Kevin Loy’s Matich A51 ‘005’ Repco F5000 departing Oran Park in Vice-Regal style, 2 February 1975…
No standing on ceremony here, although its a you-beaut ANF1 car- the Formula 5000 machine is travelling in no more comfort than my Formula Vee and considerably less so than my old Lola T342 Formula Ford. And its off to Surfers Paradise, 850 kilometres away in the hands of Ian Douglass to whom it has just been sold.
I’ll bet Frank Matich, Derek Kneller and the boys looked after the thing much more nicely in the US- this chassis was new for the US L&M Series tour Team Matich undertook during 1973. It was FM’s primary weapon, A51 ‘006’ went along for the ride as the spare. Here is a story about Matich and his F5000 cars;
Matich A51 ‘005’ in the Mid Ohio paddock 1973 (T Capps)
Lella Lombardi in A51 ‘005’ during the 1974 AGP- car was overseen by Matich himself. Lella pushed Max Stewart, the winner very hard before oil pump failure ended a great run (HAGP)
In many ways this little baby would be ‘the’ F5000 Matich to own. It toured the US, was raced by Lella Lombardi at Sandown and Oran Park in 1974, and, sold to John Goss to keep A53 ‘007’ company, won the 1976 Sandown Park Australian Grand Prix modified to A53 spec.
Another shot of Lombardi, this time at Sandown Park’s Dandenong Road corner in 1974 (B Keys)
Later still French sportscar ace Henri Pescarolo raced it at Calder in 1977, so too did Jim Richards in its ‘period dotage’ in 1979.
A very nice jigger indeed, here looking a bit forlorn on an open trailer behind an XA Ford Falcon Wagon rent-a-rocket.
Still, the serious money should be spent on the car not the trailer…
Goss wins the 1976 AGP aboard his Matich A51/53 ‘005’ from Vern Schuppan’s Elfin MR8C Chev, Sandown Park (HAGP)
Credits…
Neil Stratton, oldracingcars.com, Terry Capps, Derek Kneller, ‘History of The AGP’ G Howard and ors, Bruce Keys
Tailpiece: A51 ‘005’ fitted with Repco V8 flat-plane ‘Shaker’ crank in the Watkins Glen pitlane 1973…
Goerge Barton and John Sherwood with their MG NE Magnette, in 1934, place unknown…
John Sherwood was a rather talented Australian- an elite road racer, competitor in the 1938 Australian Grand Prix and winner of the 1939 New South Wales Grand Prix/Motor Road Race, both events at Bathurst. He was also an excellent Midget speedway racer, motor sport administrator and promoter.
Sherwood was the driving force of the NSW Light Car Club and the key individual who created the Mount Panorama track at Bathurst. From a pioneering motoring family, he was a formidable competitor and later, as a Director of Empire Speedways, was a big contributor to the growth of Speedway Racing in Australia
I was researching an article on Sydney’s Parramatta Park road circuit when I tripped over this article written by Sherwood in 1953. I’ve reproduced it for its rarity- a man of the sport, in the sport and involved in the business of racing writing about its history in period having participated in many of the events he describes.
The selection of photographs to help bring the article to life are my own, otherwise Sherwood’s work is reproduced verbatim.
John Sherwood exiting Murray’s Corner, MG NE Magnette, Bathurst, Easter Monday 10 April 1939 on the way to winning the handicap NSW GP/Motor Road Race. He won from Paul Swedberg in John Snow’s Delahaye 135S and John Barraclough’s MG NE Magnette. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that ‘Sherwood drove a splendid race throughout going into the lead after the first few laps and holding it to the end, though making two stops for faulty spark plugs’ (M Stahl)
‘Generally speaking, history tends to be on the dry side, but fortunately the historical side of motor racing is anything but dry. It is rather fascinating to look back along the years to see how the sport in Australia has developed.
Motor racing in our country has grown over the years despite several retarding factors: the continued objection of officialdom to all aspects of organised fast driving, for many years the impossibility of obtaining suitable circuits and tracks on which to race and the lack of factory support for ambitious and worthy drivers. Nevertheless, motor racing enthusiasts throughout Australia have overcome all these drawbacks, and today (1953 remember) we see more of the sport than ever before.
Motor racing in Australia developed in Australia through the early reliability trials of 45 years ago, followed gradually by the inclusion in such trials of speed events such as hillclimbs, acceleration tests and short timed events over quarter and half mile distances. Then commenced the various city to city record attempts, for a long time unhindered by officialdom, in which usually big engined chassis with bucket seats, and a host of spare tyres sped from capital to capital over atrocious roads with the success of the run always influenced by the number of blowouts of the cord beaded edge tyres, and the number of tyres it was possible to carry on the vehicle.
Drivers of these cars were considered super-drivers, and such men as the late AV Turner (later killed in a hillclimb), the late Boyd Edkins and ‘Wizard’ Smith were hero-worshipped everywhere by motor enthusiasts.
The first actual racing in Australia probably occurred on the enclosed tracks at Victoria Park Racecourse (Sydney) and the Aspendale one mile dirt track (Melbourne). Mostly big-engine low revving juggernauts took part, entirely unsuitable for the job as we look back now, but in those days the last thing in racing automobiles.’
