Darracq V8

Edwardian racing cars for many years had always been represented by illustrations of heroic poses in "Speed" and "Boys Own" annuals and in encyclopedic format books. A little like many of us as children might think of the old days as black and white, I never really pictured the Edwardians as being really fast and exciting.

It was quite late in life that I realised just how dramatic these cars really were. For me the greatest reason for this thrilling enlightenment is Mark Walker.

I'm sure that there are many others who drove their cars, in these modern day meetings, with the same dynamic style but Mark has always been outstanding. 

So often I have returned from meetings with the image of Mark's head forward, elbows skyward, animated body posture, wrestling the big steering wheel of a rarely straight, thundering, fire breathing monster.

I feel a real urge to get out the clay or pencils and capture those images almost as if this allows me to become part of this excitement.

I cannot think of a more appropriate person to own this greatest car of all and demonstrate some of the spectacle of the great Edwardian road races. Every corner is worthy of a new rendition of the famous F Gordon-Crosby illustration in Autocar Magazine.


There is an excellent illustration of this car on Stefan Marjoram's Sketch Blog .Darracq V8. This is a brilliant blog  http://stefanssketchblog.blogspot.com/  with so many fine sketches and photos. View Stefan's Flicker on  his sidebar.

In the video below, Mark tells much of the cars history. The follow on second video has "in car footage". I guess that should be on car! Its just all of that old, historic mechanism that can never be recreated, I love this car.