Category:Brighton and Hove Motor Club (BHMC)

1929: Brighton and Hove Motor Club events schedule [image info]

2018: BHMC logo on a Brighton Speed Trials banner [image info]

Brighton and Hove Motor Club (BHMC) are closely associated with the motor events that take place on Madeira Drive, and have a clubhouse set into the arches under the sea wall, near Duke's Mound. It is the BHMC that organise the yearly 'Brighton Speed Trials.

We're not sure exactly when the BHMC was founded, but there are references to them in print going back to at least the mid-1920s – the earliest that we've found so far being of the Club's plans to create a five-mile racetrack,presumably somewhere near Brighton Racecourse.

Cuttings:

1926: The racing circuit that was never built

MOTOR ROAD RACING IN ENGLAND

THOSE interested in the development of the motor car have never ceased to regret that racing under road conditions is impossible in Great Britain. Nothing does so much towards furthering and perfecting design and the track is little more than a substitute. In Great Britain we have had to be content with this substitute and even this has recently been so limited in its possibilities, through short-sighted and prejudiced obstructionism, that many of our leading manufacturers have had to conduct their most important tests and experiments on the Continent. The harmful effect on the whole British industry is obvious, and really serious and exacting car testing has become the exclusive prerogative of wealthy firms who, perhaps, need it least. For these reasons it is to be hoped that the new road track in course of construction at Brighton will successfully materialise. It is a road course of some five miles in length in which hills and bends have been incorporated and which, by the natural configuration of the surrounding land to form a huge amphitheatre, will be visible to spectators for practically its whole length.

The racing and car testing possible on such a course will be superior, not only to those previously conducted on Brooklands Track, but also to those on many of the best known Continental road courses and it is at least possible that we shall in due course witness a turning of the tables so complete that foreign makers will be sending their cars over to England for their most important tests and race meetings. But we do not know whether there is a house so close to the course that the occupiers might occasionally hear the suspicion of an exhaust note. If there is the Brighton and Hove Motor Club — the promoting body — will have to make hay while the sun shines.

— , -, , Country Life, , 27th November 1926

1958: Coach rallies

ROAD passenger transport is the richer for the institution of the British coach rally, the fourth of which has been held at Brighton under the auspices of our contemporary, Passenger Transport. It affords standards of excellence in design, comfort and safety in the vehicles and of smart appearance and skill in their crews which must stimulate any operator ambitious for public support to greater efforts. It is all very well for a manager to believe his driver can drive well; let him come to the rally and see that others can do better! Let him see also that there are features of body layout which can be improved either at once or when new vehicles are on order; what appeals to the very representative body of judges who assess the concours d’elegance may well correspond with what tickles the fancy of the general public. Particularly important is the emphasis laid in the features for which marks are given in the concours upon the comfort and convenience of the driver's cab layout and the comfort afforded the passenger. Safety aspects also receive particular attention. As a two-day event the rally owes much to the enthusiasm of members of the Brighton and Hove Motor Club and of the Omnibus Society, who checked the road tests and acted as marshals respectively; it also arouses considerable enthusiasm among the general public and stirs up interest in coach travel in no uncertain manner. The users of coaches can see for themselves that if there is only one winner fer each event, the vehicles attain a high standard; they might well conclude that there are no bad coaches, but that there are certainly better ones.

— , -, , Modern Transport, , 26th April 1958

External links

• Brighton and Hove Motor Club, Homepage (bhmc.club)
• Brighton and Hove Motor Club (wikipedia.org)