‘World Championship’ for Under 1500cc cars- Penrith Speedway, Sydney, 6 October 1930. From the outside is John Sherwood’s Lea Francis O-Type, then the Sam Aggett and Charlie East driven Bugatti T37’s and on the inside Tom Lord’s, Geoff Lowe owned Austin 7 Brooklands. On the very inside verge is Jack Field’s supercharged Lea Francis S-Type Hyper tourer slowing having paced the competitors for a lap before the championships 3 lap journey, East was the winner in his Bugatti (SLNSW)
‘The early drivers were keen, and more tracks were opened at Penrith (one mile) Maroubra (5/6 mile highly banked concrete track) and beaches at Gerringong and in Victoria came into use for racing purposes. At Gerringong, Don Harkness, driving an enormous Minerva engined chassis, was clocked at 107 mph to be the first in Australia to exceed the coveted ‘century’.
(The) First actual road racing circuit was opened at Phillip Island in Westernport Bay, 40 miles from Melbourne in 1928 and this became the mecca for motor racing enthusiasts for the next nine or ten years. At this point the dry bed of Lake Perkollili in Western Australia was the centre of motor racing in the west.
Australia’s best road circuit (more or less built specially for the purpose) at Mount Panorama, Bathurst came into being in 1938, and except for most of the war years, has been in use ever since. Other road circuits in other states have also sprung up, and since the war various ex-airforce strips have been adapted for racing with much success.
The newest circuit to come into use is in Parramatta Park, 15 miles from Sydney, a rather narrow 2 mile circuit, suitable mainly for the smaller cars, but by reason of its close proximity to a big population, is certain of success.
Down through the years cars have altered very considerably, the small high revving high compression engines now putting out power which one could not have conceived in the early days. Suspensions, brakes, steering, weight, tyres, fuel, streamlining and a hundred and one other things have combined to make the modern racing car a real thoroughbred, capable of sustaining terrific speeds over long distances.
As the years have rolled on, the scene changes, but motor racing itself does not change. Its spirit, rich in tradition and sportsmanship, linking past and present, reaches out to the future.’
Photo Credits…
Sam Hood, State Library of New South Wales, Max Stahl Collection
Bibliography…
South Coast Times and Wollongong Argus 21 September 1953, reprint of an article first published in the ‘Bentwood Review’, Sydney Morning Herald 11 April 1939, John Medley
Tailpiece: Sherwood and flock…
(Fairfax)
John Sherwood standing beside John Snow’s #4 Delahaye 135S, with the #6 Edison Waters Jaguar 100SS, Alf Barrett’s Alfa Monza and John Barraclough driven Alvis Terraplane straight-8 on the Bathurst grid in October 1939. Sherwood instrumental in the construction of this Australian racing institution- in the words of John Medley ‘Bathurst: Cradle of Australian Motor Racing’.
These two blokes are aboard a Bugatti Brescia Type 23 out front of The George Hotel in Lydiard Street, Ballarat, Victoria between 1945 and 1950…
The shot is from the State Library of Victoria archive, it was taken by George Thomas, a prolific ‘snapper at motorsport events throughout Victoria at the time. Ballarat, 120 kilometres west of Melbourne is a Gold Rush town. Over 600,000 people came to Australia from all over the globe in the 1850s to chase their fortune. Ballarat was one of the main destinations of the optimistic, it’s a beautiful place with many of the stately buildings of the period still standing, including the George Hotel.
The interesting thing is of course, which particular chassis it is and who the fellows are. My recently acquired copy of Bugattis In Australasia (details in the credits below) personally delivered by the very knowledgeable, youthful, spritely 81 year old author, Bob King suggests it’s either Bill Fleming or Neil Barter, assuming the photo date range is accurate.
The car is a long-chassis Modifie. Without going into all of King’s detail, the chassis number of the car can’t be confirmed, but it came from New South Wales to Victoria in 1938 when owned by Fred Betts. He never registered it, but raced it at Phillip Island pre-war.
After the conflict it was raced by John ‘Bill’ Fleming at the Hurstbridge and Rob Roy Hillclimbs in Victoria in 1948, before being sold to Barter that October. At this stage, as shown in the opening photograph, the car was registered in Victoria JT441 and was fitted with engine number 2566.
Fleming on the startline at Hurstbridge Hillclimb in Melbourne’s outer north-east (King)The Fleming Brescia at Rob Roy Hillclimb in Melbourne’s Christmas Hills, ‘eighteen litres of Semmering Mercedes in the background’ (King)
Barter recounts in King’s book ‘By January we were driving it around as much as petrol rationing would allow. After correcting a dismally retarded camshaft timing, we found the performance astonishing – 40 mph first gear, 60 in second, 4,300 rpm etc – we were never short of superlatives. Alas youthful exuberance led to disaster and injury when… in April 1939…the car overturned at the corner of Dendy Street and The Esplanade, Brighton’, a bayside Melbourne suburb not too far from Albert Park Lake, a place all you global GP fans will be familiar with.
‘A regular trick was to drive it as quickly as you could along Beach Road at Brighton Beach and, instead of taking the right hand corner…we would hurl it into the gravel car park opposite the monument, put it into a 180-degree slide and then drive straight out again, heading back towards Hampton. The prize for the night went to the driver who travelled the quickest and made the cleanest slide!’ What a great thing to do after a few bevvies on a Friday or Saturday night?!
‘This all came to a halt when, one night, with four up, I rolled it when turning from the beach road into Dendy Street…a very sobering experience for all and particularly me’, Neil Barter wrote. Looking at the young blokes in the car at Ballarat my guess is that it’s Barter and one of his Brighton Grand Prix accomplices!
