As the Veteran Car Run prepares to celebrate the 120th anniversary of the Ladies Automobile Club, we talked to a number of women who take part in the Run from the driving seat. Often it’s something that’s passed down their family, as in the case of Sarah Lee (nee Brooks), the daughter of the internationally renowned auctioneer and tremendous enthusiast for and supporter of the Run, the late Robert Brooks, who made her maiden drive on the Run in 2023.

My first memories of veteran cars stem from when I was really young - probably four or five years old - when my father used to drive a 1895 Peugeot on the Run. It didn’t belong to him but used to be delivered to near where my parents lived in London the day before the event. My younger brothers and I weren’t old enough to join him on the Run, but we would spend the Saturday helping prepare for it and my father would take us on laps around the block. He was so passionate about it, and his enthusiasm and excitement for these magical cars naturally passed on to us children. 

My first experience of being a passenger on the Veteran Car Run came a few years later on a 1898 Mors - our first family-owned veteran car - when I was around nine or ten, but I only went a handful of times as a child. I really loved it but, for whatever reason, my brothers were more enthusiastic initially, so they did it more than I did. But I always enjoyed it, and always got involved the day before. When Bonhams sponsored the Run, there was a sale on the Friday night and an event on the Saturday that we’d all attend as a family. By that stage the Concours had started as well, and everyone drove the cars around Hyde Park – all fabulous fun!

 

 

Once I had my own children, they got involved, as did my brothers’ children, so the family love of the Run is being passed down the generations. It was my niece Maggie who inspired me to drive for the first time.  Around Easter 2023, when she was 10, she asked why I was the only one of my siblings who didn’t drive.  She and my daughter Jemima have loved the Run since they were first passengers aged five and they can’t wait to drive themselves in a few years. I wanted to show them it was achievable and said I would drive that year… but I had to learn how in just over six months!

My first lessons were on my mother’s farm, where we have an Oldsmobile that my father bought the day one of my children was born. I think my brother Charlie was the brave one who gave me my first lesson - and it's definitely a lot harder than it looks!  All the technology that you rely on when you drive a modern car, all those checks that you do automatically, are gone. You touch a brake in a modern car and it stops, but it’s a different experience in a veteran car. You have to plan ahead, it’s a different way of thinking. Driving with a tiller rather than a steering wheel was certainly new.

The farm is near Exmoor, so it’s quite hilly and definitely not ideal for a first lesson in a veteran car but it was great fun. All the family were involved – between my brothers and I there are ten children under the age of eleven, and they were all watching and cheering when I stalled. 

The car then moved to the amazing Richard Peskett’s premises in Sussex to be prepared for the Run, and I went there for some more lessons. I think I only had two or three with him, so I really hadn’t had much experience before tackling the Run.

Everybody kept saying “Oh you’ll be fine”, I think because they knew that my father had done the Run so many times, and Charlie and John have driven it since they were 17, so everyone just assumed that I could do it. But I was incredibly nervous.

I did a bit more driving in London the day before the Run but for my first long-distance drive to include going through London and on such a public event was quite daunting. I took a friend with me, knowing that he’d been a passenger before and thinking that I would let him do most of the driving. But it’s one of those things, a bit like running a marathon or any of those mass public events where you have people on the side cheering you on and you’re just carried along on a wave of enthusiasm. I enjoyed myself so much that I didn’t want to stop and I drove the entire Run myself. 

 

I found the whole experience completely thrilling – the atmosphere on the day is intoxicating!  Starting in Hyde Park in the dark, the lamplit cars, it’s magical. It’s an assault on the senses when you smell the oil and hear the engines, and you’re surrounded by a group of truly passionate enthusiasts. You have to love it to put all that time and energy into the cars in the first place, and then to get up at 4.30am to get to Hyde Park on a November morning and commit to spending eight hours behind the wheel. We made it down relatively quickly last year, but it was still about seven hours, and it’s exhausting because you concentrate to such an extreme level and in a different way to how you do in a modern car.

The Oldsmobile can only take one passenger, so my children joined my husband Ed on a Thornycroft that’s been beautifully restored by Duncan and Francis Wood and their brilliant team at Fairbourne Carriages. Across the family we had eight children under ten on the run and this year there will be one more as John’s eldest daughter is now old enough to join him on his Peugeot; it’s a real family occasion for us. 

All the children are already set on learning to drive a veteran as soon as they’ve passed their driving tests, so it’s going down to another generation. The girls are particularly keen, which the women of the Ladies Automobile Club would have approved of, I’m sure. And I think the ladies would also have approved of the fact that Maggie – and her younger brother William – came up with the idea for the children’s activity sheet which proved so popular at last year’s St. Jame’s Concours.

The Veteran Car Run is so special for us as a family because it’s something my father was so passionate about. It was one of his all-time favourite hobbies, and favourite weekends. It was always such a big weekend for the family and there are traditions which we have continued, like watching Genevieve the night before with various friends. 

I was on such a high after driving on the event last year, and I’m very much looking forward to doing it all over again this November. I am joining Ed and the children on the Thornycroft this time, so I need to learn to drive another car!