Stan Jones, well aloft over the railway crossing at Longford aboard his Maserati 250F, leads Len Lukey, Cooper T45 Climax 2-litre, during their epic battle for honours in the 1959 Australian Grand Prix.
(Dunstan Collection)
The battle was resolved in Stan’s favour, here Alan Jones and blonde haired John Sawyer enjoy the moment with Stan. Jones had just enough power to offset the handling and roadholding advantage of Lukey’s new fangled mid-engined Cooper. Armed with a 2.5-litre FPF – not readily available to customers at that time – the result wouldn’t have been the same, but karma looked after Stan that day, he had well-and-truly paid his AGP dues after all! More about Stan here: https://primotipo.com/2014/12/26/stan-jones-australian-and-new-zealand-grand-prix-and-gold-star-winner/
Credits…
Both shots above have been lifted from Neal Kearney’s fabulous ‘Longford:The Legend of a Little Town with a Big Motor’. The much used and abused money-Longford-shot was taken by Charles Rice, here courtesy of Paul Cross’ collection, while the colour shot above is from the Dunstan Family Collection. The Pub Hotel shot below is via Lindsay Ross’ oldracephotos.com
Tailpiece…
(oldracephotos.com)
“Don’t even think about it Stanley!” muses Len Lukey as Jones shoves his nose into a rapidly diminishing gap. What a shot! The money-shot used on the cover of Neil Kearney’s book actually…
Bruce McLaren tips his Cooper T70 Climax into Shell corner at Sandown during the 1964 Tasman Cup round – the Australian Grand Prix – DNF engine in the race won by Jack Brabham. See here: https://primotipo.com/2020/04/20/mclaren-cooper-t70-sandown/
The ‘first McLarens’ – two Cooper T70s – built by Bruce McLaren and Wally Willmott at Coopers in late 1963 have been very much in the news, and star of the historic show at the 2024 Australian Grand Prix carnival given it’s 60 years since Bruce McLaren won the very first Tasman Cup driving the two T70s that summer. Bruce won three of the eight rounds – NZ GP at Pukekohe, Lady Wigram Trophy and Teretonga International – in this car #T70 FL-2-64, so too did Jack Brabham (Brabham BT7A Climax), but Bruce had the better haul of points.
Sadly, Tim Mayer crashed the car Bruce is driving above, to his death at Longford three weeks after Sandown. The surviving car (#FL-1-64) is owned by Adam Berryman, proudly showing off a car which has been in the family since 1974 at Government House, Melbourne on March 21. See here for more about the T70: https://primotipo.com/2016/11/18/tim-mayer-what-might-have-been/
(M Bisset)(M Bisset)(Eisert Family)
Aussie Ace, Bob Muir alongside the ex-Gary Campbell/Jones-Eisert Lola T330 Chev HU14 during the 1973 US L&M F5000 Championship round at Laguna Seca. Jerry Eisert is alongside Muir, John Wright is attending to the right-front, with Peter Molloy in the white top to the left.
Reg Hunt’s Maserati A6GCM/250 during the 1955 Moomba TT meeting held at Albert Park on March 26-27. I’m not so sure its the prosperous motor dealer owner at the wheel.
Hunt had a great weekend with his new car – a 2.5-litre Maserati 250F engined A6GCM – winning the Argus Cup 50-miler and one heat of the Argus Trophy 50-mile feature. He led the final until the red car’s crown wheel and pinion failed, giving Doug Whiteford’s well driven old Talbot-Lago T26C a lucky win.
Hunt turned the local scene on its head with this car, it was the most recent Grand Prix car imported to Australia for many a long year. All of his motor dealer rivals had to reach way-deep into their pockets to keep up with the Brighton Road dealer. See here for more on this car: https://primotipo.com/2017/12/12/hunts-gp-maser-a6gcm-2038/
Holden 48-215 at Albert Park was about the extent of the State Library of Victoria caption, before 1970 Australian Rally Champion, Bob Watson came to the rescue.