Bob King records a bewildering nineteen owners of this car. The last was Wolf Zeuner in the United Kingdom albeit this was way back 1992. The name Brescia was applied to these cars (T13 2.0 metre chassis, T22 2.4 metre, T23 2.55 metre) after the cars placed first to fourth in the 1921 Italian Voiturette Grand Prix.
Piero Marco, Brescia T22, Brescia before the off Gran Premio delle Vetturette, 1921 (Bugatti)
de Vizcaya, Brescia T13, GP Penya Rhin 1921- is the descriptor for this Barcelona event but my race results don’t accord with this car/driver combo that year (unattributed)
This event, the ‘1 Gran Premio delle Vetturette’, held on 8 September 1921 on the Circuito di Brescia comprise 20 laps of a 17 km course, a total of 346 km. Thirteen cars contested the race, the winning Bugatti T22 of Ernest Friderich completed the race in two hours 59 minutes 18.6 seconds. He was followed home by teammates Pierre de Vizcaya, Michele Baccoli and Piero Marco all aboard Bugatti 22s, they were chased home by a group of four OM465’s.
2,000 Brescias were built from 1919-1926 more than any other type of Bugatti. ‘Being the first Bugatti made in any numbers, it was the Brescia that established Bugatti’s reputation as a builder of sports and racing cars. They were imported into Australia and New Zealand in considerable numbers…’ King wrote.
Original period sales brochure with Brescia at centre stage, the rest of the document is below
Bob continues ‘The Brescia, of 1496cc capacity, has a cylinder block with non-detachable head and four valves per cylinder operated from a single overhead camshaft via ‘banana’ tappets. In Europe the standard touring model had a four sparking plug cylinder block with ignition from a magneto mounted transversely at the front the engine. These cars had a cast aluminium firewall and were known at the factory as the ‘Modifie’. Racing versions had eight plug cylinder blocks with two magnetos mounted in the dashboard driven (noisily) by spur gears. These latter were known as ‘Full Brescias’. Surprisingly, regardless of chassis length and whether fitted with racing, sports, or touring bodywork, the majority of new imports to Australia were ‘Full Brescias’. Perhaps it was thought to have the security of two magnetos in our relatively primitive motoring environment.’
Superb Brescia 16-valve engine cutaway, technical details as below (Griggs)
In the early twenties, Bugatti didn’t build the bodies of their cars, with the exception of minimalist T13 racing coachwork, so all of the new cars imported to Australia via the London agent, Sorel, were shipped in most cases in bare chassis form. A tax or tariff was imposed on imported coachwork to help stimulate the local industry with ‘Many of the local bodies fitted to Brescias appear to have been of poor quality. This, coupled with the harsh ride of the Brescia, and the poor roads on which they were driven, ensured that the coachwork had a short life. With the need for light bodies for competition work, the discarded original bodywork was usually followed by a succession of amateur built bodies.’ King wrote.
Bugatti played a very important part in the formative years of Australian motor racing as the weapon of choice for many sportsmen on road circuits, hillclimbs, the concrete saucer at Maroubra, gravel speedways and the beaches at places like Gerringong.
A straight-eight Bugatti T30 driven by Geoff Meredith won the first Australian Grand Prix at Goulburn, New South Wales in 1927. Goulburn, 200 km south of Sydney, was also a Gold Rush town. In fact Bugatti won five of the first six AGPs creating huge brand awareness by the standards of the time.
Four cylinder Bugatti T37As – the supercharged variant of the T37 – were victorious in the Phillip Island AGPs of 1929 with Arthur Terdich at the wheel, and in 1930 and 1932 when driven by the period’s ace, Bill Thompson. Carl Junker won in 1931 aboard a straight-eight 1.5-litre T39.
Drake-Richmond’s T37 goes thru Heaven Corner ahead of the Mert Wreford Riley Brooklands during the 1 January 1935 Centenary 300 at Phillip Island. This is the cover photo of Bob King’s book (King)
The Phillip Island AGPs were handicap events, so there is no reason a Brescia couldn’t have won a race with the right mix of speed, reliability and luck, but such never the case. The best Brescia results in our premier event were Merton Wreford’s fourth in 1932 and John Bernadou’s fifth in 1929.
Mert raced chassis 2133, ex-Arthur Terdich, and ‘In practice Wreford’s straight line speed was bettered by very few cars and he was actually faster than Drake-Richmond’s Type 37. In the race Mert was given a 15 minute start by the blown Type 37A’s of Terdich and Thompson and he finished a creditable fourth place on handicap, averaging almost 65 mph for the 200 miles with his old two-wheel-brake Brescia in spite of losing four valuable minutes with clutch trouble’ Bob King wrote.
John Bernadou raced his father Albert’s 2536 in the 1929 AGP – both father and son competed extensively in Victoria in the mid-twenties – despite being delayed by a hole in the fuel tank John was third in the Under 1500 cc class and fifth overall.
Bill McLachlan at Quarry Bend, Bathurst 1952. Bug T37A Ford V8 37358 aka the MacKellar Spl (B Gunther)
Some (not a huge number mind you) quite exotic racing cars came to Australia pre-War including several Vittorio Jano designed Alfa’s, but the faster Bugatti racing straight-eight T35 and T51’s didn’t make the trip until post-War, when they were of course beyond the first flush of youth.
