Scottish Motor Sport Museum ??

I mentioned the lack of a Scottish motor sport museum and archive in a recent Post which prompted ace photographer Frank Love to ask if something similar had not been proposed for a site near the Rest & Be Thankful some time ago. Indeed a proposal had been announced in 2017 but nothing came of it.

In fact, this was just the most recent attempt to create a lasting and physical tribute to the history and achievements of Scots in motoring and motor sport - and the latest to fail.

As for Scotland’s premier house of historical artefact and information, the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, it has little in the way of a proper collection while the National Library of Scotland has an archive of some motor sports publications and memorabilia but that is in a separate building. As for the Transport Museum in Glasgow, if you’ve been, there’s nowt to be said about that here, but if you haven’t been, don’t build your hopes up – the old Kelvin Hall venue was a far better tribute to Scotland’s automotive heritage.

There are also quite a few smaller transport museums around the country. These include the Jim Clark Room in Duns, the Grampian Transport Museum, the Moray Transport Museum, Dundee Transport Museum and then there is the giant Moulsdale Foundation in Bishopbriggs. Impressive though the Moulsdale collection is, the trustees are more interested in general motoring world-wide, although they do host ‘themed’ exhibitions at times.

Elsewhere there are smaller exhibitions like the display in Hawick Museum to commemorate the achievements of Jimmie Guthrie and Steve Hislop and the Albion Trust which has a small museum presence in Biggar. There are also quite a large number of ‘private collections’ around the country but with very limited access for potential visitors and fans, like the W H Malcolm transport firm’s Donald Malcolm Heritage Centre near Linwood and there are others which are deliberately secretive!

There are also many other smaller individual museums around the country which have automotive exhibits and interesting memorabilia like the Heritage Centre in Cumnock for instance – but as yet, there is no National Centre to commemorate Scotland’s nine World Champions on two, three and four wheels, our other national and international champions and record breakers, as well as Scotland’s motoring pioneers and automotive innovators, BUT - there is no central national repository of such memorabilia, records and information. Shocking, eh?

There have been attempts to try and create a permanent exhibit of some kind for this very purpose but so far none have succeeded for a variety of reasons. For instance, the plan to create a National Motorsports Centre in south Lanarkshire (as mentioned in ‘The Scottish Rally Championship 2000-2009’ book) was thwarted in 2001 because our motorsport’s governing body sent someone who lacked vision and imagination to view the proposed site, and he arrived in anorak, suit and shiny shoes – and promptly turned up his nose! Maybe we should have bought him wellies!

The more recent attempt in 2017 was instigated by Douglas Anderson, the man behind the return of a Glasgow based Monte Carlo Rally starting point. The Rest & Be Thankful site was chosen for its historic connections to speed hillclimbing and rallying with Argyll & Bute Council behind the idea to create another tourist attraction in the area. Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, VisitScotland and Transport Scotland were all supportive too while Jackie Stewart, John Cleland and Jim McRae lent some credible sporting gravitas to the scheme.

A Charitable Trust was to be formed to generate the £25 million needed for this ambitious plan as the idea was to ‘burrow’ into the hillside below the established car parks at the top of the Rest & Be Thankful old road. Visually impressive, the glass fronted building was designed to blend in with the surrounding crags and glens, but yet again, a bold idea foundered and nowt came of it.

The photos show a couple of illustrations and models of the R&Be T proposal. Shame, eh?

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