In 1933, British racing driver John Cobb commissioned Reid Railton to design a car capable of breaking speed records. Railton decided to put an aircraft engine into the beast: the Napier Lion, a 24-litre W12 engine (three banks of four cylinders forming a W)… yes, that’s 2 litres per piston! It developed 500 bhp at just 2,200 rpm. The car was built by Thomson & Taylor, whose workshops stood alongside the Brooklands track. Brooklands would become the scene of numerous speed records, successively broken by Cobb at the wheel of his Napier-Railton, a car regarded as one of the finest pre-war racing cars ever built. If not the finest, then certainly the fastest: between 1933 and 1937, Cobb broke no fewer than 47 records at the wheel, including the Brooklands lap record at an average speed of 230 km/h, a record that would remain unbeaten until the circuit closed in 1939. After the war, record-breaking became something of a speciality for Cobb. He travelled to the USA with the Railton Mobil Special (powered by two Napier engines) and set a land speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats at over 634 km/h. He eventually lost his life while once again pursuing a speed record — on water this time.

The model shown here is a Penelope Pitlane kit. The British manufacturer specialises in historic racing cars and single-seaters, and this is one of the few pre-war cars in its catalogue. The kit is fairly comprehensive, with a reasonably clean resin body, a brass chassis and numerous white-metal parts — radiator grille, exhausts, filler caps, steering wheel, etc. — plus a driver figure which you’ll probably waste little time throwing away and replacing with something rather better looking. I chose a PSK figure. The kit presents no major difficulties, apart from a few separate body parts — the rear air scoop and exhaust fairings — which need some thinning and fettling to achieve a perfect fit. But, of course, I decided to create a few extra difficulties for myself… The front and rear suspension springs are moulded into the body, which isn’t exactly ideal. So I removed the lot with cutters and sanded everything smooth until there was no trace of them left. I then rebuilt the leaf springs, one leaf at a time, using Evergreen strip, glued together and completed with photo-etched spring clamps, rods, brackets, brass covers and so on, producing a far more satisfying result visually. The front grille was also modified. I didn’t use the original, which was a rather poorly cast metal part, and instead made a new photo-etched grille and painted it. I also added a few details to the chassis: some extra relief and texture, steering linkage, a little more openness through the wheels, buckles for the leather bonnet straps along with their brass hinges, and a complete aluminium dashboard with instruments and bezels. The beast is almost as heavy in scale as the real thing was — and that weighed more than two tonnes! The whole model is finished in Alclad Chrome. A rare model with an undeniably purposeful, thoroughbred look…

Napier-Railton 1933 – J. Cobb
(Kit Penelope Pitlane)