The route for this year’s London to Brighton veteran car run has been confirmed, with The Mall included for only the second time in half a century.
London’s famous red-asphalted promenade was a long-standing feature of the famous event, but since 1962 has been included just once when the original Emancipation Run celebrated its centenary in 1996.
When the pioneering horseless carriages line up for this year’s run, held by tradition on the first Sunday in November, they will leave Hyde Park and pass under Wellington Arch, head down Constitution Hill toward Buckingham Palace, round the Victoria Memorial and drive down The Mall before turning into Horse Guards Road and the left towards Parliament Square, Big Ben, and Westminster Bridge. The 2014 event falls on 2 November, the first cars leaving as always at sunrise which is predicted to be 06:56am.
A total of 433 entries, all built before 1905, have been received by organisers the Royal Automobile Club, with the oldest being a 4hp open tonneau Truchutet thought to be from 1888.
Claimed to be the world’s longest running motoring event, the London to Brighton run was first held on 14 November 1896 to mark the Locomotives on the Highway Act which raised the speed limit for so-called ‘light locomotives from 4 to 14mph and abolished the requirement for the vehicles to be preceded by a man on foot waving a red flag. This run was first re-enacted in 1927 and has been held annually ever since, interrupted in the 1940s by the war.
The free-to-view event is caps a long weekend of motoring nostalgia in the capital, with the Bonhams Veteran Car Auction taking place on Friday 31 October and the free Regent Street Motor Show on Saturday 1 November.
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