This was to be my introduction to veteran & vintage cars as the veteran car club was having a run to Baccus Marsh that day.  Amongst the cars was one that I would never forget right throughout my life although even then I realized it was beyond my wildest dreams to own something like this and still is.  This car was The original 1908 Hill climb Semering Benz race-car.  It was a huge beast with two wheel brakes & chain drive to the rear wheels and a 4 cylinder engine of 18litres.  It was owned at that time by Lynden Duckett.  It had a shattering performance.  I think it was the first time in my life I fell in love with a piece of machinery.  It was awesome.  It had a traditional race car body of the period of polished aluminium and a German Silver radiator. It had a bonnet top, but no sides, and was held down with 2 leather straps, these were connected to the Chassis rails. Add one bulkhead and two bucket seats and an oval fuel tank behind them. There were no mudguards over the large wooden spoked wheels and the rear wheels were driven by a very large chain, running on the outside of the chassis rails either side of the car. It had a brass steering column and a quadrant in the centre of the wood rim steering wheel and a monical type windscreen mounted off the steering column. A8Ltrs, in 4 cylinders with open push rods. It was a huge beast or so it seemed at the time. One must remember I was only 17 at the time, but it was a very big car and I was to see it a number of times later at different venues. I cant remember the other cars that were there on that day as I only had eyes for the Benz.

Duckett invited a friend of his to join him for a quick run up the hill out of town.  So he accepted climbing into the passenger bucket seat with a huge smile on his face.  They set off with him gripping the sides of his seat. On arriving back in a very short time later the passenger was looking decidedly white around the gills and is just sitting in the seat still hanging on.  Duckett jumps down saying there is something wrong with the chain drive, on inspection he stated “Oh Buggar!”
“I have stretched the chains.”
With that his passenger climbed down very slowly saying “that’s not all you have bloody stretched”
Meaning their friendship wasn’t quite what it used to be.  He then made his way into the pub to fortify his nerves and to find a seat that wasn’t moving quite so quickly.

During my life time I have had the privilege of viewing a couple of other race cars of this type in action.  One was the Bob Chamberlain re birthed 15 Litre, L48 Napier Race car. This also was a huge powerful beast of a car and very fast.  I saw this car at a display in the Footscray area at an oval and was similar to the Benz but a much longer and talleer car. The story I was told about this car was that while speed testing, this car decelerated so quickly that the tires spun on the rims and sheared off the valves. 

The other memorable car was seen at the Canberra national Rally in 1980. It was a similar car to the ones above in that it was chain drive, with a minimum of body (Two Bucket seats and a petrol tank, seemed to be sufficient), This one was the Liberty aero-engined, chain drive, two wheel braked, Replica race car, called the M.A.B.  With memories of a man asking the driver of the M.A.B. “How fast does it go ?”
The reply came back “I don’t know! It depends how big, and how much .”balls you’ve got & I haven’t been game to find out yet as I am not that bloody crazy.

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