The Spanish Grand Prix Centennial

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Last weekend saw one of these rare events for pre WW I cars as announced earlier at these pages. The "race" lead through Madrid and Segovia´s mountain range, just like the original edition one hundred years ago. Perhaps it was a bit hard for some of the 30 entrants, with a finish at the 1880 meters high pass  "Alto de Navacerrada" which resulted in very low speeds for some cars, of course a few cases of overheating and a few cars even had fall to back on using the low gearing of reverse to get any higher. (Check for this the little 1903 Léon-Buat of photo 2). Despite of being the oldest entrant, the perfectly unrestored 1898 Peugeot (click main photo) reached the top in a very good rythm to meet the rest of exhausted 'colleagues' (photo 3). This event was one of the very few opportunities to see in the streets some very rare cars like the oldest Hispano-Suiza running example (the family Pueche trying to start up after the pause in photo 4), the sporting 1913 Abadal (photo 5) or the the 1917 España (photo 6), being this two last cars the 1 of 2 known survivors of its marques. The original 1913 race was won by a blue Rolls Royce Silver Ghost Alpine driven by the Marquis of Salamanca, importer of the marque for Spain. In this edition there was again a blue Silver Ghost, but a slightly newer 1918 model (photo 7). As this event is planned to be celebrated each year, an original (preferably blue) 1913 Silver Ghost will be very welcome, so if your are the lucky owner of one of these cars please stay tuned for the next edition!       

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