Who organized old Cars Competition?
First VETERAN MOTORING
The first VETERAN MOTORING as an organized activity stemmed from a letter written by H.E. Rendall to an English motor cycling magazine in 1910. He suggested that motor cycles built c. 1900, which were then being sold off for £ 1 or £ 2, should be preserved for posterity. The following year some members of the North West London Motor Cycling Club took up the idea by founding an Old Tanks Club, limiting themselves to a capital outlay of £ 7 for the purchase of suitably antique machines. A number of light-hearted racing events were held in the atmosphere of levity that characterized the early veteran motoring movement. The ‘Old Tanks’ did not remain alone in the field for long, the Streatham Motor Cycling Club organized a veteran run to Brighton in 1914, for motor cycles over 10 years old.
The first Veteran car rally was held at Munich on 12 July 1925, in celebration of the 25th Anniversary of the Allgemeine Schnauferlklub. The historical Automobil-Korso included the oldest petrol-driven car in the world, a three-wheeled Benz of 1886, driven by the 81-year-old Karl Benz himself Also in attendance, driving or riding in vehicles a little more juvenile, were Karl Opel, Emil Stoewer, Auguste Horch, Heinrich Kleyer and other pioneers of the German motor industry.
In Britain in a quite different spirit—the reverence was totally lacking•the Daily Sketch organized an Old Cars Competition on 13 October 1927, from the paper’s offices in Gray’s Inn Road to Olympia. There were 43 starters, and the first prize of £ 100 went to John Bryce, driver of a Panhard claimed to date form 1893. ‘As each old vehicle made its appearance it was a signal for cheers and roars of laughter’, the Daily Sketch reported the following day. `Sairey Gamp umbrellas and Victorian fashions were paraded in several of the cars’. It was on this occasion that the Daily Sketch adopted the unfortunate sobriquet `old crocks’, which veteran motorists have been attempting to exorcize even since. The Olympia rally was followed by the first of the annual Brighton Runs, also sponsored by the Daily Sketch, which was held on 12 November 1927. Out of 51 cars, only 10 failed to reach Brighton.