In our racing, which comprised many events run to handicaps, the cars were competitive but none won a post-War AGP. All played an important role in bolstering grid sizes throughout the long Australian Special Era which in the main were MG based or Ford side-valve V8 powered. In many cases once the original Bugatti (or Alfa or Ferrari or Bristol) motor blew Ford V8s, or a bit later a small block Chev or Holden Grey-six-cylinder engine was inserted under said car’s shapely aluminium bonnets.
To reframe my shallow comment a moment ago about Australian Specials, the wonderful breed included tool-room-quality machines such as the Charlie Dean/Repco Research built Maybachs, the Lou Abrahams/Ted Gray Tornados and Chamberlain brothers Chamberlain 8. Also in the mix are outrageous in brilliant original conception cars like two of Eldred Norman’s masterpieces, the Double 8 and Eclipse/Zephyr Spl, while the rest includes anything and everything from mild-to-wild MGs and Ford V8 engined specials. Not to forget the Hudson straight-eight engined machines pre-War, the high point of those is the extant (Frank) Kleinig Spl: MG chassis, monoposto, Hudson-8 and much, much more. There was no lack of creativity among this country’s mechanics and engineers however basic the underpinnings of the machines they started with!
A game-changer was the move in AGP regulations from handicap to outright events from the 1949, Leyburn Queensland AGP won by John Crouch’s Delahaye 135S. Mind you that didn’t stop the organisers of the 1950 Lobethal, South Australia, and 1951 Narrogin, West Australia AGPs having an each way bet by placing as much emphasis on the handicap winner as the outright victor, which comes through strongly in the contemporary newspaper accounts.
1951 was the last handicap-AGP (in part) and the last won by an Australian built car (the Warwick Pratley driven, George Reed built, Ford V8 engined George Reed Special) until Frank Matich won the 1971 AGP at Warwick Farm a couple of decades later in brand new F5000 Matich A50 Repco Holden.
From 1951 those who wanted to win the AGP needed the readies to acquire a car with the speed, endurance on our rough road circuits and reliability. The balance of the fifties was the Factory Car Era. A Talbot Lago T26C won in 1952/3 (Doug Whiteford), HWM Jaguar in 1954 (Lex Davison), Ferrari 500/625 won in 1957/8 (Davison), a mid-engined Cooper T40 Bristol in 1955 (Brabham) and Maserati 250Fs in 1956/9 (Moss/Stan Jones).
John Cummins raced his T37A Holden ‘37332’ complete with Bellamy IFS until very late in the piece- here the eternal racer/raconteur is at Bathurst in 1961 (unattributed)
Among all this the pre-War Bugatti’s, whether Bugatti or black-iron-powered still played an important role. The last AGP grid of substantial Bugatti numbers was the 1952 Mount Panorama contest in which three entered. Bill McLachlan’s T37A Ford V8 finished 13th, while the T35B/51 shared by Phil Catlin and Peter Menere was 15th, but the P Lowe T37 Holden failed to finish. In fact the placings by McLachlan and Catlin/Menere were the last in an AGP for Bugattis, one was Ford V8 powered, the other still had its Molsheim motor.
For the record, the very last Bugatti AGP start was the David Van Dal/John Cummins T57 which failed to finish the very hot 1957 Caversham race outside Perth. There ended a rich contribution by the marque to Australian motor racing which commenced with substantial numbers of Brescias, and Geoff Meredith’s first AGP win aboard a T30 at Goulburn in 1927. Thirty years from start to finish, not a bad record at all!
Duncan Ord in the ex-Howe/Levegh T57 ‘57264’ 3.3 s-8 in the Patriotic GP at Applecross, Perth, WA on 11 November 1940. He is turning out of Tweedale Road (Terry McGrath))
Bibliography…
‘Bugattis in Australasia’ Bob King- Bob still has a couple of copies of this book and plenty of ‘The Brescia Bugatti’- contact rking4450@gmail.com
‘A History of Australian Grand Prix 1928-1939’ John Blanden, MotorSport July 1942, The Bugatti Trust
Photo Credits…
George Thomas, Bob King Collection, Byron Gunther, Bob Shepherd, Terry McGrath, Griggs, automobiles.narod.ru
Chassis: period typical girder, H-section front axle, weight circa 610 kg
Engine: Four-cylinder, SOHC by front bevel drive, four valve with bore/stroke of 66, 68, 69 x 100 mm for capacities of 1368/1453/1496 cc. Carburettor(s) one or two Zenith. Ignition one or two magnetos, usually SEV. Plugs one or two per cylimder. 30 plus bhp with an RPM limit of (‘prudent’) 4000 ‘or even 4500 on a good Brescia’
Gearbox: located centrally, four-speed and reverse with right-hand location, clutch wet multi plate
Brakes: Location and type – foot, transmission and right-hand for the rear. Four wheel brakes fitted from 1926
Wire wheels with original size 710 x 90
Dimensions: T13, wheelbase 2.0 metres or 1967 mm, T22 2.4 metres or 2417 mm and T23 2.55 metres all with a track of 1.15 metres
Drawing of Brescia ‘2566’ engine showing the oil drain tubes from cam-box to crankcase (B Shepherd)
Notes on The Brescia Bugatti: MotorSport July 1942…
Amaroo Park, Sydney May 1976, Formula 3. The Two Brians- Shead and Sampson lead Peter Macrow, all three aboard Cheetah Mk6 Toyotas from #4 Mal Brewster, Rennmax and then David Booth in a Birrana 374 Ford, Terry Finnigan, Cheetah and the rest- Elfin 600’s, 623 etcetera…
By 1972 the classes of single-seater racing in Australia comprised the following: Australian National Formula 1- F5000 at the pinnacle through ANF2- 1600, twin-cam, 2 valve, fuel injected which effectively meant the Lotus-Ford twin-cam the ultimate expression of which were Brian Hart’s alloy, injected 205 bhp’ish 416B motors. ANF3- SOHC, 2 valve, carbs with Toyota Corolla and Kent Fords the most common but there were Datsun and a smattering of other engines too. Formula Ford and Formula Vee require no explanation.
