One announcement that was made not too long ago to Deeley Classics regulars concerned the necessity to adjust the speeds required on regularity events. They may have been the same since the event started way back in nineteen hundred and frozen to death, but things have changed nowadays, and my rallies must change accordingly. Back in 1984 you didn't have speed limits, and often very low speed limits at that, in virtually every single village, you didn't have all those new-fangled chicanes and slow-you-up hazards all over the place, you didn't have speed humps, sometimes singularly vicious speed humps, scattered everywhere (you should have seen the ones we came across in Andalucìa - like climbing the north face of the Eiger!), you didn't have just more and more overall limits generally, making it more and more difficult to regain your average legally, you didn't have as much traffic either, and all in all you didn't have the same problems all round that you do now in this 21st century.

On the last day of Claret & Classics back in 2007, seeing what was going on, I just overall lowered the top averages by 5 kph, though retaining 40 kph as the bottom speed, just to see the reaction. You might think that a small reduction like that wouldn't make much difference, but I can report that everybody, and I mean everybody, told me afterwards that even that little amount did make one hell of a difference, and took away a lot of the necessity to be over-frantic.

Accordingly as of now, or as of the next such event, obviously, expected speeds will be that:

Cars up to and including 1965** will now be able to choose between 40, 45 and 50 kph

Cars 1966** and onwards will be able to choose between 45 and 50 kph.

I assume that most people will NOT choose 50. In fact they will be positively encouraged not to do so.

**I have changed the dates to the above because the mid-sixties saw a big changeover in the classic car world generally, with many "old-style" marques, things like Austin-Healey, Riley, Standard, Alvis, whatever, disappearing for ever, and particular models doing the same. Where a marque or a model survived for a year or so but then winked out, e.g. Healey 3000 until 1968, I could relax things for them and extend the above dates. Speak to me nicely and wheedle a bit.

A surprising number of people who I would never have expected to be interested in my Treasure Hunts have told me that, yes, they could be under the right circumstances. Given luck and a fair wind. Remember, these are occasional events where the driving is not of any importance as such as it is in a rally, you only use the cars to get somewhere, so to speak. Yes, it is nice for everyone to be in classics and I encourage this as much as I can, since they do open doors for us (no, no pun intended), but it's not always possible. We had one event at the beginning of January 2007, for instance, on an exceedingly wet weekend in the Cotswolds (par for the course for the rest of 2007, as it turned out), where I think most people were very glad to be ensconced in their warm and cosy little Euroboxes - though one other team plus myself brought nice big Rolls-Royces, and could thus afford to be quite impossibly smug. On the event in January of 2008 we had quite a few classics, even pre-war, which was nice.

Treasure Hunts these days are either held abroad, normally about five days long, with equivalent costs (though much less than rallies, since there are no marshals involved), or like those ones in January 2007 and 2008, a quick Friday night to Sunday lunchtime short weekend break, with some complicated mindgames with Devious Deeley shoehorned into the available time. Quite fun, and simple to find time for, but the trouble about events in this country is that half the point of these Treasure Hunts is to have a nice gastronomic weekend, and like it or not, the food is seldom as good in this country as it is abroad unless you pay through the nose. Yes, yes, of course there are exceptions, but you see what I mean. But places do exist. Suggestions welcome.

If you are also ever interested in one of these events for your own friends or club or organisation, get in touch with me NOW, and I'll try to tailor something around you. It needn't necessarily be classic cars, either; think corporate events.






NOTICE TO CLUBS:

Deeley Classics will be glad to organise events for clubs and organisations, or offer them a pre-arranged package. This might mean actual straight organisation of a special event (for example, Roger Deeley has been running the Jaguar Drivers Club Annual Rally for several years on the trot; in 2007 it happened in May in the Cheltenham area, and in 2008 it was over in the east around the Huntingdon/Cambridge area; in 2009 it will be around Exmoor and the Doone Country in Somerset), or the organisation of something like a Treasure Hunt, a Rally or even just a Tour, exclusively for members of the club in question.