When Ann Gibbins and her daughters Vicky and Michelle drive their 1903 De Dion Bouton from London to Brighton this Sunday, it will be the first time they have taken part in the Veteran Car Run without Ann’s late husband, her daughters’ father David. David was determined that his family would continue to take part on the Run even though he knew he would no longer be here to join them, and this year’s entry was one of the final things he organised for them in the weeks before he passed away in February. 

“David made us promise that we would continue doing the Run after he was gone,” explains Ann. “But he left nothing to chance. He was amazing – while he was in the hospice, his friend Gregg May from Autohistoric visited him and David arranged that the De Dion would be serviced, prepared and delivered to London for this year’s Run for us.”

Ann came to the Run through her relationship with David, though her father used to take his family to watch it go by when she was a child, so she was not unfamiliar with the event when she started dating David in 1980. His family were already regular participants on the Run (see image below) – their involvement with veteran cars having begun many decades earlier – and Ann’s first experience of taking part was as a passenger on David’s uncle John Jarvis’s Panhard et Levassor in November 1980.

Uncle John had a garage on London’s Edgware Road at the turn of the previous century, originally dealing in made-to-measure bicycles and then moving into selling cars. He also had a workshop in a garage in one of the viaduct arches in Notting Hill. The 1903 De Dion that Ann and her daughters will drive on Run was found in the early 1960s by Uncle John. The exact story is a little unclear, but it's known that he found and repaired the car, and it’s been in the family ever since. He had quite a knack of uncovering interesting cars in need of care and attention, several of which remain in the family to this day.

Ann explains that the De Dion has always been viewed as something of a lady’s car by the family, and her and her daughters driving it on the Veteran Car Run is continuing a Gibbins family tradition. “It's a very pretty car, with basket weave trim over some of the paintwork, and John saw it as a car for ladies. His wife – David’s Aunt Enid – drove it for many years and I was a passenger with her for quite a few Runs in the 1980s and ‘90s.”

Over the decades, John’s cars have passed through the family, the De Dion going to David and Ann. They joined the Veteran Car Club some 20 years ago and drove the De Dion on the Run ever since, apart from a few years when they piloted the family’s 1899 Panhard et Levassor, which now belongs to David’s twin brother Allan. Allan and his son Michael will drive the Panhard to Brighton this Sunday, continuing the family tradition.

John also left his family two ‘modern’ cars in the form of a pair of Rolls-Royce Silver Ghosts. These were members of a trio of Rolls-Royces he found in a barn in the 1950s and restored. Ann points out that these are, of course, much too young to take part in the Veteran Car Run, one of her daughters chiming in “If only! We’d be in Brighton and eating our sandwiches on the seafront by lunchtime!”

Having been a passenger on the Run for years, Ann eventually plucked up the courage to get behind the wheel. Her very first time ever driving the De Dion was in a big car park, just to get a feel for the car. “This was over 20 years ago and then I started driving a little section on the Run – we’d stop for coffee and I’d take over driving duties for a short stretch. Then, about 10 years or so ago, I’m ashamed to say that I got rather drunk on gin one night and apparently declared ‘I’ll drive that car down there this year’. And of course, David viewed this as a verbally binding contract and said, ‘right OK, you’re driving it’. So I drove the car the whole way. And from then on it was a bit of a double act with my husband and myself - we’d take it in turns.”

Vicky and Michelle, of course, grew up with veteran cars and the Run - they are in the car in the photo above, just not visible! David was very keen that his daughters learn how to drive the De Dion and, when they old enough, taught them how to do so on the roads near their home in East Sussex.

“And suddenly they were doing it one year and David and I were in the tender car,” Ann recalls. 

"That was Vicky’s fault” adds Michelle. “There may have been drink involved again – she had slightly too much Pinot at Christmas and told Dad that we’d drive the De Dion to Brighton. I knew nothing about that until a week or so later, when I found out that Dad had entered our names, signing us up before we could back out.”

 

All three ladies talk about how different driving a veteran car is to being behind the wheel of not only a modern vehicle, but even to being at the controls of their 1911 Silver Ghost, Ann noting, “All of the management of the De Dion is done on the steering wheel. There are no foot pedals at all, so your gears, your accelerator, your clutch, everything is on the steering wheel.  You need to be an octopus to drive the car, which is why it’s essential to have another person with you. It wasn’t an easy car to master.”

“Unless you’re Dad” comments Vicky. “He had octopus arms, apparently!”

Ann continues, “The Silver Ghost is a huge car, and it's really heavy to drive but it's got a pretty much standard three-gear gearbox. The De Dion is completely different … the long stopping distances, constantly being alert to other cars pulling out, whose drivers have no idea that we can’t stop in time.  It was a real learning curve to be able to drive it, and I remember being completely terrified the day I drove it the whole way to Brighton for the first time because prior to that I used to get David to do the difficult bits – central London, Clayton Hill etc. – and I’d do the nice easy bits and then of course I was doing it all. It is very scary, you know and it takes a lot of practice to become confident in driving these cars.” 

There is an unexpected twist to the story and one of which we suspect David – and his uncle John – would thoroughly approve. Michelle has recently given up her organisational development and leadership coaching career in the healthcare industry and next Monday, the day after the Run, she moves into the veteran car world, starting work with Gregg May at Autohistoric.

“I’m very excited about this.  I went to see Gregg to do some driving and one conversation led to another and here we are! I'm looking forward to a lot of learning - I've got a very steep learning curve ahead of me, but I vaguely know my way around an engine and I helped last year when we needed to do some repairs on the De Dion before the Brighton Run. Dad’s mobility had suffered quite a lot by that point, so I put leaf springs back, put in wheels back on, reattached propshafts etc.  I had to do a few repairs on the route last year, with Dad directing me verbally. We managed to get the clutch working again which is always a bonus... I spent 25 minutes on the ground in a petrol station forecourt with the floor out of the car, trying to find second gear again but I found it, and we did get to Brighton.”

The Di Dion is a two-seater, so the ladies will take in turns to crew, alternating places in a modern car driven by Michelle’s husband Jake – although all three women will, of course, squeeze in to cross the Brighton finish line, and David will absolutely be with them all in spirit.

It would be entirely understandable if a story which starts with such a recent loss was a sombre affair. However, our discussion with Ann and her daughters was full of laughter, their memories of so many Veteran Car Runs with David demonstrating the joy the family takes in the event. Nobody is under any illusion that this will be an easy Run for them – it will be highly emotional for the ladies themselves and for David’s brother and nephew and his many friends and fellow Run participants in the South-East Section of the Veteran Car Club. But the wealth of support they are being offered is heartfelt and heartwarming, as Ann describes: “I've had so many calls and messages from people to say ‘we'll be looking out for you on the on the Run… don't worry if you get stuck, we’ll stop to help.’ So I think if there's a crowd somewhere blocking the road it'll be people helping us, which is wonderful. It’s a very special community.”

The veteran car world has wrapped its arms around this family, and we wish them all the very best for their journey from London to Brighton this weekend and as they begin this new chapter in their veteran motoring life. 

The last word comes from Ann: “It will be very emotional for us all this year, but we made a promise to David that we would do it, not only for this year, but continue to use the cars and so that's what we're going to do.”