f1steveuk wrote:Like a swan going past. Not much happening on the surface, but going like the clappers below!
That's pretty much the size of it, Steve. And most of the frantic flapping is me keeping the thing alive. But there's some great people who help me, and if they weren't there, there wouldn't be a project worthy of the name and I guess I'd pack it up.
While it's you on here, being the F1 nut, I'll mention that I totally unexpectedly found myself looking at what must have been £30-40 million's worth of historic Grand Prix cars this morning - in a private collection. There's no way I can say where it was, but I am still in a state of shock and am just amazed at what lies locked away from the public gaze in places that, for obvious reasons, are kept low-key.
I was discussing the boat this afternoon with someone and I accidentally called it a car because my mind was still distracted!
Were they mainly red and white? I have been around a huge place where there are an awful lot of red and white (and the odd silver and orange) F1 cars, all vacuum sealed in big bags. BCE had a big collection when I worked for him (still does) in a private museum, that no one goes in!
Weirdest collection I was ever taken to see with F1 cars, all wrecks. Siffert's BRM, Williamson's March, Rindt's Lotus 72 (now being restored) those sort of cars, very dark! BCE still has Elio de Angelis' BT55, packed in a crate, but that is for a different reason....................
Steve Holter, UK and France, and sometimes reality....................
I'm aware of those collections, Steve - though I have only ever seen a few of the cars in question, when they've been loaned-out briefly for shows.
No, I can't let on where this was, as they were shown to me by the owner yesterday in a very gentlemanly and unassuming way and it wouldn't be very gentlemanly of me to blab. It was the weirdest experience, as I'm sure you will have felt on comparable occasions. All these 'ghosts' suddenly alive after all, salted away in semi-darkness. Several cars were unrestored, left just as they were when Rindt and other demigods stepped out of them. About 50 cars in all.
Anyway, that page is closed - for me at least. Even if I had countless millions of pounds, I'd only want to buy about six of them, plus an iconic F1 car transporter from the early 1970s that would I'm sure have lots of fascinating tales to tell if it could talk. But it was just amazing to see so many notable cars parked together in one place, where few even know they exist.
I wouldn't push to find out where it was Nigel, especially as I know people wiith similar collections. That some you saw weren't restored is actually pleasing to my ear. BCE has the Hunt McLaren M23/8-1, still with the flies sqaushed on the screen and bodywork from it's last run, anad Vanwall VW10, which when you sit in it, it is THE very seat Moss sat in, not a recoverd copy, like all od it's bumps and scrapes, gathered in battle, and left like scars. Sadly, most of his cars are polished where they were never polishes, and look like over size Tamiya kits.
If the lottery did me a favour, and nice Lotus 91 with a DFV would do for me!
Steve Holter, UK and France, and sometimes reality....................
There's something special about a car that's come straight from racing, ages ago, and has sat unrestored over all the intervening years. You are seeing it precisely as it was last seen by its driver as he climbed out of it, and it seems to carry with it the atmosphere of its time. This is something that can never be reproduced in restoration.
That said, a car smartly and sympathetically restored can be stunning.
I agree that over-restoration can rather spoil a car. On the American classic F1 scene, in particular, some owners have a little too much chrome-plate on their cars for my taste. They look somewhat tacky and 'unreal' - like toys.
Sympathy with the original spirit of the car is the key to presenting it well.
I've received several e-mails today asking why the Quicksilver website suddenly has less pages. The reason is that we're in the process of switching over to a new site format and it's going to result in some disruption to service, as the way things were set-up back in the dim-and-distant complicates the switch ('twas ever thus).
Don't ask the reasons why the new site is currently on www.quicksilver-wsr.co.uk, while the former one continues to occupy our far more popular .com address. It just is that way!
There will be a link from the former site to the new one soon, and the switch-over will gradually play out. Nothing has changed as far as the project as a whole is concerned. We are still trudging on.
Thanks for the kind comments, Mark. I don't know about cash, but the new site certainly improves our communications.
Income-wise, in all the time we've run a website, we've raised no more than a few hundred pounds. We don't sell merchandise, except for more recently the Inspirations book that I wrote to raise funds for the project, and of course we've never had a 'Donate' page.
The new website has some rough edges, still. Quite a few. And it lacks the depth of detail that the other site had in many areas, as there are many things not on there that really should be, but that'll be remedied as we go forward. The main thing is that we now have a much better platform for promoting our project to the wider world.
I was very proud of the previous website, in many ways. But we just ran out of steam with it. Ran out of enthusiasm for it and, frankly, didn't have the website-development skills you need to do it properly. Now we've got more help. But I still think it was a great site in its time.
You'll have noticed that we got rid of the black theme-colour. I was told that black is more associated with gaming sites! But, hell, a speed-record project is a gamble from the get-go!
We don't sell merchandise, except for more recently the Inspirations book that I wrote to raise funds for the project, and of course we've never had a 'Donate' page.
Why not? Donations and merchandise sales keep us in rivets and glue and, possibly most importantly, lets us engage much more closely with our followers.
I'm only a plumber from Cannock...
"As to reward, my profession is its own reward;" Sherlock Holmes.
'It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to.' W.C. Fields.
At some point maybe, Bill, but not as things are and have been. When people paid us for tickets for the big celebrity-dinner events we ran, they got a great night out. They benefitted right away. They got their money's-worth. The same, to a large extent anyway, with our supporters' clubs. We've held upwards of 65 club events for them, they have been able to see what we're doing at first hand, so there's been a payback for them.
But someone donating gets nothing. The time our project has taken, and is taking, means that people just straight-donating don't get sufficient payback - at least, that's how I view it - so I'd not feel comfortable about taking people's money on that basis.
When the boat's ready to run, it may well be a different matter. Then donators would be contributing to something more tangible.
I don't doubt that the BBP benefits greatly from donations, and that donators get a warm feeling. Every day, you can show photos of your progress. We can't do that. It's proved to be a tough old slog for us, with little or nothing to show, often-times, for our efforts, and so I'm glad we never had a 'Donate' button.
Crowdfunding or something - maybe. But only when it's going to give a tangible boost to what we're doing and the people doing the donating can see a clear-cut benefit for themselves.
Merchandising was a different matter. In our case it was a team-branded range of clothing that looked great and was good-quality product. You can sell something to someone and that person walks away with the goods. It's a payback situation for them, so it's a good thing. But in our case our supplier was letting us down, messing us about, and when that happens you start letting your customers down. The volumes weren't high enough in the first place to make it worth the work, and so I stopped it. Then the Inspirations book came along. I sell them by hand. You take £10 off someone, hand over a book with a signature in it, and it's done. It's an easy transaction, we make money and the buyer gets a nice book to either read himself or give as a gift. So that works, because they're happy and we're happy. And there's no supplier to worry about, because I produced the book myself and the stock is sitting there, so there's no quality-control or supply concerns to queer the pitch.
