Midget and Sprite Club: July 2008

Thursday, 17 July 2008

Tales of La Sarthe

Lara made a new friend en-route to France

At the ferry port in Newhaven we were in the queue with a Commer caravanette (old H reg!) belonging to some acquaintances from the Club Arnage website and as they were packed to the gunnels and I was travelling single crewed this year I offered a lift to one of them who was painfully perched atop a pile of camping kit in the back of the van.

They had a mini convoy, the Commer and a Porsche so after a calm crossing to Le Havre we set out over the Pont De Normandie with Bob, my new navigator getting comfortable at last.

For a while all was well but the venerable Commer began to show signs that all was not well within her engine room and between Lisieux and Vermontiers she just packed up. After looking around we found the remains of a plastic bag inside the glass dome of the petrol pump, presumably used in the past to act as a stopper after a lost filler cap. If this is so it must have been a long time ago as the present owner knew nothing of it. We cleared the residue out of the way but the pump soon packed up again. Andy the owner had a new pump aboard so we fitted that and after blowing the pipe clear we set off again for Le Mans.

The Porsche driver soon became fed up with travelling at 60mph and shot off, but with the Commer having had a bad start I decided to stick around just in case. After about a hundred miles and with the signs for the 24 Hrs circuit and camping sites in view, it became a good thing that I had. The old bird packed it all in again. Andy managed to get off the highway onto a slip road but as this was in use by juggernauts heading for an industrial zone we decided to get the van off the slip road up the hill. As it was too steep to push the van up (shades of Ice Cold In Alex!!!) I decided to tow it uphill with Lara to a roundabout and a small dead-end road where we could park her safely.

After squashing cries of "You'll never get her up there with that little thing!" I showed the sceptics just what a well turned out Midget was capable of, tow strap fixed around the flats of the rear spring and the front suspension arm of the Commer we made light work of the job and were all able to settle down whilst we made a few phone calls and rounded up a tow from a mate on the campsite in his Discovery.

I had been en-route to set up base camp for our team of Spridgeteers, Gary Lazarus, Toby Anscombe and Bob Tooke, with Bob's son Anthony and friend Dan. They were due on site on Thursday afternoon. Toby was due to be joined on Saturday (at race start time!!) by Rachel and her friend.

All the above had happened on Wednesday evening and come Thursday morning Andy and I set about fitting a new (second) in line filter between tank and pump so any repetition would not stop the van permanently.

After all this the racing was almost unimportant, but Lara hadn't finished showing the happy campers what she could do. On Fridays on the Le Mans 24 hours weekend there is "The Great British Welcome" at the local town of St Saturnin where many of the hundreds of Classic car owners that attend every year go to enjoy looking and chatting about other people's cars and have a congenial meeting with Jazz bands and commentaries, plus a celebrated Car Of the Year. This year's special, oddly for a "British Welcome" was Ferrari.

After the meeting several of us including our own Gary and Toby, (Toby was my passenger for today) went for a trip around the local countryside, guided by a pair of ex-pat Brits to a small bar about twenty miles away. In our small convoy was Gary's Frogeye, a couple of Cobra replicas and the Ferrari (some sort of Fezzer, I dunno!) of another local ex-pat.

I was stuck behind the Ferrari and spent the entire drive wishing I'd set off in front of him. He braked hours before the proper time, steered wide around every curve and Lara spent the whole trip far too close to him.

I wish she had let him go but she didn't have an ounce of pity for him or me!

Lara had taught me how much she could do on the track days we'd done together, so the drive on those French roads let me have great fun using the car's legendary agility.

The racing was very good this year even if the diesels won again, Aston Martin winning their class very nicely. On Sunday morning there was much confusion about which tyres to fit and just about every team got it wrong-ish at one time or another. Due to poor pit work, during the early afternoon Peugeot lost their very strong act in a flurry of bad decisions and so Audi won again

After the race we took ourselves off to our customary watering hole at Bagnolles sur L'Orme for a great meal and the next day we split up to make our way home to our different destinations. Gary and I decided to travel along the main coast highway to Le Havre and his ferry at Boulogne after travelling many miles along dead straight French roads. They were like roads you see in "The Movies", marvellous.

After docking at Newhaven I had a three and a half hour run home with the roof off, reaching home at quarter past three.

And I was very, very glad to be home.

The great party update

The Big Party at Gaydon in May

Spridget 50, a view from the car park

Thank you all, at least it looked as if it was all of you to me.

I firmly believe that the undoubted success of Spridget 50 (and yes what a success it was!) was due to the huge number of MASC members that rose to the bait. "Let's have the biggest collection of Spridgets ever" was the gauntlet Steve Clark threw down to the club at the AGM a year and a half ago and with your total enthusiasm that is what we did.

From the top, with a guarantee of centre page publicity in MASCOT from Barry and from your general air of "yes lets get on with it" I'm certain that the MASC contingent were the greatest percentage of 'members to participants' of any club involved.

