Doug Nye: The real first Goodwood Revival was in 1954!

“This was the final of the Anglo-American Vintage Car Rally, organised by the British Holiday and Travel Association and the Vintage Sports Car Club…”

He went on to explain how two teams of ten cars each, entered by the VSCC and the Veteran Motor Club of America, had started out from Edinburgh on the previous Saturday, and during that week had covered a 748-mile route through some of Britain’s favourite tourist centres, before ending up at Goodwood here in West Sussex.

Special tests along the way had included easy starting, a ‘slow-fast’ test, a stop and restart on a one-in-seven hill, and hill-climbing at Prescott.  All this culminated at Goodwood with the contemporarily familiar rally tests of ‘garaging’, a wiggle-woggle around pylons which the organisers named a ‘bending race’, followed by what was in effect a flat-out 40-minute tyre-squealing dice around the entire Goodwood circuit…

Marks in a final concours d’elegance were then taken into account in a complex scoring system which saw the British team win with 8,376 points in contrast to the American team’s 7,001.

The entry included some fabulous beasts.  Both a 1913 American Lozier and a 1914 Simplex had engines of over 9 litres capacity while American team captain Henry Austin Clark Jr’s 1916 Pierce-Arrow was propelled by six enormous cylinders totalling 12,885cc. Amongst the myriad American marques represented, only the 1906 Ford Six-Forty Speedster was from a company still manufacturing, but it had fallen victim – yes, even back then in 1954 – to “a modern” overtaking it, pulling back in front and then braking sharply – so the near-brakeless Edwardian slammed straight into the back of it. 

While the American team had only one chain-driven car, the 1914 Simplex, the Brits deployed a 1928 ‘chain-gang’ Frazer Nash which proved unbeatable in the nimble tests around the pylons. In contrast Francis Hutton-Stott’s enthusiastically-driven British 1913 Lanchester with very soft cantilever springing nearly overturned as it rolled wildly from lock to lock like a yacht in the Fastnet race. 

Fastest time of the day at Prescott hill-climb had been set by Ronnie Barker in Anthony Brooke’s 1914 Prince Henry Vauxhall – climbing in 61.56 seconds, followed by A.T. Pugh’s Nash, Anthony Heal’s 1926 3-litre Sunbeam, Tim Carson’s 1920 Vauxhall 30/98 and T.P. Breen’s 4.5-litre Bentley. Of course, Prescott was virtually a second home these VSCC glitterati, but the first American was Henry Austin Clark’s Pierce-Arrow, which must have made a brave sight storming the hill in 67.54 seconds.

The closing day’s Goodwood programme saw the tests conducted around the site while parades and demonstrations continued virtually all day by veteran and Vintage cars and similarly evocative motor-cycles. This all culminated in a grand procession of all 254 entrants in the general concours d’elegance. 

As the Autosport reporter wrote: “What a sight! It was a film director’s dream of the Brighton Road on August Bank Holiday 1920 (or thereabouts). There were Rolls-Royces, silent as ever, but looking like perambulating Victorian drawing rooms, single-cylinder Humbers, palpitating from end to end, wings a-flutter; there were the Bentleys and 30/98 Vauxhalls, fighting it out as usual, and the original ‘Genevieve’ (N.V. Reeves’s 1904 Darracq); all fully crewed with as many friends and relations as could thumb a lift for three glorious laps of the circuit…”

And a special cheer went up that afternoon as the Stanley Steamer made a lap of honour after an all-night and most-of-the-day effort to get her going again – after bursting a cylinder head joint just 14 miles from the finish.

The final 40-minute ‘stamina test’ had not really been intended as a race (no, not much) but “the temptation was too great for the drivers of the sportier old-timers and by the end of the first lap a lively battle was in progress.

“Meanwhile the rally competitors had time for a thorough spit-and-polish session on their cars before they were lined up in echelon in front of the pits for the concours judging.  The condition of these vehicles really lived up to the familiar dealer’s description, “In showroom condition”; they might well have come direct from the factory.

“Finally came the prize-giving and, as a fitting end to a remarkable day, the Duke of Richmond & Gordon arrived to do the honours in the very first Rolls-Royce ‘Silver Gjost’ made available specially for the occasion.”

You see? Now there was a genuine forerunner of some of the high jinks and automotive larkin’ about now long associated with the Goodwood Revival Meeting. From wherever could we have got the idea…?

What reminded me of this 63-year-old pre-Revival festival of Vintage motoring at Goodwood? I was having a browse through the Revs Digital Library which I help curate - in effect it’s the vast automobile photography collection amassed by our friends at at the Collier Collection, now Revs Institute, in Naples, Florida.  And there on-line amongst the thousands of images were those you now see here, actually shot by George Phillips of ‘Autosport’ magazine back in September, 1954.  If you are keen to look back upon our illustrious past - and you have perhaps a bored hour or two to fill over the forthcoming Christmas break - take a look here - https://revslib.stanford.edu - and lose yourself back in that entrancing country…the motor sporting past.

Photography courtesy of The Revs Digital Library/Revs Institute.