Viva Brighton Issue #36 February 2016

inside left: speedway cars, 1939
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We decided to use this picture – perfect for the ‘Brighton at Play’ theme – in this slot because
we were charmed that there used to be a dodgem car ride in exactly the space where the British
Airways i360 tower now stands, between Regency Square and the West Pier. So we located Britain’s
foremost dodgem car expert, Kay Townsend (author of Dodgems, where did they come from?)
to find out more. And it turns out these weren’t bumper cars at all. “You’ll notice these weren’t
run by electricity,” she says, “and don’t have the trolley pole attached to a ceiling. They actually
had their own little engines. They were called ‘speedway’ cars, and they were manufactured from
1934 by a company based in Coventry called ‘Supercar’.” The cars, powered by 98cc 2-stroke
Villiers engines and achieving a maximum speed of 10mph, would race (clockwise only!) round
the wooden track: they were not designed to bump into one another. In the Brighton Museum
archive the picture is listed twice, once dated ‘c1930’, once ‘1939’; as these cars weren’t manufactured
until 1934, we’re assuming the latter to be correct. From the shallowness of the shadows
(and despite the overcoat the trilby-hatted spectator is wearing) we’re also assuming the picture
to have been taken in mid-summer, and therefore before the outbreak of the war. By July 2nd
1940, in fact, Brighton beach was closed off. The Supercar factory, requisitioned by the government
to produce munitions, was bombed to smithereens by the Luftwaffe in 1942. Manufacture
of the cars continued after the war in a different factory in Leamington; when ‘dodgems’ became
more popular, a lot of the speedway chassis were converted for the purpose.
Thanks to Brighton Museum for permission to use this picture; you can see many more pictures of
old Brighton in their archives at brightonmuseums.org.uk.
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