England - Beaulieu - June 2007 - About half an hour from us, is a place called Beaulieu. They'd been advertising that they had parks and stuff for kids to do, and a car museum. So, being in tourist mode, we jumped in our car and headed off to Beaulieu. What we found, is that they had the most amazing car museum, from the normal Formula 1 cars, to record breakers, including the first car to ever break the 200mph limit. It was as long as a house and had over 1000hp. They also had a McClaren F1 - not a Formula 1 McClaren, but the road version. This really made the Lamborghini Countach seem like a family car becide it. I've only taken a couple pics, as I'm sure I could fill up an entire webpage with all their cars, so here were my favourites.
Starting the pack, is an origial 60's AC Shelby Cobra. Before this, I'd seen a couple decent kit cars in Vancouver, but this was the real deal. I'd read, when they were first racing the Cobra's, there was so much torque, the car would tear out the back end. The car would either finish first because of it's power and engineering, or last, for not being able to finish.
Ford has another amazing car come out of the 60's. Everyone thinks of the Mustang, but here is the Ford F40. Agreed, it was out of everyone's price range, but even compared to modern sports cars, it's way ahead of it's time.
And, one of the last of the greats that came out of the 60's, the Ford Lotus Cortina. On the door, you can just make out "Team Lotus", and on the rear fender, there is the yellow and green Lotus logo (looks like a seashell). A lot of you know that I had a Cortina, very similar to this one. Sadly, mine wasn't a Lotus breed, althought, it had the heart of a Lotus.
We asked Seth what his favourite care was in the entire museum. Did he pick the McClaren? Did he pick a Formula 1? Maybe a Ferrari? No. He picked the Citroen Rally Champion. I'm not sure exactly why - he does like red cars, so I think that was half of his choice. That, and, by this time he had seen enough cars, so I think he picked one that he was close to. Still, it was a champion winner, so maybe that's part of it.
Here we have the beautiful Jaguar from James Bond. Behind the driver, is a gattling maching gun. I'm not sure if you're allowed to have those in London, so this must be the LA version of the car. If you didn't see the movie, this car has an epic battle over the frozen sea, and defeats the baddie.
The below picture, is also from James Bond. Rather than just have the normal rockets and ejection seat, this Lotus turned into a submarine, allowing James to escape and chase the villan where no normal police force could chase. Once again, Bond's gadgets had allowed him to aquire the vital information, giving M5 exactly the data they required.
If you have children, the next two pictures need absolutely no introduction. The license plate helps give it away as well.
Yes everyone, it's Brum. As you can see, he's not a very large car. When I saw the posters saying that Brum would be having a demonstration, I was expecting a life size car. As you can see, they've roped off quite a big area for Brum. And then, out on the tarmac, appears a 30cm/1foot short car. I'll admit, I've never watched the Brum show, and I've been told that this is infact Brum - lifesize. Maybe if you're smaller, then you'd appreciate Brum more. Maybe I spent too much time in the Big Boy museum and was expecting more.
I think this has been one of my shortest webpages, and I hope you've enjoyed it. If you're into cars, I'd recommend a visit to Beaulieu's Auto museum. After that, you can go visit the tank museum (which is 30 mins the other side of Bmth).