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Lionel Ayers and Stuart Kostera shake hands after Ayers’ victory in the 35 lap Wanneroo Park, West Australian round of the Australian Sportscar Championship (ASC) on 12 August 1973…

Lionel’s car is a real weapon, a Rennmax, ‘the Big Bertha’ of all of the sportscars built by Bob Britton, powered by a Repco ‘740 Series’ SOHC Lucas injected, 5 litre 500 BHP V8. Stuart raced a Matich SR3 Ford into third place behind Henry Michell who was second in an Elfin 360 Repco 2.5 V8.

Both Ayers and Kostera were ‘sportscar stalwarts’, they raced two-seaters for a decade and more and all over Australia- not easy as Ayers was a Brisbane boy with Stuart from Perth.

A majority of the motor racing in Australia is in the Eastern Seaboard states of Victoria and New South Wales so these blokes would have done a million miles over the years travelling from home base to chase the Tourist Trophy or ASC. As the name suggests the ASC was a national series, the distance from Brisbane to Perth and return for Ayers was about 8600 Km for example!

Ayers cut his racing teeth in an MG TC and then progressed into single-seaters such as the Cooper MG and Lotus 20 Ford before racing the first of three Rennmax Engineering built sportscars over the next decade.

The first was the MRC Lotus 23B Ford in which he contested the 1966 Australian Tourist Trophy at Longford. Later came the MRC Mk2 Repco, the last the Rennmax Repco which used the Repco ‘740 Series’ 5 litre V8 and Hewland DG300 ‘box from the MRC Mk2.

MRC ‘Motor Racing Components’ was Ayers company, which prepared the cars and part assembled them in Brisbane but the three cars were Rennmax built. Lionel was a pharmacist but he was also a pretty handy engineer.

Star of the sportscar ranks at the dawn of the seventies, post the sixties ‘Matich Decade’ was John Harvey in Bob Jane’s superb McLaren M6B Repco.

You could liken Harves to an Australian Mario Andretti in some ways, he was a champion in Speedway Midgets before hitting the circuits and was soon into single-seaters after an initial season in a Cooper S.

The shame is that he wasn’t in 2.5 litre Tasman cars earlier, that he never did a full Tasman Series (only the Oz rounds) and in the F5000 era Bob Jane popped the Bowin P8 to one side way too early. Sponsor, Castrol wanted Bob to run ‘taxis’, so it was tourers and sports sedans the team raced- and in which John excelled.

Harvey won the ASC title at a canter in 1971 and 1972, the car only raced sporadically after that as the team focussed on Touring Cars/Sports Sedans. Bob of course still owns it.

The South Australian ‘Elfin 360 Repco twins’, Phil Moore and Henry Michell won the ASC in 1973 and 1974 in two different chassis’.

Garrie Cooper built two very clever cars there (three 360’s were built, the other for Bob Romano was Ford twin-cam powered). In essence they comprised spaceframe chassis sporties built of single-seater F2 Elfin 600E hardware into which he dropped (surplus to requirements with the advent of F5000) ex-Tasman Repco Brabham 2.5 litre V8’s and FT200 Hewland gearboxes. In so doing, he created two light, chuckable, circa 300bhp little rockets which were driven with considerable skill and brio.

In 1973 Moore won the ASC convincingly taking four rounds, Phillip Island, Sandown, Symmons Plains and Oran Park, the latter a night meeting. I would love to have seen those cars, lights ablaze in the dark. Lionel won at Wanneroo and Adelaide International.

The photo below is at the Sandown round in July and shows Phil diving down the inside of  Lionel’s Rennmax at Torana/Peters Corner before the blast up the back straight where I suspect 5 litres of Repco V8 triumphed over 2.5 litres of it! Phil won the round mind you.

The following year, 1974, Ayers again won two of four rounds, at Adelaide and Calder with Henry Michell taking the title in a year of speed and consistency.

Garrie Cooper took the other two wins in ’74 in his new, epoch shifting, Elfin MS7 Repco Holden.

This one off car was a mix of monocoque chassis and bibs and bobs from his F5000 MR6 parts book including uprights, wheels, suspension and brake componentry, Repco Holden 500bhp V8 and of course the ubiquitous DG300 Hewland transaxle.