In Gold Star rounds some F2’s help bolster skinny F5000 fields, so too did F3 run with F2- which had a national championship whilst F3 did not. Combined F3 and FF races were common at State level with FF also having a national championship- ‘The Driver To Europe Series’ with FVee always racing on their lonesome but having a one-race ‘FV Nationals’ which was a de-facto national championship- very hotly contested it was too.
Sheady and Sambo ‘sambo: Shead and Sampson in Cheetah Mk4 Toyotas sandwich the F2 Birrana 273 Ford of Tony Stewart circa 1973 at Sandown. Mk4 the last of Shead’s spaceframe single-seaters- vestigial rear wing but no front. Maybe not the prettiest of Cheetahs but fast (B Jones)
Year in, year out the quickest F3 cars were the ‘works’ Cheetah Toyota’s fielded by the ‘Sheady and Sambo Show’- Shead built over fifty Cheetahs (F3, F2, F Pac, F Holden and Clubman) in a small workshop at Mordialloc and Sampson’s ‘Motor Improvements’ concern built the engines in the Nepean Highway, St Kilda, both southern bayside suburbs of Melbourne.
Both Shead’s Cheetah’s and Sampson’s circa 130 bhp Toyota Corolla motors were sold to customers but usually the two Brians had the answers with a combination of age and experience, finely set-up chassis’ and just a smidge more power than the customers got.
Shead and Sambo in the new, monocoque Cheetah Mk5 Toyota chased by Paul King’s Lew Wade owned Birrana 374 Toyota in the summer of 1975 at Hume Weir on the NSW/Victorian ‘Albury’ border. Who won this encounter Paul?? (B Jones)
For me the sexiest F3 machine of the period was the Birrana 374 Toyota with Paul King and Dean Hosking giving the two Brians something to think about particularly in 1974/5. The Elfin 700 was also a nice bit of kit but never did as well as the equally simple (spaceframe) Elfin 600 which preceded it, mind you the level of competition was stiffer in the mid-seventies than the late sixties.
Chassis of the F3 cars by that stage were aluminium monocoques pretty much universally with the Hewland Mk9 or Peter Holinger 5 speed ‘boxes the transmissions of choice.
I’ve no idea who won that Amaroo race but I’ve my money on one of the two Brians despite being away from home…
Credits…
Glenn Moulds, Brendan Jones Collection, Bruce Keys
Tailpiece: Sports Car World Birrana 374 track test…
If memory serves, always dangerous, Richard Steigler’s 374 (above) was the ex-John Blanden Adelaide owned Dean Hosking driven chassis. A fellow by the name of Adrian Van Loon useter to drive and write these SCW track test articles. Mighty fine bits of communication they were to a budding teenage enthusiast too, well and truly wetted the appetite he did. Died of cancer many years ago way too young sadly.
One of the wonderful things about the internet is the constant appearance of material on every topic, in this case a nice batch of photos popped onto it by ‘The Adelaide Advertiser’, here they are, too good not to share.
To celebrate Campbell’s achievement the people of Adelaide turned out in droves- about 200,000 flooded the streets of the small city on 25 July to see and hear Bluebird drive up King William Street to the Adelaide Town Hall. Mind you, ‘Beatle-Mania’ hit Adelaide five weeks before when 300,000 fans of the worlds greatest supergroup flooded into the capital.
Campbell also set the World Water Speed Record in 1964, achieving 276.3 mph at Lake Dumbleyung near Perth in Bluebird K7.
Max Stewart enjoying the trip back to the hotel aboard his evergreen, fast Mildren from Singapore’s Thomson Road Circuit 8-11 April 1971. Note the tow-rope!…
Max failed to finish in his Mildren Alfa that year, a successful one in which he won the Australian Gold Star Championship, albeit the car was Waggott 2 litre rather than 2 litre Alfa GTAm powered as it is here.
The Singapore race was won by Kiwi, Graeme Lawrence in a Brabham BT29 Ford FVC from the Australian duo- John Walker’s Elfin 600 Ford twin-cam and Bob Muir’s Mildren ‘Yellow Submarine’ Waggott third. It was Rennmax’ galore in this race with Ken Goodwin 6th in his BN3 Ford with Stewart a DNF, his Mildren chassis also built by Bob Britton’s Rennmax concern.
Stewart on the way to his 1972 Singapore GP win, Mildren Ford, behind is Leo Geoghegan in Graeme Lawrence’s Brabham BT30 Ford (SMI)
In 1972 Max brought this car in which he had so much success over so many years back to Singpore and won the race held on 2 April…
The race had depth- Vern Schuppan ran a March 722, Garrie Cooper, the Elfin boss converted his Elfin 600D from Repco V8 to Lotus/Ford twin-cam spec, Leo Geoghegan raced Graeme Lawrence’s Brabham BT30, Bob Muir a Rennmax BN3 and Sonny Rajah his ex-Ronnie Peterson March 712M.
In fact that was the big change to the meeting- the organisers effectively adopted Australian National F2 engine regs which in a practical race winning sense mandated the use of the Lotus/Ford 2 valve, twin cam engine. Max’s car was fitted with a Paul England built mill in place of the Waggott 2 litre 4-valver with which the car won so many events.
Max receives the booty and tells all after his ’72 Singapore GP win (SMI)
Their is a story to tell about fitment of the Alfa GTAm engine to the Mildren for its Asian Tour in 1971 though, and i would love to hear it!
The Singapore GP race in mid-April was well before the start of the Australian Gold Star Series at Lakeside on 6 June. So why was the Alfa engine, no doubt provided by Brian Foley, the only chap in Oz with a GTAm, fitted instead of the usual Waggott 2 litre with which it raced right through the 1971 season by Max and then the 1972 Australian Tasman rounds in Tony Stewart’s hands?…
(NAS)
Etcetera: Stewart, Mildren Waggott, Singapore Grand Prix 1970…
Max during the 1970 GP when the little Mildren was powered by Merv Waggott’s TC-4V 2 litre engine. The race that year was dominated by Stewart’s teammate in the Mildren Alfa 2.5 V8 ‘Yellow Submarine’- Kevin Bartlett won the 20 lap preliminary and led the GP until a valve spring let go, Graeme Lawrence’s ex-Amon Ferrari 246T with whom KB had been dicing throughout, took a popular win. GL won many races in South East Asia for the best part of a decade from the mid-sixties to the seventies. Not sure where Max placed.
Tailpiece…
(K Wyndham)
One article, one car, three pictures- three different engines.
Here is Max’s Alec Mildren owned machine- that’s Mildren talking to Glenn Abbey, his longtime friend and Chief Mechanic behind the truck in the Oran Park paddock in June 1970.
A successful weekend for the team as Max won the Gold Star round powered by a 2 litre Waggott engine from Leo Geoghegan, Lotus 59 Waggott and Garrie Cooper, Elfin 600D Repco 2.5 V8. The dude tending to the front Goodyear is Derek Kneller (his book is on the way and will be a beauty) with Stu Randall at the rear. I wonder who the pretty Missy is with an interest in all things mechanical?
The engine count for this chassis (in fact one car- two chassis frames) is something like- Alfa Romeo 1.6 twin-plug 2 valve DOHC F2, Waggott 4 valve DOHC- 1600/1860/2000cc, Lotus Ford 1.6 litre 2 valve DOHC and Alfa Romeo 2 litre 2 valve twin plug DOHC.
Credits…
Glenn Murphy, Singapore Ministry of Information/Arts, Ken Wyndham, oldracingcars.com, National Archives of Singapore
The Coventry Climax ET199 was said to be the first British produced forklift truck, 8 October 1946…
‘Seen here being demonstrated by a girl worker at the Coventry factory that produces the truck. The demonstration included lifting a racing car weighing nearly one and a half tons’ the Getty Images caption advises. I wonder what the ‘racing car’ is?
So, there you go, a Coventry Climax trivia question the answer to which you have always been waiting for!
Post war ‘Climax changed its focus away from car engines into other markets including marine diesels, fire pumps and forklift trucks. The ET199 was designed to carry a 4,000 lb (1,800 kg) load with a 24-inch (610 mm) load centre and a 9 ft (2.7 m) lift height for those with a particular interest in these devices.
The fire pump market and race adaptations of that engine proved rather successful for the company!
(Mirrorpix)
In another bit of trivia Prince Phillip paid the lads in Coventry a visit on 21 June 1966 and is doing his best to show some interest in a 2 valve Climax FWMV V8. Those with a keen knowledge of the company’s history will recall the only works Climax engines deployed in F1 that year was the special 2 litre, 4 valve FWMV Leonard Lee built for Colin Chapman to tide Jim Clark over until the BRM H16 engine was ready to pop into Col’s Lotus 43 chassis. Click here for a short article on the Lotus 33 which used this engine.
Tailpiece: Clark in the 2 litre Lotus 33 Climax FWMV V8 at Levin, New Zealand in 1967, he won the race and the series in ‘R14’…
(Digby Paape)
Clarks Lotus 33 ‘R14’ was a chassis which had been kind to him. He first raced it at Brands Hatch in July 1966, and, fitted with the super, trick, only 2 litre version of the Coventry Climax FWMV V8 it had served him well, he drove the car when the heavy ‘H16’ engined Lotus 43 was unsuited to the circuit or circumstances. His best result against the new 3 Litre F1’s was a strong third in Holland.
He won the Tasman series in ‘R14’, assisted greatly by the unreliability of the Brabhams and the BRM P261’s which had been so dominant the year before. He raced a Lotus 43 in South Africa, the first GP of 1967, then ‘R14’ for the last time at Monaco, finally getting his hands on the Lotus 49 at Zandvoort. By that time he was a British Tax exile so the first time the Scot saw the car was when he drove it in Holland, he hadn’t even tested the thing!
Dan Drinan prepares Michael Andretti’s March 86C Cosworth DFX at Indy, 19 May 1986…
It’s the final few days of preparation before Carb Day and the last chance to test the car before the Memorial Day classic on 31 May. Michael’s cheque for qualifying third is on the wall.