“It’s a BP Rally of the 1950s, possibly Lex Davison driving. A sub-event in Albert Park at the end of the rally, later events finished at Chadstone Shopping Centre on Mother’s day in front of huge crowds.” See here: https://primotipo.com/2018/12/06/general-motors-holden-formative/
(SLNSW-R Donaldson)
Ross Jensen on the way to victory of the 1959 Bathurst 100 held over the Easter long-weekend, Maserati 250F, #2509/2504. He is negotiating Hell Corner before heading up Mountain Straight.
It was a terrific win by the visiting Kiwi, all of our Top-Guns were there but Ross beat the lot: Stan Jones, Arnold Glass, Len Lukey, Alec Mildren, Doug Whiteford and others. He was as sharp-as-a-tack having raced for the works-Lister Jaguar team in Europe in 1958 upon the recommendation of Archie Scott Brown who had raced his works-lister in New Zealand in the Summer of ’58 and was impressed by what he saw.
That’s Len Lukey congratulating him below, #5 is Len’s Cooper T45 Climax 2-litre, the 250F on the far side is Glass’s. Love the proboscis…
(SLNSW-R Donaldson)(Auto Action)
Colin Bond, Holden LH Torana SL/R 5000 L34 during the 1975 Phillip Island 500k enduro, a round of the Australian Manufacturers Championship.
1948 Australian Grand Prix winner, Frank Pratt, and passenger Alick Smith at Phillip Island, date unknown. Pratt, a Geelong motor cycle dealer and racer, had famously barely done any car racing when he won that Point Cook, RAAF Airbase, AGP (photo below). See here: https://primotipo.com/2021/09/27/werrangourt-archive-10-george-martins-bmw-328/
Alain Prost during the West End Jubilee South Australian Open Pro-am golf tournament held at Kooyonga during the 1986 Australian Grand Prix week in Adelaide.
He looks pretty relaxed, and the weekend worked out mighty fine too.
Poor old Nigel had his 180mph Williams FW11 Honda 1.5 V6 tyre blowout, so his teammate Piquet was brought in for a precautionary tyre change and Alain’s McLaren MP4/2C TAG-Porsche 1.5 V6 won the race…and the title(s) in a thriller-diller of a race: Drivers and Constructors.
Glen Dix flags an ecstatic Alain Prost home in the 1986 AGP. His McLaren wasn’t as fast as the FW11 Williams that year but he chipped away with a mix of speed and consistency: the Fab-Four in ‘86 were Mansell, Piquet, Senna…and Prost(SLV)
Sportscar grid at Warwick Farm circa 1967. Frank Matich, Matich SR3 Oldsmobile, Bob Jane, Elfin 400 Repco, Glyn Scott’s Lotus 23B Ford and Bill Brown – perhaps – in the Scuderia Veloce Ferrari 250LM. More on Matich’s Ferrari muncher here: https://primotipo.com/2023/04/02/matich-sr3/
Nigel Mansell blasts away from a pitstop on the Surfers Paradise road circuit during the March 21, 1993 Australian Indycar Grand Prix, Lola T93/00 Ford Cosworth XB V8.
In a portent of things to come that year, series debutant Mansell won the opening round of the ’93 CART Championship. He won five of the 16 rounds, and the championship with 191 points, fellow ex-F1 World Champ, Emerson Fittipaldi was second on 183, Penske PC22 Chev.
(C Denby)
Not so much thought of as a racing car in Australia, Leyland’s P76 4.4-litre V8 got a run in New Zealand’s annual B &H 1000 enduro, in this case the 1975 event at Pukekohe.
This one was raced by the very experienced and successful David Oxton and Garry Pederson who finished fourth, the winning car was another Australian car, a Valiant Charger – usually dominant in this race – driven by Wayne Wilkinson and Bryan Innes.
Chris Denby, in an amusing Facebook post relates the story of the exhaust problem which befell the similar car raced by Dauntsey Teagle and Jim Murdoch. “Over a few laps its impressive engine became ‘uncorked’, which injected some great V8 sound into its otherwise fairly subdued race noise.”
“Suddenly it sounded more lie a stock-car than a production saloon – very impressive in the stand. The stewards were quick to act, within minutes a message came over the Tannoy asking if any spectator had a P76 V8 in the carpark would he allow his car to be relieved of its exhaust system to help a race team on the track (they faced exclusion otherwise).”
