FORTUNE 500

It was less famous than the Indy and Daytona 500s, shorter-lived than the Brooklands 500, but memories of the BOAC 500 live long

- JACK PHILLIPS

For British fans in the late 1960s, the easiest and best way to witness the golden era of the World Sportscar Championship was with a pilgrimage to Brands Hatch at varying times of the year. For when the new BOAC International '500' concluded the season bizarrely early in the summer of 1967, it returned top-line endurance racing to Britain for the first time in years.

'I am certain,' wrote British Overseas Airways Corporation chairman Sir Giles Guthrie in his programme notes, 'that the BOAC "500" will immediately take its place in popularity with Le Mans, the Targa Florio, the Nürburgring and the other classics which make up this championship series.'

Former air racer Guthrie had spent the five paragraphs leading up to that rather hopeful conclusion by trying to explain the connection between the BOAC and motorsport, only to effectively land on the illuminating idea that racing drivers travel a lot. There was form, though, because Ford had made sure the world knew it flew the GT40 to the United States with BOAC for a New York Auto Show preview night on its launch in 1964.

The fixture certainly made a name for itself in the years that followed, if not one that endured - in more ways than one - quite like those Guthrie had mentioned. It also returned '500' to the name of a British race for the first time since WW2 - the Tourist Trophy had been around 500 miles long, but more by luck than design. In fact, motorsport has had a mild affliction with the number 500 for more than a century. In 1911, drivers of cars with capacities just shy of 10 litres cheated death for 200 laps around a 2.5-mile brick-paved bowl in Indianapolis - which, rather neatly, resulted in 500 miles. Some 112 years and 107 runnings later it remains arguably the biggest race in America, alongside Daytona's own 500-mile event for stock cars. That relative newcomer didn't kick in until as recently as 1959.