5 cool cars to see in the Earl Howe trophy

Lagonda V12

If any car deserves its place at the Earl Howe Trophy, it's this 1938 Lagonda V12 that Howe took to a record-breaking hundred miles in an hour at Brooklands in 1939 despite suffering a puncture during his attempt. Built after the company's famous Le Mans win – its 90th anniversary is this year – the Lagonda features various high-tech innovations of the time and claims to be the first car to have hydraulic disc brakes. But the star of the show is the V12 engine, which owner  Les Searle says is "very smooth" and " quite high revving."

Searle reports the Lagonda, with its big engine up front, needs to be treated with respect, although he reports it is "very, very forgiving" despite the V12 thumping out 200PS (147kW) – impressive now; imagine what it felt like in the 1930s. 

Frazer Nash Nürburg

Frazer Nash 1 1/2 litre Super Sports Nürburg will be another rare machine – one of just three built – taking to the circuit at this year's Earl Howe Trophy. The car is named after AFP Fane, who bought chassis number 2040 (registered MV 2303) and finished it with a two-seater body designed by Fane and built by London-based coachbuilder Corsica. He entered the car in the 1500cc support race at the 1932 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring.

Ultimately failing to finish, Fane's adventure inspired two more buyers to specify Nürburg cars with the same two-seater body. The Nürburg cost £650 and was fitted with a 1496cc Meadows 4ED engine heavily modified by Frazer Nash in fact, only parts like the block, crankcase and sump remained unchanged. 

Bugatti Type 35Bs

Race cars from the 1930s don't come more iconic than the Bugatti Type 35B, a car whose styling is so iconic that it directly influences how cars look today. It's not just Bugattis that the Type 35 influenced; it was the first car ever to have cast alloy wheels – so you know who to thank for your sparkling rims.

Type 35 wasn't just about aesthetics; under the skin, you'll find a straight-eight engine that revs to a spritely 6,000rpm and, in B specification, gets a little extra juice from a large supercharger that pushes power up to 140PS (103kW). It's a machine to behold, particularly when it weighs under 800kg, thanks to innovations like a hollow front axle. 

Vauxhall 30-98

Vauxhall was a very different brand in the 1910s and 1920s. Back then it was developing cars specifically for motor racing. The 30-98 was just such a car, it won the Shelsley Walsh hill climb in 1913 and had a top speed of 100mph – a number some owners demanded to verify on the banked straights of Brooklands. 

The 30-98s name is believed to be based on the fact that the engine produced 30PS (22kW) at 1,000rpm and 98PS (73kW) at 3,000rpm, although a less technical explanation is that it sounded like the Mercedes 38/90. 

Bentley 4 ½ Litre ‘Blower’

Five wins at Le Mans entrenched the race in Bentley's history, and it owes a large part of that to this – the  4½ Litre. High-tech for its time, the Bentley 4.4-litre was based on the firm's 6½ Litre, but with two cylinders lopped off, the four-cylinder featured an overhead cam and four valves per cylinder – twice as many as rivals. Standard output sat at 110PS (81kW), climbing to 132PS (97kW) in competition-prepared cars. The motor was then paired to a 3-litre 3,302mm chassis – the result was a car lighter than the 6½ Litre model and faster than the old 3-litre. 

The arrival of a supercharger significantly increased performance, with maximum power climbing to 177PS (131kW), and the Blower Bentley was born. The car would later be labelled the "fastest lorry in the world" by Ettore Bugatti because of its surprising pace and heavyweight build quality.  

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Photography by Joe Harding, Jayson Fong and Nick Wilkinson.