Historic motorsport site under threat

[davewilson]

Plans for the widening of the A14 road through Cambridgeshire have led to fears that a historic motorsport site will be demolished.

According to story in the Cambridge Evening News newspaper the threatened site is a garage in the village of Swavesey owned by the late Archie Scott-Brown who used to test Lister Jaguar sports racing cars on A14 in the 1950s.

Historic racer Tony Ditheridge, who grew up in Cambridge, served his engineering apprenticeship in the city and had close links with Lister cars builder Brian Lister told the newspaper, "My family were friends with Brian and I can remember as a boy being taken to the garage to see the cars being built and going to races to watch Archie drive.

"It was very different in those days - safety was questionable and drivers, mechanics and cars integrated with the public. The cars that Brian built were magnificent with all-aluminium hand-crafted bodywork and engines that made a shattering sound and took the cars up to 160 or 170 miles an hour.

"The cars were regularly tested on the ordinary road outside the garage - there was little involvement by non-driving health and safety obsessed bureaucrats telling people what to do in those days - how things have changed."

The lease on the run-down boarded-up garage, which for many years was a petrol station, is now up for sale. The site’s current owner Duriam Ahmetaj from Kent said: "I know that the garage has some kind of motor racing connection - some of our older customers remember it and talk about it when they are here."


The Stig