McFERRAN, Hughie.

The co-proprietor of a Belfast garage “McFerran and Davis” which purchased a two-seater Bugatti from London, UK dealer Jack Bartlett around 1933*.

The firm is recorded as having paid the asking price of £45 for the car (chassis no. 4981, engine no. 77 and reg. no. YR 4302). (B.51/1/12).

David Burgess-Wise wrote of car 4774 (which had been raced by Richard Seaman in 1933) : “McFerran competed in Irish events …colliding with a wall during the Bray Round-the-Houses race in May, and replaced it in 1935 with another type 35A.”

He was later the owner of a type 57 which he drove in the 1935 Northern Ireland TT races. The car, with chassis no. 57283 is pictured in B57 p.82.

Alexander Spottiswoode (UK) :

Son of a whealty family, Alexander Spottiswoode graduated from the Trinity College, Cambridge, then he joined the Fleet Air Arm and served in the aircraft carrier HMS Furious. In 1929 he purchased an ivory painted 1,5-litre Bugatti T37 and had his racing debut, winning a race on Skegness Sands and racing at Brooklands. At Shelsey Walsh in 1930 Spottiswoode won his class, then he bought a red 8-cylinder Bugatti T35 2000 cm3 and won the Warwick Senior Long (nine miles) Handicap, from Eddie Hall in a Bentley 4500 cm3. At Whitsun he was 2nd to E.L. Meeson's Vauxhall and in the Brooklands Mountain races he set the fastest lap before retiring. In the 1934 JCC 100-lap International Trophy at Brooklands he led the race after 20th lap but did not finish due to mechanical failure. He scored victories at Shelsey Walsh, Lewes and Skegness Sands and in 1936 he was 2nd in the Inter-Varsity speed trials at Branches Park, Chalfont, behind W.B. Scott's Delage, then he overturned his Bugatti at Ewelme Downs and at Shelsey Walsh he won his class after hitting an embankment during the race.

At the end of 1936 season Alexander Spottiswoode was married and abandoned racing, he sold his Bugatti T35 Grand Prix car to Hugh McFerran of Belfast, who re-painted it blue and raced it in Northern Ireland and Eire events. In May 1937 Spottiswoode joined the Imperial Airways, piloting one of the Short S23 Empire Class flying boats fitted with four Bristol Pegasus engines, which the company used in the direct mail service to Australia. On 23 November 1938 Spottiswoode was the first officier on the "Calpurnia" for the journey to Australia, the aircraft had a refuelling stop at Tiberias near the Sea of Galilee, then it crashed in territory of Iraq, before arriving to the next scheduled stop at Lake Habbaniyeh, 60 miles west of Baghdad. Alexander Spottiswoode and other three crew members lost their lives. He was survived by his wife and a young daughter.

Sources:
Magazine MotorSport, issue June 2007.

I am moving home and my reference books are packed up.

Is there an "e" on the end of Spottiswood's name ?

SPOTTISWOOD, Alec N.
A UK amateur driver who competed with type 37 and type 35 Bugattis in the between 1930 and 1936 and was one of the earliest members of the UK Bugatti Owners Club.

His cars were mainly run at Brooklands and in UK sprints and hill-climbs and normally seviced by Hubert Papworth.

His obituary appeared in “Bugantics” Vol.8/1/2.

My list for the T35 ends with #4964. Engine #77 belongs to chassis #4783, and engine #77A to #4755.

I understand this was #4809