Bobby Rahal won in a similar March with Michael sixth from grid three having led 45 of the 200 laps, including the first 42. In a rout for March, the Bicester concern had cars in nine of the top-ten placings, the only interloper was Al Unser Jr’s Lola Cosworth in fifth.
Rick Mears, Kevin Cogan and Rahal battled for the lead. In an emotional win, Rahal got the jump from Cogan after a lap 194 restart and took victory for team owner Jim Trueman who died of cancer eleven days later. Rick Mears was third.
Michael Andretti, Indy 500 1986, March 86C Cosworth (B Harmeyer)
With an opening photo like that the focus has to be on that magnificent engine and it’s conversion from F1 ubiquity to CART interloper.
John Barnard’s appointment to replace Maurice Philippe as designer for the Vels-Parnelli F1 and Indy team was at the behest of his former Lola colleague, Jim Chapman, then VPJ Team Manager.
Barnard achieved much with VPJ and Chaparral before returning to Europe and staggering F1 success with McLaren. It’s his role in development of what became the Cosworth DFX V8 turbo which is of interest in this article.
John’s primary VPJ role was to design and develop the ground-breaking Parnelli VPJ6B and 6C which introduced the turbo-Cosworth DFX to Indycar racing. Over the next dozen years the engine dominated, winning 151 races, including 10 consecutive Indy 500s from 1978-87.
When Barnard arrived in South California in 1975 he was thrown into the deep end, fettling the team’s F1 car and designing the drivetrain for Parnelli Jones’ off-road Ford truck, you can’t argue with those extremes of variety.
Danny ‘On The Gas’ Ongais, Parnelli VPJ6B Cosworth, Indy 1977 20th from Q7 (B Harmeyer) Al Unsers VPJ6B rear, Indy 1977. Note turbo plumbing and wastegate outlet (B Harmeyer)
Through the early and mid-1970s Indycars were allowed to run unlimited boost, the ageing four-cylinder Offenhauser was finally pushed way beyond its limits. “I was on USAC’s rules committee and we kept blowing up engines,” says Parnelli Jones in a Gordon Kirby article published in MotorSport.
“You could not buy an engine from Drake Engineering (manufacturers of the Offy) and run 500 miles. You couldn’t even run it 100 miles because of porosity in the engines. We had a machine to impregnate the engines so we could keep ours together, but you had to pull it all apart and blueprint it after you bought it…Then USAC cut the fuel mileage back to 1.8 mpg and I said to Vel, “We’ve got those little Formula 1 Cosworths. I think they could work’.”
In amongst the team’s F1, USAC and F5000 programs Barnard was beavering away converting the F1 design into a USAC car using a mix of changes including turbo-charging the Cosworth DFV F1 motor.
John Barnard picks up the design changes: “It was actually a completely new chassis. We put coil springs on the rear, but I kept the torsion bars on the front. The Brit strengthened the car by double-skinning the monocoque and designing a much stronger front bulkhead. “That proved very useful,” Barnard says. “In ’77 we were practising at Indy and Al ran over Janet Guthrie’s turbine wheel, which came out on the track, and had quite a big accident. But he walked away. I was glad I had double-skinned that front bulkhead.”
The resulting VPJ6B was a much smaller overall package than the existing Offy and Foyt/Ford-powered chassis’ then racing.
Ongais again in 1977, note front suspension linkages, torsion bars the spring medium up front (B Harmeyer) Unser 1977, Q3 and third in the race won by AJ Foyt’s Coyote Foyt/Ford V8 turbo and Tom Sneva McLaren M24 Cosworth who started from pole (B Harmeyer)
Barnard also designed many key components for VPJ’s DFX development program. “There was a lot to do on the engine, inlet manifolds and all sorts of things. I was drawing conrods and pistons, an oil pump system, fuel injection and God knows what else. It was fantastic for me because I had never really got into engines much, but we had our engine shop so we could do this stuff to every part of the car and engine. It was fantastic, just like having a toy shop.”
But there was little support from Keith Duckworth for turbocharging the DFV. Duckworth famously didn’t believe in turbos. “I remember him giving me a lecture about turbos,” Barnard adds, “and another one about why 4WD wouldn’t work. I remember Vel reporting that Cosworth told him he was a bit of a twit trying to get all this horsepower out of an engine that was designed to generate 500bhp, and there we were getting more than 800,” Barnard says. “Vel told me, ‘Those bloody guys at Cosworth don’t mind selling me pistons and heads all the time. I’ve spent $100,000 with them just on pistons.’ But they told him we were idiots for making a turbocharged version of their engine.”
Unser and Andretti ran a few practice laps at Indianapolis that year in an early version of the VPJ6. The first complete 6B made its debut in Unser’s hands in 1975’s season-closing race at Phoenix, finishing fifth. “Once we got in the right ballpark with wheel and spring rates we had pretty good balance, and it got better and better,” Barnard remembers. “We continued to muck about with the engine. It was an ongoing programme. I was making wastegates and all sorts of things.”
Unser scored the Parnelli Cosworth’s first win in the Pocono 500 in June 1976, then won again at Milwaukee in August and Phoenix at the end of the season. “We proved that the engine worked and we brought Duckworth over to Pocono because we wanted to get a distributorship for the Cosworth Indy programme,” Parnelli recalls. “So Duckworth came over and damned if he didn’t turn around and steal Larry Slutter and Chickie from us.”
