Posts Tagged ‘Elfin MR5 Repco-Holden’

Allan Moffat Single Seater Racer 2…

Posted: September 17, 2026 in Features
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(BNelsonColl-MBisset-Wordpress)

Barry Nelson with Allan Moffat aboard his Brabham BT16 Lotus-Ford Formula B on the Road America dummy grid on June 17, 1967.

In a very limited campaign, he finished seventh in the Central Division of the SCCA-sanctioned championship.

(BryarRacingMagazine-MBisset-Wordpress)

Moffat’s primary program was running Ford’s Lotus Cortina program. The shot above shows him winning the Bryar Motor Sport Park 250 Trans Am round outright in London-Laconia, New Hampshire, in July 1966.

I’ve already written an epic about Moff’s single-seater racing, but my discovery of AI-enhanced photographs lured me back in this direction, as it meant I could do something with Barry Nelson’s old colour shots which were potentially very good. See here:https://primotipo.com/2020/04/14/allan-moffat-single-seater-racer/

Moffat two-wheeling his Lotus-Cortina at Sandown during the November 1964 6 Hour, he and Jon Leighton were fourth (unattributed)
AM racing a works-Bud Moore Mercury Cougar, circuit unknown, 1967 (unattributed)
(BNelson-MBisset-Wordpress)

AM ready to rock and roll in the most salubrious of surroundings! In the lane behind Bob Jane Racing, itself behind Jane’s Chrysler/Valiant dealership at 740 Sydney Road, Brunswick, Melbourne, with the ex-Jack Brabham 1968 Tasman Cup Brabham BT23E Repco-Brabham 740 2.5 V8.

Moff was entered in round three of the Australian Drivers Championship, the Gold Star, at Sandown on September 15, 1968, but things quickly turned to custard in practice when the just rebuilt car – from John Harvey’s Easter Bathurst accident caused by component failure – lost a wheel and did enough damage to end the weekend.

(B Nelson)
(BNelson-MBisset-CoPilot)

Same time, same place, same car, but this time with John Sawyer, Jane’s team manager and chief mechanic. And a VE Valiant. In both enhanced shots, the car comes up well, but the facial features are much harder for the tool when the original is lacking…

(BNelson-MBisset-Wordpress)

Jack Brabham, below, earlier in 1968 racing the same chassis, BT23E, but fitted with the first 830 Repco-Brabham V8 during the February 25 Australian Grand Prix. DNF engine after 21 of the 55 laps; Jim Clark won the race – his last GP win – in a works Lotus 49 Ford Cosworth DFW.

(RBartholamaeusColl-MBisset-Wordpress)

Moffat exits Honda, maybe, in Bob Jane’s Elfin 400 Repco-Brabham 720 4.4 V8 at Phillip Island in November 1968. It’s a little-known event, and was probably a case of Bob throwing Moffat a bone.

He’d helped Sawyer and Jane buy the Shelby Mustang, and the deal supposedly was that AM would drive the old Mustang and Bob the newie. But Bob had racing drivers up to his armpits by that stage: there was Bob himself, Harvey recovering from his huge Bathurst prang, Ian Cook racing the Brabham and Elfin, and Bevan Gibson – arguably the most promising of the lot – sniffing around too.

(Rob Bartholomaeus Coll)

‘Take the Elfin down to the Island for a race or two and have a good time at the Isle of Wight.’ Before too long, Jane and Moffat had a parting of the ways, then Moffat pulled off the KarKraft Trans Am Mustang deal, and the rest is history…

How’d he go in the Elfin at the Island, folks? Rob Bartholomaeus sent me this magazine shot a decade ago. It’s a shit shot out of a magazine, but it’s amazing how well it came up with a tickle on WordPress. I even colourised it, something I’ve said to all and sundry, I’d never do, but being the President of the Australian Society of Hypocrites, I just had to have a go. A brilliant job it is too. And yes, the number could be 7. Apart from anything else, I’m intrigued to see how long it takes the colour shot to ‘do the social media rounds.’

(RBartholomaeusColl-MBisset-WordPress)
Engine and cockpit of the Jane 400 – ratio change in progress – probably taken during the January 26, 1969 Phillip Island meeting when the car was driven by Bevan Gibson (N Chambers)
(AutoAction-MBisset-WordPress)

Moffat hadn’t finished with single-seaters just yet.

Elfin ran a Calder test day for mainly BP-contracted drivers to have a lash in the brand new Elfin MR5 Repco-Holden F5000 car at Calder on Monday, September 13, 1971.

John McCormack finished second in the Sandown Gold Star round the day before in #5711, Kevin Bartlett won it in his McLaren M10B Chev. The steerers that day included Moffat, Henk Woelders, Garry Rush, John Harvey and David McKay, wearing his journo hat.

Moff did an undisclosed number of laps, and with too tall Sandown gearing, worn tyres and fullish tanks, did a best of 44 seconds neat.

There were rumours once or twice about a Tasman F5000 drive, but, sadly, that never happened.

(AutoAction-MBisset-WordPress)

Credits…

Barry Nelson, Rob Bartholomaeus, Neville Chambers, Auto Action

Tailpiece…

Things Go Better With…

Moffat with the Sandown hardware after winning the 1970 Sandown Three Hour aboard a works Ford Falcon GTHO Phase 2. Who is the bloke in the background?

(unatt-MBisset-WordPress)

Finito…

Repco Birthday Series 1972…

Posted: November 4, 2021 in Features, Who,What,Where & When...?
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Max Stewart with John Walker at right, Calder 1972. Repco-Holden V8, then circa 490bhp powered Elfin MR5 and Matich A50 (S Gall)

During 1972, then Australian automotive parts manufacturing and retailing colossus, Repco Ltd celebrated its half century.

Yes folks, that means the now foreign owned 400 store retailer of automotive bits and pieces made by others is a centenarian in 2022! They have some exciting things planned for next year, I won’t rain on their parade by sharing the bits I’m aware of.

Time flies all too fast, as a young teenager I attended two of the five Repco Birthday Series F5000 championship meetings run at Calder between March and December ‘72 as part of those celebrations.

The man who was ‘sposed to win the Repco Birthday Series, F Matich Esq. Bi-winged Matich A50 Repco-Holden, Calder 1972 (S Gall)

At that stage Repco had been out of F1 for four years, the 3-litre V8 Repco Brabham Engines program had yielded two GP world constructors and drivers championships for Brabham Cars (Motor Racing Developments Ltd), Repco Brabham Engines Pty. Ltd, Jack Brabham and Denny Hulme in 1966-1967.

Repco’s cost effective means of maintaining a racing presence after pulling the F1 pin was a partnership with General Motors Holdens to build F5000 engines using GMH’ then ‘spankers 308 V8 as a base, from 1969 to 1974.

Phil Irving and Brian Heard did mighty fine jobs, their Repco-Holden V8 engine design won AGPs, NZ GPs, many Tasman rounds, several Gold Stars and countless sports-sedan and sportscar races.

The interloper: KB in his sinfully sexy and oh-so-fast Lola T300 Chev at Calder in 1972 (I Smith)

It was therefore a pain-in-the-tit when Kevin Bartlett’s Chev powered Lola T300 rained on Repco’s parade in their home state by winning a ‘72 championship the grand plan of which involved a Repco-Holden engined victory!

It wasn’t all bad, Frank Matich, in the Repco sponsored Matich A50 Repco-Holden won that years Gold Star, but KB’s two Birthday Series round wins gave him a nine point advantage over FM. Conversely, Bartlett was 12 points short of Matich in the Australian Drivers Championship, the Gold Star.

Repco’s race heritage goes all the way back. In 1935 they were sponsors of engineering substance, rather than just cash…not that cash is to be scoffed at (B King Collection)

In recent times Repco have returned to racing as series sponsors of the Bathurst maxi-taxis. In the forty years they were involved as OE and aftermarket suppliers to the motor industry, and constructors of cars (Maybachs, Repco Record), race engines, components and equipment from the mid-1930s to 1974 Repco’s involvement was supreme.

Still, the comparison is unfair. We once had an automotive industry in this country until it was sodomised to a standstill by a troika (sic) of incompetent, greedy fuckwits bereft of commonsense or a single-cell of vision; management, government and organised labour.

Gees he was a big, lanky prick wasn’t he? The capped Marvellous Maxwell Stewart partially obscured by mutton-chopped Bryan Thomson or Garrie Cooper (? who-izzit?) in the BP compound at Calder in 1972. Elfin MR5 Repco, not Max’ favourite car (S Gall)

Etcetera…

(T Johns Collection)

More on the use of Repco pistons and rings in 1935. This time fitted to Les Murphy’s MG P-Type during the ‘1935 Centenary 300’ held at Phillip Island in January.

(S Gall)

Warwick Brown proved he had the ability to handle these demanding 5-litre roller skates in 1972 having jumped out of a Cosworth FVC powered McLaren M4A – McLaren M10B Chev heading into Calder’s main straight in 1972.

(S Gall)

Graham ‘Lugsy’ Adams – then mechanic and later rather handy driver and F5000 constructor – does his best to focus on the Calder job at hand. Is that the future, and still current Mrs Brown looking thoroughly wonderful behind an M10B shortly to become Bryan Thomson’s Volksrolet?

Credits…

Stephen Gall, Bob King Collection, Ian Smith, Tony Johns Collection, Barry Edmunds

Tailpiece…

(B Edmunds)

John Harvey in one of the very few appearances of Bob Jane’s Bowin P8 Repco-Holden F5000 at Calder in 1972 – Surfers Paradise and Warwick Farm were the others as far as I can see.

Bowin bias hereby declared…here I go. Again.

This beautiful, small, light, compact, ingenious, variable-rate suspension F5000 never got the run it deserved. Supposedly Janey put it to one side because Castrol wanted him to focus on his taxis rather than his real cars.

Then Leffo bought it in mid-1974, sans Repco-Holden V8, to replace the P8 chassis he boofed at Amaroo and then stuffed up the installation of a Chev V8 into a chassis for which it was never designed, creating a car as stiff as a centenarians todger, with handling reflective thereof…

John Joyce’s P8 Repco design is a great Oz F5000 mighta-been, not that mighta-beens count for SFA in motor racing!

Finito…