Before our trio of Delages meet again on the Brooklands banking, Abba Kogan and Paul-Emile Bessade pore over a miniature marvel: a hand-crafted scale model of the 15-S-8’s 1½-litre straight eight. It’ll run too, once the gearbox has been made and attached. Which is largely why model maker Mike Sayers is here. There’s in-the-metal research at hand.
“I’ve been building models of engines for 20 years,” says Sayers. “I started out as an instrument engineer, then worked for Esso before joining the family construction business which gave me time for what I really wanted to do. That was vintage motor racing, building full-sized ones.