david kipling

I should have stated that the Don Luck photo is courtesy / copyright of his son Jim Luck.

Hi, admin. Thanks for your continuing advice --- I am pretty backward on computers no2 . The photo of Nev Hughes's car was taken in 1964 by Dave Chapman. My website www.oldstox.com has quite a few Long Eaton photos, and this particular one is on a page headed SENIORS / F1'S IN THE SIXTIES. Some of you know that Long Eaton was promoting stock cars ahead of almost every other permanent track in the country. Here's a great photo of the first promoter, Don Luck. He opened the gates to a huge crowd on 17th July 1954.

Thank you! Nev Hughes took up promoting at Long Eaton after he retired from racing. He now lives in Canada with his wife Dorothy. Here is a high-res. photo of Nev's car in the LE pits, showing the railway bridge behind. The unusual bonnet and rad grille are from an old French Delahaye saloon. Again, sorry if my copied links don't open without some adjusting.

Typical. I used to drop in my mate's shop and help out. He caught me polishing up a brass plate on a chest, and yelled at me to leave it a bit mucky, and never polish up the top either. He told me the punters like to whisper to each other "That'd come up nicely, I could renovate that a treat", and that way they're more likely to buy it than if it was all tarted up. He was wicked, used to turn people away with their "junk" saying he couldn't sell it. They'd come down to just shillings and pennies but he'd still tell them to take it away. Result: there would always be a few who were fed up

Lovely badges. I once lost a beauty. Although I watched the brief revival of the Bristol Bulldogs speedway team in the seventies, I'd never seen the originals. But a pal who was an antique / junk dealer ("I buy old junk and I sell antiques!" he used to say) gave me a 'cloisonne' / enamel Bristol Bulldogs badge, in art deco style, perfect nick, showing two riders' heads in profile, in gold. I showed it off a lot and wore it on my jean jacket lapel, like an idiot. It had a crescent-moon fastener on the back, for buttonholes, not a secure pin. Sure enough one day I looked down at my jacket

Thanks for people's welcome messages, and for fixing my link. I am no good at computers. A couple of Long Eaton based stock-car racers were 180 Laurie Hooton and 355 Brian Carter. Red-top racer Nottingham's Nev Hughes #69 was promoter there, too. As for speedway-versus-stock cars, it has unfortunately always been an insoluble problem, but both sports needed shale tracks (even though stock cars are also happy on concrete). I remember from many many years ago an ARCHERS radio episode in which a young lad was spending time at a stock car track to the dismay of his parents ---- happily the s

!hand! Stock cars! My lifelong favourite spectator sport. If you went to Long Eaton, you will remember seeing the Pavilion Hotel in the background, from the pits. Here's a photo that just shows it: I have over 1,300 photos of stock cars from 1955 to 1975 on my "nostalgia" website www.oldstox.com Have a look. Keith Barber was the hard-working promoter at Long Eaton for many years, as well as building and racing stock cars, publishing magazines, etc.