The organising group from all five participating clubs met often to expand ideas and begin the actual planning, with different areas of expertise being taken up by the team.

Quite early on into the planning Steve Clark had to step down from the "chair" due to work changes and commitments. We all sidestepped taking up his mantle in favour of leaving Jeremy Cogman holding the reins. Which in retrospect was a very wise move, the event was tirelessly driven forward with Jeremy's enthusiasm and organisational skills to the result we all enjoyed on the 24^th May.

I offered to be "Head Traffic Warden" and be responsible for safely getting the huge number of cars expected off the Warwick/Banbury road without traffic jams.

The plan I put together with the constant enthusiasm from John Bishop at the Events Organisers department at Gaydon seemed to go well, due in huge measure to the enthusiastic help of the volunteer marshalls. The wonderful signposting efforts of Andrew in Yorkshire had the desired effect and not once did we get hold ups outside the site.

From the early days when I measured the car parking available via Google earth mapping I wondered whether we'd get you all in, but a promise is a promise so we gathered as much grass parking as we could into the plan and pressed on.

The 24^th was a tiring day for an old codger like me but at the end of it we on the steering group were very satisfied with what the five clubs had achieved together. Much of the day-to-day organisation drew on the skills of the admin team from the MGOC, under the guidance of Julie Neville, who worked tirelessly to keep us rolling along on the rails and helped me with building up the infrastructure on the weekend.

The Pride of Ownership and Concours competitions were ably policed by

mostly MGCC people and we dealt with much of the important "other stuff". Chris Jackson for instance dealt with the Regalia for the event. Jonathan Whitehouse-Bird did the majority of graphics tasks, designing the second batch of flyers, the Rally Plaques, the posters and the free programmes for the day, all along with getting his baby, EAO back to glorious life for the week. (The first Flyers were the work of Carlo la Duca and got the whole shebang off to a flying start)

AHC were able to bring along some very lovely historic Sprites and Midgets too, a great tribute to our marvellous cars.

This is starting to look like a "Thank you all" speech which it shouldn't so I wont DO any more of that.

On the Saturday morning we had a Green Innocenti Coupe waiting at the gates when I got there. Bill its pilot had come along all the way from the USA and later we had folks from Australia, France, Holland, Switzerland, Germany Czechoslovakia and Scandinavia amongst many others to join us and in general everyone behaved just as we marshalls asked them to with little dissention (we had a minor problem with a marshall sending a bloke in an MGB into the classic car park instead of letting him down on the arena. That wasn't the problem, it was in the ground rules, as I had specified in the briefing papers for marshalls. Mr Don Hayter was very understanding when I explained the reason for his diversion and then allowed him down to give the morning talk, which was very well received by all that attended!)

The only major exception to my rules was a chap in a Lotus that seemed to think his car was Spridget based enough to deserve entry. Me? I'm still not quite convinced but we did have enough room for him within the racing car area so I didn't pursue him when he slipped down the main road, Sprite Way.

In another incident, near the end of the day, I was disgusted to see someone having a moan at a MASC club officer. Not an appropriate time or place for such shenanigans in my opinion, everyone else was having fun!

Bill Mohan

Chief Traffic Warden

Scotland MASC

All,

Can I introduce you to a new website for MG’s and Triumphs...

A few years ago, a Spitfire enthusiast David Lipowski met a group of MG Midget drivers, the Glasgow branch of the "Midget and Sprite Club".

David became the area organiser for the Glasgow/Scottish region of Club Triumph and joined forces with Carson Thomson & his group of Midget & Sprite enthusiasts. The group has become very diverse over the last few years - and I think we love it all the more for its diversity.

Although mainly consisting of Midgets and Spitfires we're an anything goes group and we are often joined on runs by such varied transport as motorcycles, modern Mazda MX-5s etc.

Being a branch of Club Triumph we are naturally always happy to see Triumphs of any description too. As with most car clubs we have a wide range of people and ages involved with the group.

This is a very active group. Its fair to say the group is more disposed to driving and enjoying the cars, though there is plenty of polishing goes on too behind closed doors.

We generally are out driving as a group every month between about March and October with drives ranging from gentle outings to marathon weekend trips to the islands.

For more details please go to http://www.glasgow-mg-and-triumph.co.nr/

Sunday, 13 July 2008

Your Club Needs You!

Do you have hours, even days, of spare time?
Do you have lots of spare cash?
Do you have untapped skills you’re eager to use?

Then become a Midget and Sprite Club committee member and see all of these disappear in an instant.

Seriously though, nominations are now being sought for the 2008/2009 committee. All positions are now open for nomination, particularly that of Editor following the resignation of Barry Lowe.
See inside page of Mascot for list of positions. Please note that the role of Editor is to revert to being a committee position.

If you would like to find out more about what is involved with any of the job roles or request a nomination form then contact Nigel Williams on 01179612175 or e-mail nigelwilliams7@tiscali.co.uk
Closing date for nominations 31st August.