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June April/May 2016 2011
Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today
www.KCWToday.co.uk
Motoring & Sport Bonhams gears up for Goodwood By Fahad Redha
Ford every stream By Fahad Redha
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n 1966, Ford, out of spite, raced the GT40 at the 24 hours of Le Mans and won. The company had tried to buy Ferrari but were turned down by Enzo himself. So instead, it was decided that they would humiliate him on his home turf. The British built car with a 7 litre engine topped out at 200mph at the Mulsanne straight and would claim the title four years in a row, from 1966 to 1969. Now, fifty years later, Ford returns to race at Le Mans on the 18th of June with the new 2017 GT. The new car is powered by a 3.5 litre turbocharged V6 and will showcase Ford’s line of ‘ecoboost’ engines that range from a 1.0 litre, 3 cylinder in the Fiesta, to a big truck motor in the American F-Series.
The road going GT, Ford says, is its most advanced production car ever. The car will be in limited production and its desirability allows the company to choose only those worthy to own it. “From the outset, we developed the all-new Ford GT to return Ford to the world of GT endurance racing,” said Raj Nair, executive vice president, Global Product Development and chief technical officer. “We’re pleased with the progress we’ve made so far, including winning at Laguna Seca and taking second place at Spa. We are looking forward to further pushing the capabilities of this next-generation GT at Le Mans.” Look out for the new GT on the 18th of June.
Grass, rackets and balls
Lawn tennis and paraphernalia By Lynne McGowan
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s the manicured lawns of Wimbledon are being razored down to the last blade and strawberries by the million are being fattened up, now is a good time to take a look at lawn tennis and its disputed historical heritage. Invented by a ‘brummie’ and a Spaniard, the first game of lawn tennis as we know it was played on a croquet lawn at Edgbaston in 1865. Despite the various claims made for Major Wingfield being the inventor; Harry Gem and Juan Perera were the original twosome who devised a new rackets game of smacking a ball across a net based on pelota (Spanish for ball)or lawn rackets. In 1872, the regency midlands town of Leamington Spa hosted the world’s first lawn tennis club with a printed set of rules and laws outlining all aspects of the game from court markings to the exact size of the balls, made from white indiarubber of course. The making of tennis balls these days
is a complex procedure with components coming from 11 countries as far away as New Zealand who supply the superior wool for the felt weaving done in Stroud. Slazenger, the official ball supplier for Wimbledon say their balls travel over 50,000 miles before they bounce off the synthetic strings of Mr Murray’s carbon
There was a time when Ferrari 250 GTOs were just knackered old race cars with little value. Today, £10m would be a bargain for them. A man at the Classic Car Show last year remarked to me that he once owned a 300SL Gullwing that he sold then for £30,000. Now, its value is well into six figures. And there are few better places to get your hands on cars like these then Bonhams Auction. On the 24th of June many of the world’s greatest and rarest cars will go under the hammer during the Bonhams Festival of Speed Sale at Goodwood. These include everything from old Aston Martin race cars to newer supercars. Ferraris will be among the highlights including a 275 GTB and a 365 GTB4
fibre racket. Many believe the rackets game of tennis evolved from 12th century French monks batting a ball back and forth with their hands and later gloves. In fact the word tennis derives from the French verb tenir to hold, to take or to receive. Real tennis or royal racket tennis was played in the 16th century with King Henry V111 championing the sport and creating a court at Hampton Court, no less, in 1528. Players would have used a long handled, wooden tear dropshaped racket made from ash for easy bending and durability with stretched strings made of intestinal gut providing maximum tension. One theory is the word racket comes from the Arabic rakhat meaning hand, on the other hand, it could come from the Flemish raketsen meaning to strike back. Other mysterious tennis terms such as ‘deuce’ also have origins from the french a deux le jeu meaning ‘to both is the game’ ie both have equal scores. And as for the unlikely tennis term ‘love’ meaning zero, many theories are banded about such as Flemish word lof meaning honour and the French word l’oeuf meaning an egg-shaped 0, the French very sensibly stick to zero and not love. Considering the noble etiquette of lawn tennis I prefer the Oxford English Dictionary’s suggestion that it is sheer love of the game that keeps a scoreless player on the court, based on the colloquial phrase for ‘love’ in a
Daytona. “Supremely vigorous car with a fiery temperament,” was how the former was described upon its launch. The car offered here is one of just 48 built in right-hand drive and is expected to fetch between £1.6-1.9m. The Daytona, named for the marque’s 1,2,3 finish at the American track in 1967, is hailed as one of the all-time greatest cars ever to wear the prancing horse. The 1972 model is estimated at £620,000-680,000. BMW’s first supercar, the M1, showed the world what German engineering and Italian style looked like. In its day the M1 was seen as a more user friendly supercar being easy to drive and live with compared to contemporary Italian models. This 1981 car is being offered at an estimate of £280,000-320,000. “The Festival of Speed is the highlight of the UK summer motoring calendar,” Tim Schofield, Bonhams UK Head of Motoring, said. “Each year Bonhams continue to offer a wealth of exciting, rare, and often record breaking motor cars, and this year is set to be no exception.”
competition meaning ‘without stakes being wagered’. The illogical scoring 15, 30, 40, appears to be based on the clock face and then modified from 45 to 40 to make the scoring work easier after deuce, such peculiar and eccentric terms for tennis continue to baffle and amuse. At a time when the ladies wore ankle length ‘tennis whites’ complete with corsets and huge hats there was no such thing as any prize money; the silver salver or cup sufficed until 1968 when the men received £2000 and the ladies £800. Of all the major global ‘Grand Slams’ Wimbledon is the only one to be played on the green stuff persisting doggedly in the historical legacy from 1877 and hosted by the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in true English style.