| Date | 6 May 2016 |
|---|---|
| Source | Slough Observer |
| Reference | VP-0067 |
| Volume | Views of the Past |
| Collection | Views of the Past |
Transcript
Vintage car history
AS A teenager, one of the first real veteran cars I was able to drive in was a car called a Darracq which was manufactured in France and immortalised in the classic film Genevieve. Quite by coincidence, I was invited for the ride in the London to Brighton run in a similar 1904 Darracq. I was delighted to find in more recent years that a Darracq was one of the first cars to come to England and was housed in Datchet.
The Hon. Evelyn Ellis (1843–1913), of Rosenau in Datchet, had an interest in the developing motor industry of France and Germany, and he was one of the first people to promote the motor car in this country. The early days of motoring was extremely slow – mainly as a man with a red flag had to walk in front of any self-propelled vehicles on a public road at a lightning speed of four miles per hour – this law was put in originally for the use of steam traction engines that moved between farms. Ellis was often seen driving without the man and the red flag as he thought this was absurd. The law was eventually repealed in 1896.
In 1895 he purchased a car from the French motor engineers Panhard-Levassor which was powered by a Daimler engine. It was taken across the channel and then by train to Micheldever, Hants and from there he drove it up to Datchet. In 1896, after the appeal of the red flag law, the first London to Brighton car run was held and the speed limit for vehicles was raised to 12mph. In 1896 Ellis became a director of the first British Daimler car factory in Coventry.
Ellis was extremely influential in the motor industry and gave the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, his first drive in a motor car at Kensington Palace. In 1906 Ellis had purchased a Darracq 200 racer and was housed in workshops in Home Farm, Datchet. The Darracq Company built a mammoth 200 horse-power with a V-8 engine.
The car achieved a speed record of 127.66mph. Following worldwide publicity, it was later purchased by Algernon Lee Guinness, who kept the car until 1922, and the car was later sold for scrap apart from the engine. Algernon later bought the engine back.
Image: Evelyn Ellis, of Rosenau in Datchet.
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