“That approach didn’t work. A later Tannoy message said, ‘If a spectator with a Leyland P76 notices a much louder than normal exhaust note upon leaving the track, don’t worry, the race mechanics will fix it before you depart…”
(MotorSport)
Vern Schuppan contesting the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch in March 1973, BRM P160D.
The Victorian Governor’s Australian GP party is a wonderful event on the Thursday before the race, here is Jenny and Vern Schuppan on March 21, 2024.
Vern has just turned 81 and is a sharp as a tack. The couple live in a penthouse apartment in the Adelaide Markets – on the AGP course – and split their time between there, visiting their son and family in Melbourne, their daughter in Cambridge, and another home in Portugal.
(M Bisset)(SLNSW)
Fred Withers at Penrith aboard the Marcus Clark & Company owned Cleveland Six racer, circa 1925.
It’s hard to believe that department stores once sold cars, but there-ya-go! This company was founded by Marcus Clark in Newtown, Sydney in 1883 and by the early 1900s was a colossus operating from buildings like this on the corner of Pitt and George Streets, Railway Square, Sydney.
(Hall & Co)(Nambour Chronicle January 22, 1926)
Withers raced the Cleveland Six at Penrith and Maroubra Speedways in New South Wales/Sydney and at Aspendale, outside Melbourne in the 1920s. He was also a record-breaker of some repute using Cleveland and Essex products.
He was famous at the time for some crazy jumps performed with his Essex to gain column-inches in the dailies, this shot was taken in 1927.
(J Sherwood Collection)(P Jones)
Frank Matich contesting the 1970 New Zealand Grand Prix in his much-modified McLaren M10A Chev at Pukekohe. FM had a pretty good Tasman Series, winning here at Pukekohe and at Wigram a week later. While he had the pace, he didn’t have Graeme Lawrence’s Ferrari Dino 246T reliability. Graeme prevailed by five points, 30 to 25.
(T Glenn)
A little later, from 1971-74, Frank Matich and his small team designed and built six F5000 cars: three A50s, two A51s – one A51 evolved into the short-lived A52 – and this A53, the very last of the breed.
Matich A53/007 in build in FM’s ‘shop in Military Road, Cremorne in late 1973 (D Kneller)
Credits…
Getty Images, State Library of Victoria, Charles Pratt-State Library of Victoria, Rennie Ellis, MotorSport Images, Chris Denby, Peter Jones, John Sherwood Collection in ‘Half a Century of Speed’ by Tony & Pedr Davis and Barry Lake, Bob Williamson Collection, Eisert Family Collection, Derek Kneller, State Library of NSW-Lynch, Tony Glenn, oldracingcars.com
Fritz d’Orey in the Sebring pits, US GP December 1959 (MotorSport)
The ultra-light, disc-braked Maserati 250F-engined TecMec F415 was the ultimate development of the long line of 2.5-litre front-engined Maserati 250F Grand Prix cars which commenced in 1954; the preceding 2-litre Maserati A6GCM F2/Grand Prix machines of 1952-53 are duly noted.
In 1957 the works team’s Piccolo 250Fs took Juan Manuel Fangio to his record-setting fifth and final world title. Soon after, with the company on its financial knees, Maserati withdrew from racing. In the best of Italian traditions it wasn’t quite a final withdrawal. In the 1958 French Grand Prix, a special lightweight 250F appeared for Fangio in what became his his final race appearance. He was fourth, and with that the Maserati works-team was no more.
The team’s chassis and transmission engineer during the latter 250F years was ex-Ferrari man Valerio Colotti (1925-January 19, 2008). As the Cooper mid-engined ascendancy began he had a new super-lightweight 250F on his drawing board. Colotti left Maserati to form his own Studio Tecnica Meccanica in Modena.
Georgio Scarlatti, Maserati 250F during the 1959 French GP at Reims, Q21 and eighth (MotorSport)
Racer, Giorgio Scarlatti approached Colotti with a view to building the ultimate 250F. Valerio set to work, fabricating a light, multi-tubular spaceframe chassis made of small diameter steel tube. He scrapped the De Dion rear rear suspension, replacing it with an independent transverse top leaf-spring and lower wishbone set up. At the front was a very un-Italian pair of Alford & Alder uprights, supported by upper and lower wishbones and coil/spring damper units, an adjustable roll-bar was incorporated. Girling discs replaced the 250F’s finned drums but the wheels remained passé Borrani wires. Scarlatti provided an ex-works 2.5-litre six-cylinder engine.
Giuseppe Consoli, an ex-works mechanic, built the car for Colotti, working in the living room of his house near Modena’s aerautodromo. When workshop space was later made available the embryo Tec-Mec F415 was wheeled out through Giuseppe’s French windows!
The car was clad in a functionally attractive, tight fitting aluminium body, the height of which was constrained a bit by the relatively tall Maserati 270bhp, DOHC, two-valve, triple-Weberised six-cylinder engine.
(Colotti)The Tec-Mec F415 shortly after completion, date and workshop unknown (Colotti)Testing times, the boredom is palpable! (Colotti)
Bonhams wrote that, “In the meantime Hans Tanner, Swiss motoring journalist and entrepreneur, became involved with the project. He had been on the Modenese scene for years and was close to Maserati. He enlisted backing from Floridan racing enthusiast Gordon Pennington who lived then in Modena’s famous Hotel Reale.” Pennington intended to race an Italian car so Scarlatti sold him his interest in the Tec-Mec project.
Colotti, meanwhile, had gone into partnership with former Stirling Moss mechanic Alf Francis as ‘Gear Speed Development SpA’, with plans to build Colotti transaxles as the mid-engined revolution popped, and so too the demand for quality, reliable gearboxes.
While all of this played out, Consoli completed Tec-Mec in 1959, complete with engine #2523 purloined from a 250F Jo Bonnier had for sale.
“Under the Pennington-Tanner aegis, Studio Tecnica Meccanica changed its name to Tec-Mec Automobili. The car was tested at Modena by American driver Bob Said, Piero Drogo, Jo Bonnier and Scarlatti.”
Just like the front-engined Scarab and Aston Martin DBR4 programmes, this one was too late. The basically 1957-designed Tec-Mec became raceworthy in late 1959 just as Jack Brabham clinched the first World Championships for a mid-engined car aboard the Cooper T51 Climax 2.5 FPF.
Fritz d’Orey during the 1959 British GP at Aintree. Maserati 250F, Q20 and DNF accident (MotorSport)
The 1959 World Championship closed with the United States Grand Prix at Sebring, Florida in December. Given it was in Gordon Pennington’s ‘back yard’ the Tec-Mec F415 was entered for Brazilian amateur – and former 250F racer – Fritz d’Orey. He qualified the Camoradi team run car 17th of 19 starters but retired after seven laps with an oil leak/engine failure.
Jesse Alexander wrote this comment about Fritz d’Oley’s performance in the car in his Sports Cars Illustrated race report. “The Tec-Mec was never driven quickly enough to show up any defects. The only time we know of it being driven fast was when Jo Bonnier took it around the Modena Autodromo last summer. His comments were not all that favourable. He complained of, among other things, a flexing chassis.”
One race in-period only, D’Orey and the Tec-Mec at Sebring (MotorSport)
After repair, the car was taken Daytona Speedway for a record attempt but D’Orey was injured in another car. Then Pennington lost interest and the project was abandoned. The car lay on a trailer in a Miami garden until early 1967 when it was acquired complete with spares – including unopened boxes of new parts – by Tom Wheatcroft for what became The Donington Collection.
After restoration he drove the car regularly in open test days at Silverstone and Oulton Park before crashing it heavily into a parked ambulance after spinning-off at Silverstone. After the car was rebuilt it was driven by engineer/restorer Tony Merrick in VSCC events while residing in the Donington Collection. After sale by Wheatcroft in the 1990s the car has been a formidable historic racer.
Etcetera…
(Colotti)
Tec-Mec F415 – Tec-Mec Project 11 – on its first appearance, perhaps, after its restoration.
(Colotti)(Colotti)
Credits…
Bonhams, MotorSport Images, Colotti Transmissioni, Sports Cars Illustrated March 1960 via Stephen Dalton, colotti.com
Reg Hunt, Maserati 250F, on his way to winning the Victorian Trophy at Fishermans Bend on February 12, 1956
Context…
Australian motorsport’s governing body was the Sydney based Royal Automobile Club of Australia until 1953 when the Melbourne based Confederation of Australian Motor Sport took over. CAMS Ltd trading as Motorsport Australia (CAMS) still rules the roost today.
One of the CAMS’ rare acts of decision-making excellence was the creation of the Australian Drivers Championship – the Gold Star – from 1957.
Lex Davison, Ferrari 500/625 was the first recipient of the award for points gained in nine rounds spread across all states except Tasmania – remedied in 1958 – on an 8-5-3-2-1 points basis for first to fifth places in each round.
1956 Faux Gold Star Championship…
I’ve thought for a long while that it would be interesting to summarise our elite level Formule Libre racing results by seasons, if for no other reason than when I want to research one thing or another a summary of the competitor set exists. Why not, I thought, extend the idea to calculating notional Gold Star points?
Of course it’s a fucking stupid thing to do as it simply didn’t happen! In the words of that great Australian philosopher, ‘Sir’ Frank Gardner, “If yer’ Aunty had balls she’d be yer’ Uncle”. In other words, deal with what is/was, rather than what isn’t/wasn’t.
But of course CAMS run a who-gives-a-fuck-about-facts (WGAFAF, pronounced ‘woggafaff’) motor racing history model. They don’t recognise the January 1927 Australian Grand Prix at Goulburn as the first AGP, yet we have 1928 and 1937 Australian Grands Prix, apparently, neither of which actually took place then, as officialdom chooses to brand them now. So, in accordance with established Oz-racing fast-and-loose WGAFAF precedent, what follows is a summary of the 1956 Gold Star, Faux Division.
Officialdom awaits the ‘Champion of the Day’ of the 100 Miles Road Race at Phillip Island held on Saturday 31 March, 1928. Oopsie, sorry there were two 100 Mile Road Races that day. The morning one started at about 11am, oopsie again, sorry, B-Class started at about 11am, and D-Class at about 11.05am. The afternoon race, races really, started at about 2.25pm for A-Class and then C-Class at about 2.30pm. All ‘Akin to European GP practice’ is the favoured line of some
The readily apparent State-The-Obvious flaw in my Faux Gold Star award is that as there was no such championship, drivers didn’t enter meetings they may have otherwise if they aspired to win such a title. However, the rich/well-funded in every era raced far and wide beyond their local meetings, this was certainly the case for the 1956 motor trader front runners, so I’m not so sure the top-3 are impacted by this factor.
Some criteria points. I’ve basically followed the equivalent 1956 meetings that CAMS recognised in ’57, even though some of the races are too short, in my mind, to be of championship length. Where there were two Formula Libre races of ‘championship length’ – over 75 miles – at the one meeting, such as the Albert Park Moomba meeting, the longer, feature event prevails. Results are scratch based only. I’m only awarding points for first to fourth placings as those are the records I have. If someone has more comprehensive records, spreadsheet skills and OCD knock yer’ socks off and I’ll update this masterpiece.
Away we go.
Reg Hunt on Gnoo Blas’ Main Straight while the 4.05pm to Sydney gets ready to depart. Maserati 250F (GB.com)
Gnoo Blas, Orange, New South Wales (NSW) : South Pacific Championship : January 30, 1956
This season opening race meeting on the Gnoo Blas road circuit at Orange, 260 km west of Sydney had become Australia’s only international meeting in prior years. The Australian Sporting Car Club always managed to entice a few of the drivers doing a full southern summer season In New Zealand across-the-ditch to the Great Brown Land before they headed back to Europe. As an aside, the Kiwis were five years or so in front of us in the Big Race Stakes.
Our Jack was the only international in ’56 mind you. He raced the 2-litre Cooper T40 Bristol that he built for himself at Surbiton to make his championship GP debut at the British Grand Prix at Aintree in July 1955. Brabham brought the car home at the end of the year, winning the AGP with it at Port Wakefield after frontrunners, Stan Jones in Maybach 3 and Reg Hunt’s Maserati A6GCM/250 (a 2.5-litre 250F engined A6GCM 2-litre F2 car) had problems, then did the Kiwi season and would sell it to Reg Smith before heading back to the UK.
To rub in his advantage, Reg Hunt brought along both the Maserati he raced throughout 1955 and his new 250F on the long tow from Melbourne to Orange, then disappeared into the distance, winning the 27 lap, 100-mile race in the 250F from Brabham.
Stan Jones gave vigorous chase, but blew the 3.8-litre Maybach SOHC six fitted under the long bonnet of Maybach 3 sky-high on lap 22 when 39 seconds adrift of his fellow Melbourne motor trader.
That blow-up proved a defining moment in Australian Motor Racing History of that era as it marked the end of the Charlie Dean/Repco Research/Stan Jones/Maybach period. Repco’s stock of 3.8 and 4.2-litre Maybach cylinder blocks was at an end, so the car couldn’t easily be rebuilt. In any event, Stan realised he needed a Big Red Car to remain competitive, taking delivery of a 250F later in the season. Ern Seeliger created the very fast Maybach 4 Chev V8 of course, it proved to have a surprise or two in 1958-59, but the big-blue Maybach sixes were no more.
Kevin Neal was third in his Cooper T23 Bristol, then came Curley Brydon’s ex-Peter Whitehead – present at Gnoo Blas in the previous two years – Ferrari 166 and then Col James’s MG Special. Jack was a non-resident by then so he doesn’t get Gold Star points for his second place, so we have our top-four below.
1.Hunt Maserati 250F 8 points 2.Neal Cooper T23 Bristol 5 points 3.Brydon Ferrari 166 3 points 4.James MG Special 2 points
End of an era. Jones aboard Maybach 3 – very Mercedes W196’esque in appearance – before the engine let go, South Pacific Championship, Gnoo Blas in 1956 (GB.com)
Fishermans Bend (once Fishermen’s Bend) Melbourne : Victorian Trophy : February 11, 1956
Top guns entered for the 24 lap, 52.8 miles Formula Libre race included Hunt’s Maserati 250F, Lex Davison’s HWM Jaguar (“now with latest D-Type head and Weber carbs” according to AMS), Doug Whiteford’s Talbot-Lago T26C, Stan Jones’ Cooper T38 Jaguar sportscar, Brabham’s Cooper T40, Tom Hawkes Cooper T23 Bristol and Bill Craig’s Alta Holden.
While billed as on international meeting to attract some spillover visitors to New Zealand that summer, the only ‘internationals’ were Brabham from New South Wales and Craig from South Australia…
Hunt romped away, Whiteford’s old T-L, somewhat surprisingly, proved quicker than Davison’s ’54 AGP winning HWM Jag, then Davo spun, while broken throttle linkages accounted for Jones and Hawkes.
1. Hunt, Maserati 250F 8 points 2.Whiteford Talbot-Lago T26C 5 points 3. K Neal Cooper T23 Bristol 3 points 4.W Wilcox Ford Special 2 points
Albert Park, Melbourne : Moomba Meeting – Argus Trophy : March 18, 1956
Albert Park – promoted by the Light Car Club of Australia – hosted a pair of international two-weekend carnivals in ’56: the Moomba meeting in March and Olympic meeting in November/December.
The feature on March 11 was the Moomba Tourist Trophy for sportscars. Tony Gaze won that 150-miler in his HWM Jaguar VPA9, from Bib Stillwell’s brand-spankers Jaguar D-Type and Ron Phillips’ Austin Healey 100S.
F.A.O. Gaze DFC and Two Bars, OAM had decided to retire from racing and sold his HWM and ex-Ascari Ferrari 500/625 to his good mate, Lex Davison before the meeting. Tony had raced both cars in New Zealand that summer together with Peter Whitehead. Davison’s deal included racing the Ferrari in the Argus Trophy, the Formula Libre, 48-lap, 150-mile feature on the following weekend, March 18.
Davo had some serious opposition though, not least Hunt’s 250F and Melbourne haulier, Kevin Neal, who had bought Hunt’s immaculate A6GCM/250. Other expected front-runners included Hawkes’ Cooper Bristol, Stillwell’s D-Type, not to forget Arthur Griffiths, who had bought the ex-Moss HWM Jaguar just vacated by Davison, and Reg Smith in the Cooper Bristol similarly vacated by Jack Brabham.
Somewhat predictably, Reg Hunt won the race in his current model Maserati 250F – one of the great GP cars of any era – from Davison, with Neal, Hawkes and Stillwell third to fifth.
Lex’s old-bus dated back to 1952 – in 2-litre spec it was Alberto Ascari’s main weapon of choice in his triumphant 1952-53 World Championship years – but fitted with a 3-litre DOHC four-cylinder ‘Monza’ engine it proved for several years to have the measure of the fastest cars in the country thanks to a combination of Davo’s speed and almost peerless reliability. Tony Gaze had the Ferrari prepared by Alan Ashton and his AF Hollins crew in High Street, Armadale. He implored Lex to continue the relationship, Davo did so and it was key to his ongoing success with this car.
Reg Hunt from Lex Davison during the Argus Trophy at Albert Park, March 1956. Maserati 250F and Ferrari 500/625 (D Meale)
Port Wakefield, South Australia : Easter Saturday : March 31, 1956
Not all the serious boys spent Easter at the traditional Bathurst fixture, some contested the 50-lap, 65- miles Wakefield Trophy at Port Wakefield, South Australia: Tom Hawkes, Cooper T23 Bristol, Kevin Neale, ex-Hunt Maserati A6GCM/250, Ted Gray, Tornado 2 Ford, and Derek Jolly, Decca Mk1 Climax FWA Spl included.
The weekend feature was for the 20 fastest cars. Soon after the start, the race developed into a Cooper and Maserati duel a lap in front of the rest of the field. Hawkes, in a great performance in the slower of the two cars, won from Neal’s Maserati, Ron Phillips’ Austin Healey 100S and TE Stevens, MG TC Spl.
Interesting are the top speeds recorded on Century Straight (all mph): Gray Tornado Ford V8 110.5, Neal Maserati 2.5 108.5, Hawkes Cooper Bristol 2-litre 104.7, Eldred Norman in the legendary Norman Zephyr Spl s/c 102.5, Murray Trenberth, Vincent 1000, 100, and Eddie Perkins, VW Spl s/c 99.5
The 26-lap, 100-mile handicap, Bathurst 100 had a huge field, “more entries from interstate than Bathurst has seen for some time” wrote Australian Motor Sports. Stan Jones and Jack Brabham weren’t at the meeting, Maybach 3 was dead and Stan’s 250F hadn’t arrived, while Jack had returned to the UK.
The handicap was won by Davison from Hunt, Bib Stillwell, Jaguar D-Type, and Paul England’s Ausca Repco-Holden. To be consistent, Gold Star points are awarded for the scratch results: Hunt, Maserati 250F, Lex Davison Ferrari 500/625 3-litre, Stillwell D-Type, and Tom Sulman’s Aston Martin DB3S.
1.Hunt Maserati 250F 8 points 2.Davison Ferrari 50/625 5 points 3.Stillwell Jaguar D-Type 3 points 4.Sulman Aston Martin DB3S 2 points
Port Wakefield Road Races : South Australian Trophy : June 4, 1956
Stan Jones took delivery of his Maserati 250F in May, demonstrating it in an untimed run at the Geelong Sprints meeting on May 27, Port Wakefield was chassis #2520’s Australian baptism of fire.
Other fast cars which took the trip to the desolate, wind-swept permanent race track included Davison, Stillwell and brilliant, intuitive Adelaide engineer, Eldred Norman in his Norman Zephyr Spl s/c. Most significantly, Ted Gray was present in the Lou Abrahams owned, Gray/Mayberry Bros/Abrahams built Tornado 2 Ford. Tornado 1 Ford died a terrible death at the October ’55 Bathurst meeting, Tornado 2 was a new car using few of T1’s bits, amongst the exceptions were the Ford Ardun/Abrahams fuel injected OHV V8 and Ford truck ‘box. Ted was ok after a very long convalescence too.
