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Tributes paid to ‘legendary’ motorsports fan Tom Wheatcroft at Donington track

A book of condolence has been opened in memory of legendary motorsports fan Tom Wheatcroft, who died at the weekend.

Staff at the Donington Park Grand Prix Exhibition have invited members of the public to leave their personal tributes in the book.

Mr Wheatcroft died aged 87 on Saturday morning at his home in Arnesby after a long battle with illness and yesterday, flags at the circuit flew at half mast in his memory. Today, Donington Grand Prix collection manager Garry Rankin paid tribute to him. He said: &”I had known Tom for 15 years and it is a very sad loss.

&”He was a great man, he had a fantastic life and I believe he did everything he wanted to do.

&”It is a sad loss for motorsport and a sad loss for me personally.

&”We hope that members of the public will come and leave their tributes.&” The Donington Grand Prix Exhibition was established in 1973 to house the vast collection of motor racing cars Mr Wheatcroft had built up throughout his life, and remains the largest collection of Grand Prix racing cars in the world.

Among the 130-plus exhibits are cars driven by some of the sport’s greatest drivers including five-times world champion Juan Manuel Fangio, British driver Nigel Mansell and Brazilian driver Ayrton Senna.

Notable exhibits include the 1936 twin-engined 500 bhp Alfa Romeo Bimotore, which has a top speed of 200mph, Jim Clark’s World Championship winning Lotus 25, the ‘howling’ flat 12 Ferrari 312B, and Stirling Moss’s Lotus, in which he defeated the might of the Ferrari works team in the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix.

Tributes to Mr Wheatcroft were led yesterday by McLaren Formula One Team principal Martin Whitmarsh who described him as a &”legend&”.

Former Formula One World Champion Damon Hill, who raced in the 1993 European Grand Prix held at Donington, said: &”I knew Tom from going back to my bike-racing days. He has always been a tremendous, larger-than-life character and someone everybody loved to know.&”

What Really is a Dream Car and How Would you Recognize It?

What really is a dream car and how would you recognize it? Many people argue on what the best dream car is, and many people also have differing opinion on what constitutes a dream car.

For instance for the teenage boy trying to impress the girls something like a Ferrari or a Lotus Elise might be their version of a dream car, or it could even be a souped-up version of an old Ford or Honda which looks nothing at all like what it started life out as!

The dream car for the Young and the Upwardly mobile adults of yesteryear was definitely any make of a BMW. That was it, nothing more nothing less. This has of course now expanded to include the likes of Audi and Lexus, but you get the picture here, right?

A dream car on the other hand for person perceived to be having a mid-life crisis by their friends and family, could be something along the lines of a Porsche coupe or an Aston Martin DB-version. Corvettes, Lamborghinis and even Alfa Romeo’s seem to make the cut for this type of dream car.

Going further up the ladder you will find that a dream car for the person who can’t afford the signs of affluence will run along the lines of Mercedes-Benz, Jaguars, Audis, BMWs and yes, Lexus.

What is the ultimate dream car though? What is the one car above all others which makes a grown man break down and cry when he sees it? It is not one but a number of cars actually which all have one thing in common (besides the making a man weep thing that is). They are all of them fabulously expensive.

Any one of these choices could pose as the ultimate dream car for any car enthusiast, but taken together, they really will make grown men fall to their knees. These are, in no particular order, the Bugatti Veyron with a price tag of $1.7 million.

The Koenigsegg CCX with a price tag of just over $6 hundred thousand; the Ferrari Enzo which comes in at a cool $1 million; the Mercedes McLaren SLR at about the mid range of $4 hundred thousand; and also the Aston Martin Vanquish which comes in at the mid range $2 hundred thousand.

And let’s not forget the Porsche Carrera GT which is just under $5 hundred thousand; the Saleen S7 Twin Turbo at just over a $.5 million. And if these weren’t enough to make you drool, one of the grandest of all cars to be considered a dream car is none other than the Rolls Royce Corniche convertible.