Brooklands - Present Day

Present Day

Modern companies based at Brooklands today include Argos, BAE Systems, Currys-PC World, Japan Tobacco, Marks & Spencer, Mercedes-Benz World, Mothercare, Nomalites, Procter & Gamble, Sony, The Storage Pod, Tesco and John Lewis.

Brooklands Museum houses many historic aircraft including the Vickers Wellington bomber recovered from Loch Ness in 1985, a British Airways Concorde, G-BBDG, the UK's first production Concorde, and now also owns the 40% scale Concorde model "G-CONC" displayed for many years as a gate guardian at Heathrow Airport. After restoration and repainting, the model was relocated for similar duty at Brooklands Museum's public entrance off Brooklands Drive on 29th September 2012. There are also many other civil and military aircraft on display including a Vickers Vanguard, Viscount, VC10. The majority of these exhibits were built at Brooklands or have close associations with the site. The VC10 was built and first flown at Brooklands in 1964 and after airline service with British United and later British Caledonian Airways, in 1974 it became the official VIP transport for the Sultan of Oman until retired and flown back to Brooklands on 6 July 1987 and donated to Brooklands Museum by the Sultan of Oman's Royal Flight.

Although the Circuit is no longer driveable, it can still be simulated in the Spirit of Speed 1937 game for the PC and Sega Dreamcast, in which it was re-created in detail. Several other video games also feature Brooklands and Brooklands Museum's Formula 1 simulator also features a detailed computer simulation of the pre-war race track.

In 2009, BBC Top Gear presenter James May announced plans to recreate the full length Brooklands using Scalextric track and cars. This was undertaken with a team of 350 volunteers building the track from an uncounted number of pieces of Scalextric track, navigating ponds and roads, closely following the route of the old Brooklands track. This event broke the Guinness World Record for the longest ever Scalextric track in the world, intended to measure the original 2.75 miles (4.43 km) of the original Brooklands circuit but in reality recording 2.95 miles (4.75 km) in length (due to the need to navigate modern features that block the original course). The episode was shown on BBC2 on 17 November 2009 as part of James May's Toy Stories.

BBC TV's Antiques Roadshow filmed at Brooklands Museum in July 2009 and subsequently produced two programmes for its next series - these being first broadcast on 10 and 17 January 2010.

Apart from the displays and exhibits to be seen at Brooklands Museum, today there are a number of memorials to Brooklands. The first of these is the 'Brooklands Memorial' built by Vickers-Armstrongs to mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Motor Course and was unveiled by Lord Brabazon of Tara in July 1957. This impressive concrete faced monument featured a fine bronze letters, plaque and related inscription summarising the site's history from 1907–57 and was originally located at the North end of the aerodrome, was designated as a Scheduled Monument in 2002 then relocated and restored in a new position just east of the River Wey on the museum site to make way for the new Mercedes-Benz World complex which opened in 2006. The original bronze fittings were stolen in the 1970s but the plaque was later found and is now displayed in the main entrance foyer of the former BARC Clubhouse. A second memorial dedicated to Brooklands aircraft design and manufacturing heritage was specially designed and manufactured by British Aerospace in the late 1980s to mark the closing of its last factory there and takes the form of a large engraved acrylic panel displayed at the southern end of the old runway close to the entracne to the community park and a children's nursery. Overgrown in recent years, this was recently rediscovered and is still in good condition. Another initiative was taken in the early 1990s by the developers Trafalgar Brookmount Ltd who commissioned an artist to design and produce two large brown terracotta 'gate statements'; these are located at the east end of Wellington Way and the south end of Sopwith Drive and feature representative images of Brooklands' pre-1940 history namely the Napier-Railton, Vickers Vimy and the two former Clubhouses. In 1993, HRH Prince Michael,of Kent officially opened a new Garden of Memories at Brooklands Museum which features a growing number of commemorative plaques in memory of many people who have been associated with Brooklands for more than 100 years.