The winners of the Royal Automobile Club Historic Awards for 2020 – which recognise outstanding achievements within the British historic motoring and motorsport world – were announced at an online ceremony on 28 January 2021.
The winners of the Royal Automobile Club Lifetime Achievement Award were Peter and Betty Banham. For decades, this highly skilled and endlessly enthusiastic duo have been the backbone of historic rallying, acting as ‘sweep crew’ and working mechanical miracles on innumerable events.
The Collection award (supported by Footman James) was won by the British Motor Museum for its impressive performance during the lockdown of 2020, while the Competitive Event award went to the 2020 HSCC Legends of Brands Hatch Super Prix, the event that showed that major historic race meetings could run to the ‘new normal’ of COVID rules.
The winner of Motoring Spectacle was an entirely online event: Classics for Carers, a ‘stay at home’ motorshow, which raised £17,500 for NHS charities during lockdown.
Gary Pusey’s painstakingly researched story of the pioneering African wildlife conservation efforts of Ted Reilly (published in Land Rover Monthly) won the Outstanding Journalism category.
For her tireless work in securing dozens of historic motoring apprenticeship opportunities – even during lockdown – Operations Director for the Heritage Skills Academy, Janice Pitchforth, won the Personality award (supported by HERO).
The winner of Race Series (supported by A. Lange & Söhne) was the GT & Sports Car Cup. During 2020 its races featured large entries of cars of exceptional quality and saw exemplary driving standards.
The award for Restoration (supported by Bicester Heritage) went to the remarkable restoration of 1948 Land Rover JUE 477 by Julian Shoolheifer and his team, who went to incredible lengths in order to retain as much of the original vehicle as possible and took the brave decision not to over-restore.
Finally, the winner of the Young Achiever award (supported by 1762 from Brewin Dolphin and StarterMotor), was 24-year-old Jack Bond. Jack already has 16 years of Vintage Sports Car Club membership under his belt, has competed since the age of 14, works at Tip Top Engineering and recently cast, machined and sold his own run of Morris cylinder heads.