The car (below) was a crowd and sponsor pleaser, you can just make out the Ansett logo against the bare aluminium body on the nose of the MS7 which is making its race debut at Adelaide International, just down the road from Edwardstown, where the car was built.

Its 25 August 1974, Ayers won the two ASCC rounds before the Elfin raced, Garrie won the other two at Phillip Island and Symmons Plains. In an unfortunate turn of events Lionel broke both of his arms in a low speed motorcycle accident after the first two rounds of the series, perhaps missing out on a title it would have been wonderful to see him win- mainstay of sporties as he had been.

He promptly retired from the sport and sold the Rennmax but remaining close to the scene. A decade ago he did a brilliant job restoring the Mildren Waggott ‘Yellow Submarine’ made famous by Kevin Bartlett and Frank Gardner. He died in 2013 but his memory lives on in that wonderful car retained and used by his family.

The Rennmax did achieve a national title though- after Lionel sold it.

It passed through Melbourne’s Jim Phillips hands, he raced the car for a few years and then sold it to the ‘Racing Gibsons’ in Benalla. There, at Winton in 1979, with yours truly watching the race, I was contesting the Formula Vee support races that weekend, Paul Gibson won the Australian Tourist Trophy- from none other than Stuart Kostera in the Elfin MS7 Repco Holden. The presentation of the Australian Tourist Trophy to Paul was a very proud moment for father ‘Hoot’ Gibson, a racer himself who raised a family of racers!

Kostera cut his racing teeth in sedans but progressed through an Elfin Catalina Ford to the Matich SR3- this famous car was ex-Matich and Don O’Sullivan- who finished 2nd in the 1969 ASSC in it behind Matich’s famous SR4 Repco.

Stuart continually developed the car, 5 litre Ford, not Repco ‘620 Series’ 4.4 V8 powered as it had originally been to the stage that it won the West Australian Sportscar Championship in 1975 having finished second in 1972 and 1974. At national (ASC) level he was 9th in 1972 and 1973, 12th in 1974, and 5th in the single race ASC at Phillip Island in 1975, the winner Cooper’s MS7.

He bought the MS7 Repco Holden from Garrie Cooper, running it as a quasi-works machine, the car mainly based at the Elfin works in Edwardstown, Adelaide rather than Stuart’s hometown of Perth.

Kostera’s first big win in the car was at Phillip Island twelve months after Coopers MS7 victory in the one race 1975 Australian Sports Car Championship. Kostera won the 1976 Australian Tourist Trophy at the same fast, demanding circuit tailor made for powerful devices such as the Elfin.

Kostera was a talented driver, I saw him race both the SR3 and MS7 at most of the Victorian circuits on numerous occasions, he always got the best from these big, demanding cars. The Elfin drive ended after Garrie Cooper’s demise in 1982.

All of the cars mentioned in this article still exist, the MRC Lotus 23, MRC Mk2 Repco, McLaren M6B, Elfin 360’s, Elfin MS7 and Matich SR3.

The Rennmax has been in Jim Phillip’s ownership (back to him post the Gibsons period of ownership) for decades, and will hopefully one day see the light of day outside the outer east of Melbourne garage where it resides. So too do the two 360’s mind you one of those has been in a garage not too far from the Rennmax for about the same time period!

 Etcetera…

Matich SR3 ‘3’ Ford

This ex-Don O’Sullivan/Frank Matich car evolved, as cars do over time. Attached are a couple of shots of the chassis which defeated Chris Amons Ferrari P4/Can Am 350 during the 1968 Tasman Series sportscar races competitive against more modern designs. The story of the SR3’s and a comprehensive chassis list of all the Matich built cars is in this article on the Matich SR4;

https://primotipo.com/2016/07/15/matich-sr4-repco-by-nigel-tait-and-mark-bisset/

 

 

Credits…

State Library of Western Australia, Terry Walkers Place, Ellis French, Robert Davies, Jeffrey Lay, Australian Motor Racing Year

Tailpiece: Phil and Stuart, ready to roll, ASC Wanneroo August 1972…

Finito…