primotipo…

Bib Stillwell leans his Cooper into Homestead Corner, you can see and feel the energy being expended in extracting all the performance the car has to offer in this John Ellacott shot…

Stillwell was four times Australian National ‘Gold Star’ Champion from 1962 to 1965, his early sixties battles with rival Frank Matich in both single-seaters and in sports cars, Matich in his Lotus 19 or 19B, were legendary.

Both were Australian champions in both types of car and fierce rivals- Stillwell the Melbourne motor dealer/semi-professional racer and Matich, the Sydney based, and perhaps first truly professional Australian driver.

In Sportscars Stillwell won the ‘Australian Tourist Trophy’ aboard the Cooper Monaco in 1961 and 1962. Matich won it in 1964 in a Lotus 19B Climax and in 1966 racing his almost brand new Elfin 400 Olds (aka the ‘Traco Olds’), then in 1967 in his first self-built Matich SR3 Olds and again in 1968 in a Matich SR3 Repco.

The ATT was not contested in 1969 but Frank’s Matich SR4, powered by a 5 litre quad-cam Repco ‘760 Series’ V8 was the fastest car in Australia of any sort that year. It was built to contest the Can-Am Series in 1968 but was too late in completion to compete so Frank used it to destroy the opposition at home a year later instead.

Bib acquired this ex-Moss car in the UK. The chassis number is uncertain but Doug Nye believes it to be the car ordered by Moss in April 1959 as a kit of parts ex-factory which was then built up by Keele Engineering.

The Monaco was lightly raced by the great Brit, commencing with the British GP meeting at Aintree in 1959, DNF after qualifying on the front row. He took the car to Scandinavia in August winning races at both Karlskoga, Sweden and the Roskilde Ring, Copenhagen, Denmark and it was then put to one side as he focussed on a Lotus 19 to which the engine and ‘box from the Monaco were fitted.

Bib bought the car off Moss during a trip to the UK in 1961.

At Stillwell’s Kew, Melbourne Holden dealership workshops it was fitted by Gerry Brown with a 2.5 Litre Coventry Climax FPF four cylinder engine and gearbox out of one of Bib’s Cooper single-seaters upon arrival in Australia and was soon ready in time for the 19 September 1961 Warwick Farm meeting.

Starting a familiar pattern, the Stillwell transporter left its Cotham Road, Kew, Melbourne base to go to Adelaide with two cars- Bib raced both his Cooper T53 in the Australian Grand Prix at Mallala in October 1961 finishing second to Lex Davison- Lex in Bib’s older Cooper T51, and the Cooper Monaco that weekend.

The Monaco arrived in Australia with the standard leaf spring rear suspension configuration but Alf Francis had modified the rear chassis bracketry to also allow the use of a coil spring/damper set-up- both were used in Oz.

 

In Australia the car also raced with a 2.7 ‘Indy’ Climax FPF with which it was timed at 160mph on Longford’s ‘Flying Mile’ in 1963. In a quest for still more speed, in October 1964 the car was fitted with an ex-Scarab RE/Arnold Glass BRM P48 Buick V8.

Lance Reventlow sold one of his engines to Arnold Glass after the one off appearance of his mid-engined Scarab RE Buick Intercontinental Formula car raced by Chuck Daigh at Sandown’s opening meeting in March 1962. Glass replaced the somewhat temperamental BRM 4 cylinder engine with the lightweight, 3.9 litre aluminium, pushrod V8.

In Stillwell’s hands the car won the 1961 and 1962 Australian TT, the Victorian Sports Car Championship in 1962 and 1963 and the South Pacific Sports Car Championship at Longford in 1962.

 

Sold to ‘Pitstop Motors’ Dick Thurston, he first raced it at Calder in January 1966- shortly thereafter he was fifth in the 1966 Australian Tourist Trophy at Longford- a race won, as mentioned above by the Matich Elfin 400 Oldsmobile.

The car was was soon sold on, still in Melbourne, to South Yarra’s Tony Osbourne of ‘Argo Racing’- as in Argo Street South Yarra, who raced it at Calder in May 1966 and then contested the first Surfers Paradise 12 Hour race together with Murray Carter and Ray Gibbs- the beast completed 96 laps of the race won by the Scuderia Veloce Ferrari 250LM crewed by Jackie Stewart and Andy Buchanan.

