Hill-Climb Hero: A Centenary Outing in the GN Spider

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If you’ve ever attended a VSCC hill climb, you’ve almost certainly become acquainted with Spider. The oily, rattly, asymmetrical GN special built by Basil Davenport in 1924 has rarely been out of use during its 100-year existence.

Whereas today it divides its time between Prescott, Shelsley Walsh and other hills on the VSCC calendar, during its first competitive phase, from 1924 to 1930, it was campaigned mainly around the hill climbs and speed trials of north-west England, within easy reach of Davenport’s Macclesfield home. Victory at Shelsley was the Holy Grail for the young, speed-obsessed GN devotee, however, and he developed Spider very much with that in mind.

Spider originated as an unused racing chassis purchased from Archie Frazer-Nash following the dissolution of GN, round which Davenport constructed a razor-blade body inspired by Kim II. It was fast in 1924, but for 1925 Davenport went back to Frazer-Nash and bought the fearsome 1½-litre vee-twin which had been specially developed for the GN Mowgli Brooklands racer. In this guise, Spider was almost indomitable. It not only frequently won its class, but it rivalled Raymond Mays’s Bugattis and outpaced big three-litre sports cars, even holding the Shelsley record from 1926 to 1929.

Zack Stiling travelled to the Pennines to meet Spider, still very much original and unrestored, and its enthusiastic young owner at the site of its first ever hill-climb. It’s just as lively as ever, he reveals in the September issue of The Automobile, on sale now.

Photographs by Stefan Marjoram

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