The Club met once again to enjoy our Reunion Dinner, this time at a new venue for us, the New Lanark Mill Hotel in the village of New Lanark, a former 18th century cotton spinning mill village located on the banks of the Falls of Clyde.
The venue for our two previous gatherings were unable to give us a suitable date for our 2024 so this alternative was found and proved to be very popular.
VSMA Chairman Chris Paton was pleased to welcome 76 members to this our 10th reunion.
The day started in the early afternoon as there was work to do setting up for the AGM and also finalising the table plan for dinner.
As always there was a good mix of rallying and racing buffs and a few hill climb fans joining together for an excellent meal and several refreshments.
Following it’s popularity of last year we again had the “all ladies” table to sit alongside the normal “all men” table.
Again having proved very popular last year we had the on-screen display of photos, this time being those submitted by members attending the event.
We were delighted to annouce our guest speaker Pat Smith whose Motorsport career began in 1959 and continued until 1975 having been involved in Rallying as a Co-Driver.
Pat competed in 35 International Rallies with mostly female drivers, from the Portugese with Nancy Mitchell in 1959 to the Scottish with Margaret Lowrey in 1975.
She won five Ladies Awards and was a member of the BMC Works Team in 1960 in a 850cc Mini with Tish Ozanne.
She competed in 4 Montes, 3 Tulips, 2 Alpines, 4 RACs and 6 Scottish Rallies ’66, ’69,’70, ’72, ’73 and ’75.
Six successful Economy Runs with Margaret Lowrey.
Pat finished 18th in 1970 London to Mexico World Cup Rally with Jean Denton in a British Leyland Special Tuning prepared Morris 1800 entered by Woman Magazine.
Pat gave us a spell binding account of her adventure competing on the gruelling 1970 World Cup Rally from London to Mexico. On display were many items of memorabilia as well as reproductions of the route maps which were included in the souvenir program (see below).
An important guest was Linda Cowan who had contacted the Association with the kind offer to provide a trophy to be awarded annually to a Scottish Motor Sport enthusiast, of any discipline, who had made an outstanding contribution to motor sport. The trophy will be named the Andrew Cowan Achievement Award.
Chairman Chris Paton was pleased to annouce that in consultation with Linda, the board unanimously decided the first recipient of the award should be our Honorary Vice President, Jimmy McInnes.
Once again there was a souvenir programme with a centre spread detailing the guest speaker’s background story.
Click on the image below to view the Programme.
A straw poll conducted during the event showed that there is the support to hold the event annually and therefore we are planning to hold our 11th reunion in October or November 2025. When a firm date is set and a venue decided we will make an announcement.