This is the moment a 111-year-old steam-powered car made its return to competitive racing after a 100-year ban imposed by motorsport regulators.
After years of lobbying the Motor Sport Association, steam car fan Dr Bob Dyke and his colleagues managed to get the ban lifted in September 2015 and have been eagerly waiting for the start of the 2016 racing season to put tyre to tarmac.
Accordingly, Bob took his 1905 steam-powered racing car, called Whistling Billy, to the Chateau Impney Hill Climb in Droitwich, and in his first run of the day he completed the 1,000-yard course, described as one of the most challenging hill climb courses in the country, in 92.07 seconds from a standing start.
The original Whistling Billy was one of the fastest of any type of car on the American dirt track races in the early 20th century; it was built by the White Sewing Machine Company in 1905 and engineered specifically for racing.
Originally known as the ‘White Rocket’, the car was renamed ‘Whistling Billy’ by fans due to the howling noise that came from its burners as it went down the straights.
It won numerous races in its early years and in 1905.
The end of Whistling Billy was in 1912 during a practice run in Portland, Oregon, where it crashed over an embankment and was found upside down, broken in half.
The driver was seriously injured, but survived, and following the crash, the car was said to have ended up in storage, before being moved onto a farm and left to rust and ruin.
Bob Dyke, who set about building his own version of Whistling Billy more than ten years ago, had acquired a number of original parts which were manufactured for Whistling Billy and had components from another 1907 White steam car he had bought over a decade before.
With the car completed, he then had to do battle with the MSA so he could finally race the machine.
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