Organisers of the 2025 London to Brighton Veteran Car Run have altered the route through central Croydon when the event takes place early on the morning of Sunday November 2.
Tight turn: around 400 veteran vehicles are expected to chunter through Croydon on Nov 2. Pic: Lee Townsend
The 400-or-so road-worthy museum pieces taking part in this annual rally will be giving Southbridge Road a swerve, just the day before gas engineers close the road off for mains replacement works in and around South End.
The RM Sotheby’s London to Brighton Run, to give it its official title, is one of the great celebrations of eccentric British life, setting off from Hyde Park at 7am on the first Sunday in November to provide a splendid spectacle all the way to the south coast, with the old A23 road forming the spine of the route as it trundles through Norbury, Thornton Heath, along Roman Way and under the Croydon Flyover, on to South Croydon, Purley and chugging into Coulsdon.
With the vehicles setting off one-by-one from central London, by the time they’ve chuntered up Brixton Hill and begin to arrive in Croydon, they will be coming down a road near you thick and fast.
But this year, after chuntering under the Croydon Flyover, instead of steering a tight curve around a mini-roundabout to make it onto the A236 en route to South Croydon, the veteran cars will go up Lower Coombe Street before turning right on to South End.
A spokesman for the organisers told Inside Croydon that the route change was made before the South Croydon road works were sanctioned.
Traffic jam: by the time they reach Croydon’s roads, the veteran vehicles are lining up behind each other, as they negotiate suburban Sunday traffic. Pic: Lee Townsend
The London to Brighton is the largest free-to-view motoring event in the world.
The vehicles taking part all date from before 1905, and comprise an array of eye-catching antiques of the road, with some three- and four-wheelers, mostly petrol-driven but including some powered by steam. In the past, there has even been pioneering electric vehicles.
Cars are expected to arrive on Norbury High Street from around 7.25am, with the last vehicles expected to pass through by 9.45am.
The timings of the procession reaching Coulsdon are from 7.35 to 11am.
Of course, some vehicles may have to make brief stops along the route, but the scheduled stopping points nearby are at the Honda showrooms at Redhill (from 8am), and at the halfway checkpoint in Crawley (8.20am to 2pm).
Fire engine: The vehicles in the London to Brighton rally through Croydon come in many shapes and sizes
One four-wheeled star is Genevieve, the 1904 Darracq that was the eponymous lead in the 1953 film comedy about the Run.
The run commemorates the passing of the Locomotives on the Highway Act. This raised the speed limit for “light locomotives” from 4mph to 14mph and abolished the need for the vehicles to be preceded by a man carrying a red flag.
The passing of the Act was celebrated by the first “Emancipation Run” when 30 cars travelled from London to Brighton. It was held on November 14 1896, the very day the Act came into law.
In 2025, the run to Brighton comes at the end of London Motor Week, organised by the Royal Automobile Club, which includes the Art of Motoring exhibition at the Iconic Images Gallery in Piccadilly (Oct 29 to Nov 1) and the free-to-attend St James’s Motoring Spectacle (Nov 1) staged on Pall Mall.
For more details of all the events visit www.veterancarrun.com
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