The Amazo Effect: Motorsport At The Palace 2014

25th-26th May 2014, Crystal Palace Park, Anerley Hill, London, SE19.

Regular visitors to this show know that the car park is usually a pretty good aperitif/digestif to the main meal:

Once inside, the cars are of equal quality:

How often do you see a first generation Honda Accord these days?

Rover 12 tourer:

Looks like a 60's 4/4; crossflow engine with supercharger?

Small-block Chevy in a Mini. In the wet. Brave.

More engine lunacy; two Kawasaki ZX9 engines in a Tiger Z100:

TR6 rims on this Daimler SP250 look ACES. A natural wheels choice really, seeing as it uses TR3 underpinnings:

Reliant Sabre, predecessor to the Scimitar below that. A pretty sharp tool it's own right:

Honda S800, with that gorgeous 791cc jewel of a 4 cylinder engine with twin cams, a roller bearing crankshaft and two twin-choke carburettors in original tune; 71bhp at 9000 rpm!

McLaren 650s, always great to look at up close:

The new Alfa 4C:

And an older relative:

Monte Carlo or bust:

Now to the competitors. The rain wasn't deterring these guys:

Amazons in the forest:

This year’s event focused on the legendary 1971 Osram Saloon Car Championship race, which saw Mike Crabtree, Martin Thomas and Gerry Marshall wage an epic battle for victory in one of the great races of the era, a race so thrilling that the BBC featured it in their 100 Great Sporting Moments series.

Both Crabtree and Thomas attended this year’s Motorsport at the Palace as special guests, along with the actual cars they raced 43 years ago. The late Gerry Marshall was represented by his son Gregor, with an identical replica of the Viva GT in which Marshall won the ’71 race.

The Thomas Camaro:

The Crabtree Escort:

And the Marshall Viva replica:

The '70 lineup also included the George Whitehead WRA Engineering Anglia. Campaigned by him in 1971; it featured in the May '69 issue of Car & Car Conversion. It fell into disrepair, but was restored in 2009:

And the Derek 'Doc' Merfiled/Jon Doubleday 'Fraud Cortina'. originally wit a Coventry-Climax FWMV V8 engine designed for F1. It currently runs a small-block Chevy V8: