Motor racing has everything to me: cars, engineers, designers, drivers, politics, the racing itself and of course a corporate element…
Here in February 1964, Jack Brabham – looking very comfy in a white shirt and baggy suit! – having earlier pitched his ideas for a simple Tasman Cup race V8 engine based on a production block to the Repco Ltd Board, is at their 630 St Kilda Road, Melbourne corporate headquarters to get formal agreement to proceed with the deal.
From left to right are Bob Brown, Frank Hallam, Brabham, Charles McGrath, Ted Callinan and Charlie Dean. I doubt it’s the full Board but rather a committee delegated for the purpose.
‘Dave’ McGrath (‘knighted’ in 1968) was CEO/Managing Director, while Brown, Callinan and Dean were Directors. Hallam was a General Manager responsible for the new subsidiary, Repco Brabham Engines Pty Ltd. He reported to Brown.
The first Repco RBE620 Tasman 2.5-litre V8, numbered E1 burst into life in the Repco Engine Laboratory at Doonside Street, Richmond on March 21, 1965.
Those Webers were loaned to RBE by Bib Stillwell, whose Holden (he signed with Ford on 14/2/1966) dealership was 3 km away in Cotham Road, Kew. The Repco Engine Lab was in Doonside Street, Richmond. This engine was never raced or tested on circuit with carbs, nor was any other RBE V8. The carbs were fitted pending completion of a suitable Lucas fuel injection setup (Repco)
The Melbourne and RMIT Universities in Melbourne are the holders of the Repco Ltd and RBE Pty Ltd archives. It may be that some of the material the Board discussed in their old, oak-panelled room on that hot February 1964 day is available for researchers, he says hopefully!
Jack didn’t win the first Tasman Series in 1964 but he did pretty well using Repco prepared Coventry Climax 2.5 litre FPF engines tended to by Mike Gasking.
He won at Sandown, host of the Australian Grand Prix that year, and at Warwick Farm and Lakeside but Bruce McLaren took the title with the same number of wins, three, but more points.
Between those three February rounds the board meeting took place with considerable optimism.
The very first engine of any sort Repco built was numbered E1. The first to race started in the South African Grand Prix on January 1, 1966, a 3-litre RB620 (#E3C) fitted to Jack’s BT19 chassis, his F1 Championship-winning car.
The first victory for the engine was in the BRDC International Trophy at Silverstone on May 14, 1966, and the first championship win was recorded at Reims during the French Grand Prix on July 3, 1966. On both occasions, Jack raced BT19-1, that machine of course, has been owned by Repco for 40 years or so.
The other observation these photographs trigger is Brabham’s ability to flit between a whole lotta critical functions: driver, engineer, team owner, racing car company co-proprietor, businessman, corporate strategist and schmoozer; in this case, the board of one of Australia’s then largest public companies. He was no slouch, and he performed ALL of those roles at a superior level.
Credits…
Repco Ltd Collection photographs via Nigel Tait and Michael Gasking, ChatGPT
Tailpiece…
Jack Brabham en route to winning the 1964 AGP at Sandown in a Brabham BT7A Climax 2.5 FPF on February 9, second was Bib Stillwell in a BT4, and third was John Youl in a Cooper T55 Climax.
Utterly irrelevant to anybody other than Melburnian anoraks is that the mansion that Repco occupied 60 years ago at 630 St Kilda Road remains intact and is now owned or leased by the Australian & New Zealand College of Anaesthetists. A bit of a miracle really, Melbourne’s grandest boulevard lost most of its majestic residences in favour of run of the mill office buildings in the 1970s and 1980s. Many of these have since been rolled over or repurposed as apartment buildings.
Finito…
primotipo... 