‘Please keep off the track’ seems sound advice.
The perils of wandering about Mount Panorama during a race meeting are obvious enough, but were a potential problem throughout the first weekend of racing at Australia’s greatest cathedral of speed, hence the sage-like advice of the New South Wales Light Car Club.
Tom Peters, MacKellar Ford V8 Spl aka the ex-Bill Thompson Bugatti T37A #37358, is snatching a look over his shoulder of Bob Lea Wright’s, Terraplane Spl during the April 18, 1938 Australian Grand Prix at Bathurst.
Peter Whitehead won the race in his ERA B-Type that weekend. Peters was a terrific fourth in a car he had earlier owned and raced in its original, ‘pure-Bugatti’ form, and Lea-Wright was 11th. I wrote about the race yonks ago: https://primotipo.com/2015/04/16/peter-whitehead-in-australia-era-r10b-1938/
Here’s Ford dealer/racer Ron MacKellar on the debut of his comprehensive rebuild of the ex-Bill Thompson 1930/32 AGP-winning Bugatti Type 37A chassis 37358 at Centennial Park, Sydney in November 1937.
A McCullough supercharged flathead Ford V8 engine and gearbox and general fuglification of Ettore’s finest resulted in a faster car than before. It raced on all the way to 1952 when Bill McLachlan finished 13th in the AGP, at…Bathurst. See here for more about this T37A https://primotipo.com/2015/10/27/motorclassica-melbourne-23-25-october-2015/
To the current custodian, Michael Miller’s credit, his slow restoration/reclamation of 37358 is of the Oily Rag type, and with luck, the car may be finished in advance of Australian Grand Prix Centenary celebrations at Goulburn in January 2027. Keep an eye on the website, folks: https://goulburngrandprix.com.au/
Credits…
Bill Forsyth Collection, State Library of New South Wales, goulburngrandprix.com
Finito…
primotipo... 