Vintage Minor Register
The Lewis and Nicholson Trophy
Peter Hull’s History of the
VSCC, published in 1964 to mark the Club’s 30th Anniversary
contains a reference to
vintage Minors in the very first paragraph of the book:
“On October 5th 1934
a letter appeared in The Light Car under the signatures of C. P. L. Nicholson
and E. T. Lewis
suggesting the formation
of a club for pre-1931 sports cars. Colin Lindsay-Nicholson, who
described himself
‘Secretary’, was at the
time the owner of an Austin 7 whilst Ned Lewis, who, undertook to be ‘Competition
Secretary’,
had a 1930 Morris Minor.”
History tells how this
germ of an idea took root and the new club (then known as the Veteran Sports
Car Club
until the Veteran Car Club
complained) held its first meeting in Harrow on 23rd October.
Ned Lewis went on to found
the Northern Section in 1937.
So the founding Competition
Secretary of the VSCC campaigned a vintage Minor, and perhaps competitive
rivalry
in club circles between
the Minor and the Seven can now be dated to 1934 and these two gentlemen.
What more appropriate name
therefore to give an Austin Seven versus Morris Minor competition trophy
than
the Lewis and Nicholson
Trophy!
And so it is that the Lewis
and Nicholson Trophy is competed for anually at our Summer Rallies
when a team of vintage Sevens
challenges a team of vintage Minors in the Navigation Rally.