The car subsequently passed through many owners hands including Fred Wheelhouse, Peter Nielson, Charles Dominelli before acquisition by Pat McLernon of Dandenong, Victoria who fitted a new body built by Ted Proctor in Sydney, by this stage a Ford 302 V8 was fitted. Stan Rumble owned it for a while before the wonderful machine fell into the loving hands of Paul Moxham who restored it to original Coventry Climax engined form.

In 2000 Frank Sytner and John Coombs acquired it, the car has raced in Europe since then.

‘Scuderia Stillwell’ arriving and unloading the Monaco and Cooper T53 at Mallala- South Australia Gold Star meeting in October 1962 after the long haul from their Kew.

Stillwell had a good start in life…

He attended Trinity Grammar and Scotch College in Hawthorn and at 22 had parental support for his original small MG dealership in 1949, but over the decades grew his business.

He was awarded a Holden franchise in 1953 operating from Cotham Road Kew, and later as a Ford, BMW and other prestige marques dealer building a large group with his own talent and entrepreneurial flair which prospers in his families hands today long after his death.

His management skills were world class, his interests included aviation. After success in that field from the mid-sixties in Australia- distributing Beechcraft and later Lerjets he was appointed President of the Lear Corporation in the US in 1982, a position he held for 3 years before returning to Australia to a ‘second motor dealing career’ in luxury franchises and historic racing, he died on June 12 1999.

I rather like this observation Michael Lynch made in his obituary of Bib published in the Melbourne ‘Age’ newspaper.

‘The links between business and sport, and the characteristics required to succeed in both, have often been drawn. Drive, determination, persistence, talent, luck, the ability to think outside the obvious and seize opportunities that others don’t see – and then make them work – are all characteristics shared variously by top sportsmen and the leading lights of the business world.’

’Stillwell, who died suddenly last weekend from a heart attack, had all of them in good measure, showcasing them in both his sporting career, which ran until the mid-1960s, and then his business career, which was still being developed at the time of his death’.

Cooper T49 ‘Monaco’ Specifications…

The Cooper Type number is 49- the car was given the ‘Monaco’ name in recognition of Jack Brabham’s victory in the 1959 Monaco Grand Prix, his first GP win on the way to his, and Coopers first World Championships as driver and constructor.

Of typical curved Cooper space frame construction, the car owes most of its hardware to its single-seater siblings. Front suspension is by upper and lower wishbones and coil spring/damper units with an adjustable roll bar. At the rear top location is provided by a transverse leaf spring, with a lower rear wishbone. Brakes are disc all around, steering rack and pinion and typical Cooper alloy wheels of the period were used.

Most of the cars were fitted with Coventry Climax FPF engines of varying capacities, Stillwell’s mainly with a 2.5 but it was raced with other engines as recorded above. Gearbox was the Citroen ERSA or Colotti units- the Moss/Stilwell car was first fitted with a Cooper CS5, 5 speed transaxle.

Etcetera…

Another successful Mallala weekend for Stillwell, this time after winning the 19 August 1961 ‘Mallala Trophy’ Gold Star round.

Looking very natty in his BRDC badged blue blazer, it’s perhaps a posed BP publicity shot, whatever the case, a top shot.

Stephen Dalton reckons this shot of the Monaco is at Calder in January or February 1962.

Credits…

John Ellacott, Kevin Drage, Ray Bell, James Allington cutaway, Ken Devine Collection, Reg Sparks Collection via Craig Sparks, Phillip Skelton via Tony Johns Collection

The Nostalgia Forum, Richard Austin, John Blanden ‘Historic Racing Cars in Australia’, Mike Kyval

Tailpiece: Equipe Stillwell during the November 1962 Caversham AGP weekend…

The open-wheeler is a Cooper T53 Climax- Bib was third in the AGP behind Bruce McLaren’s Cooper T62 and John Youl’s T55 at Caversham off the back of winning the Gold Star from Youl and Patterson- he took victories at Bathurst and Mallala on the way to the title.

Finito…