Just 40 minutes drive from where I live, down narrow pockmarked lanes and well off the GPS track is an innocuous looking grass airfield. The buildings have a distinctly faded air to them, with peeled paint and the airfields name ‘Rendcombe’ barely visible on the rust red corrugated roof.
Despite the low cloud and persistent drizzle there’s the unmistakable drone of a radial engined biplane up above, but I am not here for the ‘planes but a JBL press conference (more on that in my next blog) But in the meantime let’s focus on our host, no less a man than Pink Floyd drummer and avid car nut, Nick Mason.
Nick Mason
Nick’s collection of classic cars, much pared down of late he tells, has been garaged here for some years.
Rendcombe was a WW1 training airfield and, until 15-20 years ago the buildings lay abandoned and the grass airstrip was farmland. In an almost unheard-of move, a local flying enthusiast bought the whole lot and restored much of it to its former glory.
Inside Nick’s hangars it’s really like an automotive Aladdin’s cave from the 1902 Panhard Levassor with its five-liter, four-cylinder engine ticking over at 30 rpm when fully warmed, through to the supercharged shrill of a Bugatti Type 35 Nick bought as a box of bits nearly four decades ago; one of his earliest classics.
Sandwiched by them was an early competizione Daytona that has been unraced for 25-30 years. While the Ferrari and Panhard obediently started the Type 35 refused to burst into life when called upon to do so – we had to wait a full 30 minutes before the hangar was reverberating to its 6000 rev beat, our eyes watering as the burnt methanol hit them.
Elsewhere on show was the Ferrari 512S used in Steve McQueen’s ‘Le Mans’ film that nearly toasted Derek Bell, a 1962 Birdcage 3-liter Maserati as well as a McLaren F1, to mention just a few.
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