The museum is located in Warwick, near Birmingham, about an hour or so north of London on the M40.

One of the first cars you see is an 1897 Daimler, the oldest UK built example.   It was used extensively in its heyday and is still in working condition.   You can see its flame ignition system, which is essentially a pair of Bunsen burners heating metal tubes that ignite the fuel.   The car was later fitted with an elephant hide hood.

Proceeding into the museum you see a number of concept cars such as a Rover SD1 estate, and a BL electric car.    From there, the museum is divided into a number of exhibits.   These include:

• The concept cars described above
• Famous Jaguar Competition cars
• Royal vehicles, including the Queen’s personal Rover P5
• ‘Memory Lane’ type exhibits that show popular vehicles from a particular time period
• Competition and record breaking cars
• Estate cars
• Land Rover/Range Rover
• British Sports cars including an excellent cutaway MGB GT

Including spending time at the Overflow collection and the Jaguar Heritage Collection, I spent the entire day there.

The British Motor Museum is also the home of the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust archives.   The archives are the suppliers of heritage certificates.    There is also a reading room which is available for research by appointment.

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Not only is the display quite a sight, but its one of the few times of the year you’ll sit in traffic behind a Jowett and have a Daimler behind you.    One of the highlights was seeing a Bentley 6.5 liter in the Vintage Sports Car Club.   I was hoping to see a Derby Bentley as well, but unfortunately it would appear there were none in attendance.    Was hoping a member of the Rolls Royce, Bentley or Vintage sports car clubs would bring one along.   There was a rather nice S Series Continental though.

As usual, the Jaguar Club had a great display, especially the E-Type register.    As with last year, no XK140s on display but a few with other clubs.    There are always large numbers of MGs, Minis etc on display too.    After the big Flynn auction I was wondering if there would be a big display of Rovers this year, but it as pretty similar to last year.    For some reason this year there were only a few Jensen Interceptors on display.   The Bristol club had a nice handout of their key models including numbers in the club and production volume.   A nice touch.

It is great to see some of the more forgotten marques, such as Riley, Alvis, Wolesely, Humber.   These cars are going to need their next generation of enthusiast.   And the marques that are defunct but perhaps better known like Austin, Rover, Daimler etc.   These shows certainly help show off the cars to people who may not have been familiar with them.

UPDATE (1/9/17):  There was a lovely Rolls Royce Silver Ghost that looked it it had been through a very thorough restoration.   I noticed an interesting switch on the side of the car.   Through a friend in the Rolls Royce club, I was able to find out its function.   It controls fuel pumps.   The Silver Ghost apparently has a mechanical pump and a manual pump that can be operated by the passenger.   The switch allows the selection of one, both or neither of the pumps.   It is quite a clever system, as it’s easy to forget that back at the time this car was new, the infrastructure to support the automobile was also in its infancy.

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Some of the cars I liked were a very original looking Bentley S1 Continental, a couple of nice Jaguar XK140 FHCs, and a former vice regal Rolls Royce Phantom V that took Sir William Kerr to make his announcement that he had dismissed the Whitlam Government.

An interesting piece of information I overheard was during a discussion by some Jaguar Owners, one of them mentioned that there is a man in Melbourne who is making 5 speed gearboxes that are a better fit than the ones out of the UK and America.  Many sporty Jaguars were originally sold with Automatic transmissions that really don’t suit the character of the cars.   Many have been converted to manual over the years, either from a wrecked car or through a 5 speed transmission.   This is particularly the case for MK II models.

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