John Simister: Starting the new year right at Brooklands

So, with 2018 just eight hours old, I leave my house in my faithful and well-rustproofed 1961 Saab 96 two-stroke and in convoy with friends Bryan and Robert in Bryan's vividly green Lotus Elan Sprint, as featured in this column a few months ago as its owner strove for its perfection. There's still a small tripwire in this quest, the Lotus having developed a propensity to cut out and get going again without warning as the tacho needle flails wildly, but Bryan thinks he's finally knocked it on the head amid talk of coil voltages and ballast resistors. We'll see.

En route we pick up friends John and Peter in their shared 911 2.7 RS-lookalike in bright orange, and on we head to Brooklands. There has, as yet, been no sign of rain.

Which is why, as we drive in around 9 am, around us and ahead of us is a sea of classic cars as diverse as can be imagined. Pre-war machinery is gathering in front of the Clubhouse in a scene straight from the track's heyday, and all the way along the newly-uncovered Finishing Straight towards the banking are lines of cars heading for a parking slot. Different makes and models are randomly mixed except where clubs or informal posses have made a point of staying together; for me, the more mixed-up the better, because it makes for all manner of surprises and intrigue as you wander around.

The banking has already filled up, so the Saab and I snick into a siding (bounded by ugly, temporary and unnecessary plastic barriers) on the Finishing Straight opposite the restored Wellington Hangar. This was recently moved from where it blocked the Straight, on which it was originally built during World War Two, to the Clubhouse side of the Straight. It has been re-clad over the original steel skeleton and is now known as The Aircraft Factory, with interactive displays showing how aircraft have been built in different eras and the Wellington bomber, retrieved from Loch Ness, looming in the middle. Steps lead on to the new Flight Shed, with an aircraft display at Straight level and an archive and learning rooms beneath. Brooklands hasn't looked this good, and this complete, for years.

Time, after a quick breakfast in the Sunbeam Café, to wander round the cars. My eye is immediately caught by an Imp-powered Ginetta G15 in yellow and, opposite it, a late Austin 1300 also in yellow. These BMC ADO16 cars, once Britain's best sellers, have had their numbers savagely culled by rust so it's good to see a survivor. The rare MG 1300 and the Austin or Morris 1300GT versions are starting to become quite collectable now, and they were always good fun to drive. 

Nearby is an even more forgotten piece of popular British history in the form of a Hillman Hunter, and then my eye is drawn to the familiar yet subtly different lines of a 1964 Coune MGB. Belgium's Coune coachwork company created its own version of a fastback GT two years before BMC released its factory version, and the changes went some way beyond a new, integral roof. The windscreen was very deep, the wheelarches gained lipped edges and even the headlamp recesses got an extra inner flare. Fifty-six Coune MGBs were made of which just a dozen or so survive. 

And then, just beyond a Brooklands shed, I spy a car remarkably like the one in which I have arrived but painted in a curious pinky beige and breathtakingly immaculate. It was restored, perfectly, in Sweden before being acquired by famous Surrey dealer Bell & Colvill (it sold new Saabs when such a thing was still possible) and displayed proudly in its showroom. From there it was bought by former racing driver Ray Armes who loves it to bits, whitewall crossply tyres and all. Ray used to race Imps, so his interests and mine align remarkably closely. Cue mutual admiration of each other's Saabs, envy on my part of his car's un-pitted boot handle and pristine engine bay, intrigue on his part as to why mine has vent holes in the rear shelf and his doesn't…

More examination of curious old European cars with tiny engines comes when we stumble upon a Panhard PL17, another car destined for my imaginary Top 20 garage. Its owner is fiddling under the bonnet, revealing the giant polished-aluminium fan cover in front of the 848cc flat twin, and now he's starting it up to the accompaniment of nearly as much smoke as our two-stroke, three-cylinder Saabs generate even though the Panhard is a four-stroke. It also has a perfect reproduction Venetian blind in the rear window, made to the original Panhard-accessory pattern.

Now, here's Car and Autocar writing legend Steve Cropley with the Ford Capri 280 he's borrowed from Ford's heritage fleet, one of the very last Capris made. It's the final-edition model in, appropriately, Brooklands Green. Our expanding party continues along the banking, discovering 'The World's Fastest Jensen C-V8' which is being readied, in best back-garden fashion, for a record run at the Bonneville Speed Week.

What else? A Triumph 1300, rare and distant front-wheel drive ancestor of the Dolomite Sprint. A Lancia Trevi automatic, the notchback version of the Beta and featuring a dashboard styled after a piece of Emmental cheese with switches and minor dials buried in the bubbles. An Imp van full of period spares. A Reliant Sabre Six, the forerunner of the Scimitar. A Tatra 603 with its rear-mounted, air-cooled V8. Back at the Clubhouse, another rare-groove V8-engined car in the form of a 2.8-litre, 99bhp, 91mph Autovia saloon built in Coventry in 1938.

Then, on the way back to my Saab, I spy the unlikely sight of a 1962 Ford Zephyr 4 MkIII, handsome and immaculate in white. Why so unlikely, when there are numerous other flavours of Zephyr nearby? Because it's on original Italian plates, from Turin. That's how diverse Brooklands' packed New Year's Day Gathering is. It's just brilliant, and only when we left at lunchtime did the rain finally fall. Belated Happy New Year!