Ongais 1977 (B Harmeyer) Unser 1977, gorgeous bit of engineering kit. Took the first Cosworth DFX Indy win aboard a Chaparral Lola in 1978, 11 of the 33 starters were Cosworth powered (B Harmeyer)
Barnard took a dim view of Duckworth’s manoeuvre. “As soon as we won Pocono, Cosworth saw the light. It wasn’t long afterwards that they nicked Larry Slutter and set their own engine shop up right there in Torrance, which to be honest I thought was pretty mean. “I was told by somebody at Cosworth many years later that the turbo Indy engine programme – the DFX as they called it – was their most profitable programme of all. So I wasn’t impressed with the way they did that. Vel and Parnelli were the ones putting their hands in their pockets to develop this car and engine, and I don’t think they ever got the proper credit.”
After all the money and effort VPJ had put into developing the engine, not being able to turn it into a commercial enterprise was a big blow, playing a role in the team’s demise a few years later. “Of course,” Jones says, “we were in a catch-22 because you had to satisfy your sponsors and we needed to order parts from Duckworth. We could have sued him, but we decided to try to work with him.”
For the 1977 season both McLaren and Penske built new Fl-based cars with DFX engines. Tom Sneva won the USAC Championship aboard Penske’s Cosworth-powered McLaren M24 and Penske PC5. Johnny Rutherford also won four USAC races in the works McLaren DFX, while Unser and new team-mate Danny Ongais each won a single race, with Big Al taking the California 500.
Barnard quipped “I didn’t start the Cosworth programme,” he adds, “but I had most of the input making a car work around that engine. Looking back, I learned massive amounts and enjoyed it, too. It was bloody hard work, but I was a young man and ready to do whatever it took.”
Unser 1977, classic aero of that just before ground effect period. The F1 Lotus 78 raced throughout 1977- the first of the Lotus g/e’s (B Harmeyer)
Bibliography/Credits…
MotorSport article by Gordon Kirby in 2013, Getty Images-Bettman and Bob Harmeyer
Tailpiece…
Cosworth Engineering studio shot of the DFX, engine number unknown.
The covers of some old magazines are amazing aren’t they!?…
Rob Bartholomaeus, one of our friends in South Australia sent me this ‘Motor Manual’ 1950-51 Year Book to assist in the research of the Derek Jolly article I wrote not so long ago.
This magazine lasted well into the 1970’s, to me it was always a distant third behind the two Australian road car monthlies- ‘Wheels’ and ‘Modern Motor’ both of which survive today, the latter title became simply ‘Motor’ in 1992. These yearbooks are research gold now. Mind you Rob and I can make no sense of the painted cover in terms of the cars and places represented, perhaps the blue car has a bit of Maserati 4CL about it- I like it all the same!
The content of the ‘Tailpiece’ is different though- and a beauty it is too from Brian Caldersmith’s collection. It is MM’s Yearbook Number 6 of the 1955 season. The top image is Reg Hunt’s Maserati A6GCM, arguably the dominant car of the season if not the AGP winner. The bottom photo is an Albert Park grid front row with the nose of Kevin Neal’s ex-Hunt Cooper T23 Bristol alongside Doug Whiteford’s blue Talbot-Lago T26C and Hunt’s A6GCM at right.
The Vauxhall 30/98 was an iconic high performance, light touring car despite the relatively small number, circa 596, built.
Such was the build quality and the fact that ’old car people’ saw the intrinsic merit of the Laurence Pomeroy design a large proportion of those constructed between 1923 to 1927 still exist. They were popular in Australia, we have a lot of 30/98’s in Oz in relative terms, the cars are a very welcome and admired part of the historic car scene. This short article is about two Velox bodied fast tourers shipped to Australia in 1924, chassis numbers OE86 and OE100.
In some of my history of Australian motor racing articles i’ve mentioned the grip on the publics imagination transcontinental or city to city record breaking had in the formative motoring years of this great sun-bleached land. Vauxhalls featured heavily in these achievements in the hands of Boyd Edkins and others.
30/98 at the Queensland/Northern Territory border fence (unattributed)
John Balmer was the scion of a well to do Victorian family, his mother acquired 30/98 chassis number OE100 as a gift for him. He competed in various motorsport events with it, and together with co-driver Eddie Scott set the transcontinental Darwin to Adelaide, Fremantle (Perth) to Adelaide, and Adelaide to Melbourne records during 1936 in the car.
OE100 was somewhat bruised by this experience so its core components- 4224cc 112 bhp four cylinder engine, gearbox and front end wheel to wheel were fitted into OE86, another 30/98 owned by RS Robinson, a friend of Balmer’s from their Melbourne University and Citizen Air Force training days.
With sponsorship provided by Shell, Dunlop and Repco, Balmer and Richard Kent established a new 9326 mile circumnavigation of Australia record of 24 days, 11 hours and 58 minutes in 1938. The Repco advertisement at this articles outset recognises that remarkable achievement of grit and endurance.
Crossing the Katherine River in the Northern Territory (unattributed)
John Balmer was killed on a bombing mission over Berlin in 1944 but left his share of the car to Robinson’s wife Janet. The car was retained by the Robinson family in Victoria’s Warrnambool area, little used other than in occasional VSCC events until sold in 2016- and restored by Paul Chaleyer in Blackburn, Victoria.
Bibliography…
ausauto.com, MossGreen auctions
Tailpiece: The transcontinental adventurers, John Balmer and Richard Kent, ‘Boys Own’ stuff isn’t it? Blackall is in central Queensland…
primotipo... 