Catch up on our recent visit to Dan’s shed, thanks to this lovely report from Elliott Nicholls.

A perfect Sydney evening greeted us when we gathered at Daniel Bando’s shed for our February General Meeting. We whiled away some time enjoying Daniel’s hospitality and the social side of the meeting in the outdoors until, with pizza consumed, the setting sun beckoned us to Daniel’s self-proclaimed “mini-shed” for a serious look at a serious collection of cars.

Daniel has been a racer for some years and must have inherited something from his Dad John (on hand on the night) whose exploits go back to Warwick Farm and his own, continuing entanglement with clubmans.

There were a couple of road cars that couldn’t fit in the shed but Daniel showed us the Formula Vee which he has campaigned for a number of years (which by all accounts has been a very successful experience), his PRB (which has quite a pedigree) that he has raced and has also owned at least twice if I heard correctly (how do you own a car twice? Well, you sell it and buy it back again later – Just like Kerry Packer did with Channel 9), and the latest addition – the Lotus 51 which he is now campaigning in Historic Racing.

The 51 appeared in 1967 and was Lotus’ and the world’s first Formula Ford open wheeler. For someone of my vintage, it transported me back to a younger age when I was entranced by anyone circulating a race track in a green Lotus (preferably with a yellow stripe as Daniel’s car has) from Formula 1 to Formula anything. Daniel was in the middle of a rebuild (installing a new engine mainly) in preparation for the upcoming Historics at Wakefield and he’d only dropped the new engine in in the preceding 48 hours so we could see everything together.

Our thanks to Daniel and his family for hosting us and providing us with a delicious pre-pizza spread.

Also, a special thanks to the Waverley Primary School who allowed us to park in the school car park for the evening – and to Mike Donnan for organising and marshaling the parking at the school.

Thanks to Syd Reinhardt for the photograph.