Just the weather for a seaside trip

But Lawson had a hidden agenda for celebrating "Emancipation Day", for this self-confident company promoter wanted to control the infant motor-car industry through master patents held by his British Motor Syndicate - and he certainly extracted large sums of money from hopeful investors in the companies he launched, including Daimler, which survives as Britain's oldest carmaker.

However, the "Daimlers" entered in that original Brighton Run had not been built in Lawson's much-vaunted "motor mills" in Coventry, which were still preparing for production: they were continentally built Panhard-Levassors and Peugeots with engines built to German Daimler designs (and thus covered by Lawson's 'master patents'), plus a couple of German Daimler cars, one of which carried Gottlieb Daimler as a passenger.

Interviewed by The Brighton & Hove Guardian and Visitor’s Register, Harrington Moore of the Motor Car Club declared that there were "something under a hundred" motor cars in Britain, and - according to an impressive list issued before the event - 58 of these were entered for the run. In the event, around 33 turned up on the day, of which 22 were "tested cars... lent by the British Motor Syndicate or their licensees" and the rest consisted of "all kinds of experimental cars" (which meant they lay outside Lawson's ambit).

Prior to the run, the weather, which had been fine for several days, changed for the worse overnight, and it rained heavily as the competing vehicles began to gather outside the Metropole Hotel in Northumberland Avenue in readiness for the start. "Everything wasdamp, dreary and dull, with a fog of considerable proportions thrown in," dejectedly observed The Autocar’s reporter. Nevertheless, "a turbulent torrent of humanity," estimated at 500,000, crowded the pavements outside the hotel, where the participants were breakfasting.

Heading the procession was Harry Lawson in a racing Panhard-Levassor flying a banner and, noted The Sunday Times "A great roar went up as the pioneer began slowly to move, and cheer after cheer was given as the drivers of the other cars mounted the box."

Nothing like this had ever been seen in Britain, and the cars found it difficult to force their way through the crowds, despite the efforts of a hastily summoned troop of mounted police.

The streets were sodden with mud, and by the time they reached Brixton, their numbers had begun to thin as the electric cars and some of the trailer petrol cars quietly left the route to seek a railway station for an easier ride on the Brighton Line.

The strongest performers were the three-wheeled French Bollees and the Duryeas. As a specially chartered train carrying guests of the Motor Car Club passed through Coulsdon, its passengers watched a Bollee racing a horseman, followed by the Duryea and another Bollee. By the time the train reached Reigate, where the cars were scheduled to stop for lunch and "the inhabitants of the town and country around had assembled in thousands", the three fastest cars had already passed through and, noted the Brighton Argus "only ten or twelve cars entered Reigate, and they came in at such considerable intervals that there was little enthusiasm excited".

At Crawley, where a banner slung across the road proclaimed "Success to the Motor-Car," one of the Duryeas knocked down a little girl nal-ned Dyer who ran into the road without looking, but it was nevertheless the first four-wheeled car to reach Brighton - the two Bollees apparently arrived first - and by 4.30 in the afternoon, eight cars had finished the run.

Under the chilling rain and wind, the crowds dwindled and most of the cars came into Brighton without a welcome, noted the Brighton Herald, though a tradesman near the railway viaduct displayed a placard that paraphrased Napoleon: "Centuries look down upon this thy immortal ride. "

Some of the cars only reached Brighton the following day after a succession of breakdowns, and the official results further confused the issue by failing to distinguish between those that had arrived by road and those that had hitched a lift on the train.

But if the correspondent of the Brighton & Hove Guardian had glumly concluded that "all motor cars are vanity" when his promised ride failed to materialise, and the rival Brighton Herald thought "as a public spectacle (the run) was a dreary failure", The Times was far nearer the mark when it prophesied that the motor car was "destined to becomeone of the most important branches of locomotion".