Nigel Shiftright, 13th Earl of Bolton
(Publisher's note: Imagine a place, if you will, and a time and a man, a special man, an imaginary man, who captured the hearts and minds of sports car lovers around the globe......... )
Nigel Shiftright has been called an automotive anachronism, but call him what you will, he stands above the crowd in the annals of post second war sports car lore.
Supposedly (or in actual fact - depending on your personal state of denial and view of reality) Nigel was the creation of Joe Troise and Phil Frank. The result of their combined brilliance graced the pages of Road & Track Magazine for about twenty years, becoming for many the first thing they turned to on opening the magazine in order to learn of the latest adventure.
The Nigel character was characterized as a scarf wearing, RAF Flying Ace turned ex-pat racing driver, who continued his fight against the enemy on the roads and streets of California.
To quote Phil in a SF Chronicle article in 2007 "Nigel is an Anglophile, loving all things British and imagining himself to be an unrecognized member of British royalty living in the United States with a fleet of spindly-wheeled old cars at his estate on Flapping Bonnet Lane.
Nigel refuses to ride in any "sports car" that has electric windows. He also has personal conversations with his vehicles and lives out imaginary dog fights and battle scenes with lumbering American cars on his local roadways, all to the great amusement of sports car owners, who in many ways identify with his traffic frustrations and keen loyalty to British cars.
Joe Troise, in a recent interview said this about those days:
"What made Nigel unique, however, were his fantasies. Nigel would go into these fantasies about where he was or who he was. And only at the very end of the strip did he get jolted back to reality. That was kind of the formula,” Troise explained.
In that first episode, called Dawn Patrol, Wing Commander Shiftright is crossing the Golden Gate Bridge when he finds himself in his fighter plane with his arch-rival Baron von Stockbroker in his sights. A dogfight ensues and using an Buick Electra 225 for cover, Nigel fires on the Baron, in his BMW.
In the last panel, a bewildered BMW driver is covered with little suction cup darts and mutters to a policeman, “This old coot in an ancient MG started shooting darts at me.”
You can read more of that interview of Joe Troise by Larry Sanata of Classic MG Magazine here.
Where is Nigel Now?
You will be comforted to know that In Nigel's fantasy world, the University and BURLWOOD Circuit are keeping Nigel very busy these days.
The University is housed in Burlwood House, the stately original castle found on the expansive estate of Nigel Shiftright, 13th Earl of Burlwood, RAF Flying Ace, fondly referred to by his friends as "The Wing Commander" or on occasion, "Lord Spline". Learn more about Nigel Shiftright here.
With the deepest respect for such rich history and great affinity for all things British, and especially for those spindly-wheeled sports cars that started it all, Founder and Patron, Sir Nigel Shiftright determined that it would be most fitting that his cradle of higher technical learning should be named after the "MOWOG" moniker, a brand which has been become famous around the world in the workshops, race track pits and back yard shade trees where this very special knowledge is both respected and celebrated.
After his long run of celebrity, Nigel's eccentricity lead him to drop completely out of sight and to the hermit lifestyle at his expansive Burlwood Estate. However, Nigel has not at all been idle. In his "Howard Hughes - like" recluse, he has been very busy as a philanthropist, founding MOWOG University, where he is now a lecturing Professor of Archaic Technical Languages. The University Board of Governors recently appointed Nigel to the prestigious Cecil Kimber Chair.
A long time supporter of motorsport, Nigel has invested a considerable fortune into reconstruction and transformation of his estate, a former WWII Bomber Training Base located on the grounds of BURLWOOD House, Flapping Bonnet Lane. This work has produced a first class motor racing facility in the same fashion as that of his distant cousin's ever so popular Goodwood Road Racing circuit.
(Publisher's note: Imagine a place, if you will, and a time and a man, a special man, an imaginary man, who captured the hearts and minds of sports car lovers around the globe......... )
Nigel Shiftright has been called an automotive anachronism, but call him what you will, he stands above the crowd in the annals of post second war sports car lore.
Supposedly (or in actual fact - depending on your personal state of denial and view of reality) Nigel was the creation of Joe Troise and Phil Frank. The result of their combined brilliance graced the pages of Road & Track Magazine for about twenty years, becoming for many the first thing they turned to on opening the magazine in order to learn of the latest adventure.
The Nigel character was characterized as a scarf wearing, RAF Flying Ace turned ex-pat racing driver, who continued his fight against the enemy on the roads and streets of California.
To quote Phil in a SF Chronicle article in 2007 "Nigel is an Anglophile, loving all things British and imagining himself to be an unrecognized member of British royalty living in the United States with a fleet of spindly-wheeled old cars at his estate on Flapping Bonnet Lane.
Nigel refuses to ride in any "sports car" that has electric windows. He also has personal conversations with his vehicles and lives out imaginary dog fights and battle scenes with lumbering American cars on his local roadways, all to the great amusement of sports car owners, who in many ways identify with his traffic frustrations and keen loyalty to British cars.
Joe Troise, in a recent interview said this about those days:
"What made Nigel unique, however, were his fantasies. Nigel would go into these fantasies about where he was or who he was. And only at the very end of the strip did he get jolted back to reality. That was kind of the formula,” Troise explained.
In that first episode, called Dawn Patrol, Wing Commander Shiftright is crossing the Golden Gate Bridge when he finds himself in his fighter plane with his arch-rival Baron von Stockbroker in his sights. A dogfight ensues and using an Buick Electra 225 for cover, Nigel fires on the Baron, in his BMW.
In the last panel, a bewildered BMW driver is covered with little suction cup darts and mutters to a policeman, “This old coot in an ancient MG started shooting darts at me.”
You can read more of that interview of Joe Troise by Larry Sanata of Classic MG Magazine here.
Where is Nigel Now?
You will be comforted to know that In Nigel's fantasy world, the University and BURLWOOD Circuit are keeping Nigel very busy these days.
The University is housed in Burlwood House, the stately original castle found on the expansive estate of Nigel Shiftright, 13th Earl of Burlwood, RAF Flying Ace, fondly referred to by his friends as "The Wing Commander" or on occasion, "Lord Spline". Learn more about Nigel Shiftright here.
With the deepest respect for such rich history and great affinity for all things British, and especially for those spindly-wheeled sports cars that started it all, Founder and Patron, Sir Nigel Shiftright determined that it would be most fitting that his cradle of higher technical learning should be named after the "MOWOG" moniker, a brand which has been become famous around the world in the workshops, race track pits and back yard shade trees where this very special knowledge is both respected and celebrated.
After his long run of celebrity, Nigel's eccentricity lead him to drop completely out of sight and to the hermit lifestyle at his expansive Burlwood Estate. However, Nigel has not at all been idle. In his "Howard Hughes - like" recluse, he has been very busy as a philanthropist, founding MOWOG University, where he is now a lecturing Professor of Archaic Technical Languages. The University Board of Governors recently appointed Nigel to the prestigious Cecil Kimber Chair.
A long time supporter of motorsport, Nigel has invested a considerable fortune into reconstruction and transformation of his estate, a former WWII Bomber Training Base located on the grounds of BURLWOOD House, Flapping Bonnet Lane. This work has produced a first class motor racing facility in the same fashion as that of his distant cousin's ever so popular Goodwood Road Racing circuit.
BURLWOOD MOTOR CIRCUIT has been constructed in the spirit of the great British motor racing circuits of the immediate post-war era, and is amazingly similar, in fact it is a direct copy of the world famous Goodwood Motor Circuit. As such, it is the only classic motor circuit in North America to offer the style and ambiance of the heyday of British and European motorsport. The facility has been sympathetically created over these past many years in preparation for the inaugural Burlwood Revival in the fall of 2015. Thanks to the significant investment of capital and the arduous and painstaking work, the beauty of the park-like setting, Burlwood makes a perfect playground for all motorheads.
Updated Jan. 17, 2024
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