has numbers of images of Poppe in the Seven, some of which have been discussed here on the forum. What I add above is to confirm Editor Howard’s comments about Tom Norton hosting the event. Ah yes, what an irreplaceably good range of pictures that Austin Harris/LAT collection contains. I wonder if it is ever updated. To add coloured images of a certain stalwart driver heroically managing a class win in a trial in 2023 for example, or is that the wrong century?