Back in 1981 Dennis Miller-Williams, the Public Relations Manager of Rolls-Royce Motors watched his first Le Mans 24-hour race and was fascinated. With his Bentley hat on, he was even more intrigued to realize that, including Bentley's five victories in the 1920s, British cars had won Le Mans more times than those of any other country. To cap it all, 1982 would be the 50th Le Mans race since the series began in 1923.
What better way of marking the anniversary than by staging a parade of British winning cars before the race itself?
So a steering committee was formed, representing the victorious British marques - Bentley, Jaguar, Ford and Aston Martin Lagonda - and the task of gathering together the winning cars or exact look-alikes got under way.
The Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO), which has organized the Le Mans 24-hour race since its inception, was initially sceptical that we could field the promised cars, but when we assured them we would definitely be bringing fifteen vintage racers to represent the fifteen British winners, they set to and produced several Le Mans winners from their museum.
We brought a replica of the famous British Le Mans winner, 3-litre Bentley "Old No 7", meticulously recreated by noted Bentley restorer Len Wilton. Additionally, we had four more vintage Bentleys, an Aston Martin DB3S, a 4.5-litre Lagonda and five Jaguars - C and D types.
The race-day cavalcade proved a tremendous success. The ACO was amazed to find, in its post-race opinion poll of the weekend's events that it had proved almost as popular with the huge crowd as the race itself.
It was apparent that what had been intended as a one-off celebration could become a regular feature of the pre-race warm-up period. So the two prime movers in organizing that original cavalcade, Dennis Miller-Williams and Ray Wiltshire, President of the Bentley Drivers' Club, set up Motoring Cavalcades to oversee its continuation, with generous support in the early years from the late Tom Northey of Pirelli Tires.
Nowadays, the main sponsorship is provided by AON, a company that offers specialized classic car insurance, but the basic ethos remains the same: to take an outstanding selection of Le Mans cars back to the circuit to parade before the crowds before the 24-hour race and to have fun doing it!
Virtually every car in the cavalcade is driven to Le Mans and back, a round trip of at least 500 miles.
It's on the road that these old warriors really come to life - which is as it should be, for the original purpose of the Le Mans 24-hour race was to test the endurance of touring cars on the public highway. Over the years I've been lucky enough to ride in many of the participating vehicles, from a D-Type Jaguar raced (and crashed) at Le Mans in 1956 to the famed Bentley "Old No One", which on one memorable occasion was driven by Prince Michael of Kent.
I've ridden down, too, in the sister car to the '27 winner, Bentley "Old No 8", but perhaps my most memorable Le Mans Cavalcade came in 1998 when Victor Gauntlett generously allowed me to drive his newly-acquired 3-litre Bentley to Le Mans and back.
Perhaps the greatest contribution made by the Cavalcade is the way it has kept the Bentley flame alive over the years, to the extent that in 2001 the company felt that the very best way to celebrate its heritage was to enter a brand new racing car at Le Mans for the first time for over 70 years.
Over the years my friend Ray Wiltshire acted as both ringmaster and headmaster to the irrepressible band of friends that he christened "Cavalcadians", many of whom have been coming to Le Mans with us since the 1980s. Ray's "school reports" on the motoring misadventures of the Cavalcadians were a hilarious feature of his addresses to the troops at the many marvellous meals that we've shared over the years. It's difficult - almost impossible - to realise that no longer will we be admonished not to pass the "fastest 3-litre" on the Mulsanne Straight, but we can be sure that somewhere in the wide blue yonder Ray is advising WO Bentley and Woolf Barnato on the secrets of go-faster driving, Wiltshire style.
Ray, we shall miss you - but thank you for making it all so much fun.
This article is adapted with permission from a longer feature on the Le Mans Motoring Cavalcade in the summer 2002 issue of Automobile Quarterly.
