The wonderful world of Horstman.
It is fairly common knowledge that in 2011 , I built a new circuit in Lincolnshire mainly for the purpose of running track days, testing and driver tuition as well as sprint events and Rallycross. Over the next decade, I was fortunate enough to drive an amazing array of cars and also be a passenger in cars being driven by people infinitely more talented than me!
I did a lot of laps in McLarens , quite a lot in Formula Renault single seaters and enjoyed being a bit of a hooligan in a Rallycross Mini! If I listed all the cars in which I lapped Blyton Park it would be a very long list. You can see my journey here below…
Having moved on to Great British Car Journey , my exposure to racing cars has been much reduced. Of course I have driven all the cars on the Drive Dads Car fleet and plenty of other wonderful and occasionally weird machines but at the end of last year, a unique racing car dating from 1921 came our way and I have to confess to being in love.
Horstman were one of a plethora of British car makers who sprung up before the First World War but unlike most, they had a brief moment in the sun as a serious competitor in long distance races at the Temple of Speed that was Brooklands.
They built about 20 racing cars and the car in our cars is the only survivor making it genuinely unique. In 1921, a similar car finished fifth in the first 200 mile race ever held at Brooklands and it was the first British car across the line sandwiched by two Bugattis.
It may only have a 1.3 litre engine, it may only develop about 40 bhp but it weighs around 600 kilos and does without any real brakes. So although I love Drive Dads Car and all the cars that entails, the Horstman is my favourite racer : it averaged over 80 mph for well over two hours on Brooklands’ bumpy concrete and driver Douglas Hawkes and his intrepid riding mechanic were clearly made of very stern stuff!
Here you can see I didn’t quite manage 80mph around our site in Ambergate…
Getting it there, however, was no small feat. When the Horstman arrived at Great British Car Journey, it was very much a static display piece. Its little 1.3-litre engine had long since seized, and while the car had survived for over a century, it hadn’t turned a wheel in anger for many, many years. Fortunately, we have two of the most brave mechanics in the business, Doc Laurence and Luke, who took it upon themselves to wake the Horstman from its sleep.
Over countless hours, they painstakingly freed the engine, rebuilt what needed rebuilding, and coaxed the old girl back into life. Seeing it fire up for the first time in decades was spectacular!
With the Horstman running once again, we needed somewhere special to give it the run it truly deserved. And what better place than a banked circuit—just as it had done in its heyday? Thanks to an invitation from Toyota, we took the car to their top-secret test facility in Derby, where, for the first time in over 100 years, a Horstman once again tackled the curves of a banked track.
It was a surreal moment—this tiny, fearless machine, designed for the rutted concrete of Brooklands, stretching its legs on a modern test track under the watchful eye of Classic & Sports Car magazine. Of course, with no real brakes and over a century of history in our hands, we weren’t about to match Douglas Hawkes’ 80mph average. But as the little car roared around the banking once more, it felt like we had, in some small way, reconnected it with its past.
History had come full circle. And I, for one, couldn’t have been prouder. You can read about it in Classic & Sportscars latest issue…
(credit to Max Edleston for Classic & Sportscar for the photography)