At this point of 1956 the key machines of Australian Formula Libre racing from 1956-59 were in place: the two Maserati 250Fs, Davo’s Ferrari and Tornado 2…two-litre Coopers were still to come.
Held in a big rainstorm, the 30 lap South Australian Trophy race, early on was a close contest between Stillwell – pretty comfy in his Jag sportscar – with Stan all over him, but unable to pass and see…
Davo spun on lap 3, so too later in the race did Gray, although another column in AMS says Ted didn’t even start the race due to a broken CV joint… The race was won by Stillwell from Jones, Norman and ??
Somewhat prophetically, Bob Pritchett wrote in the July 1956 issue of Australian Motor Sports, “Who said Ted Gray’s Tornado Special doesn’t handle. Ted was, I think, the only high-powered operator who did not spin off in the meeting (the guy that wrote the race report sez otherwise!) and in winning the A-grade scratch race 6-lapper, held Stan’s Maserati for four laps until Stan spun off in the wet.”
In the same column, Pritchett reported that Tom Hawkes was considering a Maserati four to get more speed out of his Cooper T23 Bristol, that engine being at the end of its development potential; a Repco-Holden Grey shortly thereafter provided a potent and more cost-effective solution.
Similarly, he mused about the possibilities of Maybach 3, “by dropping in one of those 300-plus USA V8 monsters that are now available.” – the very path followed by Ern Seeliger, and Ted Gray with hot 283 Chev Corvette V8s being popped under the bonnets of Maybach and Tornado before too long.
Yes, the little-tacker in the lower shot is Alan Jones. He has recounted over the years his disappointment in finding Dad’s new, red Italian car was a Maserati and not a Ferrari! Bob Chamberlain at left Bob King thinksTed Gray from Stan Jones during their Port Wakefield scrap in June 1956. Tornado 2 Ford V8 and Maserati 250F; plenty of scraps to come from this pair from 1956-59. Gray’s experience went all the way back to giving Peter Whitehead and ERA R10B a run for their money at Aspendale and Rob Roy in 1938 aboard a speedway-midget
Lowood Airfield Queensland : Lowood Trophy : June 3, 1956
“Queensland Racing Drivers Club conducted this year’s ‘Lowood Trophy’ meeting in typical Queensland winter sunshine, before a crowd of about 6000. The 2.7-mile circuit was in good condition…34 entries was received, including eight from NSW…” recorded AMS.
Top guns included Arthur Griffiths’ ex-Davison HWM Jaguar, Ken Richardson’s ex-Whiteford Talbot-Lago T26C, Steve Ames aka Count Steve Ouvaroff ex-Davison Alfa Romeo P3, John Aldis’ ex-Whitehead/Jones Cooper T38 Jaguar and Arnold Glass’ Maserati 4CL; it wasn’t a great entry of modern cars.
The 12 lap, 32 miles Lowood Trophy results were as follows:
1.Griffiths HWM Jag 8 points 2. S Mossetter Austin Healey 100S 5 points 3.R Weintraub Healey Silverstone 3 points 4.J Johnson MG TC 2 points
Bathurst : NSW Road Racing Championships : September 30, 1956
A crowd of 8-10,000 people fronted up to cold, blustery conditions for the second traditional Bathurst meeting a year, October fixture.
While Stan Jones was present to sharpen his skills in advance of the Australian Grand Prix two months hence, Lex Davison and Reg Hunt were notable by their absence, ‘preserving the machinery’ or whatever.
Bill Pitt was there in the Geordie Anderson/Westco Motors Jaguar D-Type and Jack Myers in the WM Special, a much-modified (by Myers, a highly skilled Sydney mechanic-cum-engineer) Cooper T20 fitted with a Waggott-Holden twin-cam, two-valve circa 200bhp ‘Grey’ six-cylinder engine.
Handicaps were still prevalent, if not the norm in Australian racing, with the 26 lap NSW Road Racing Championship (Racing Cars) no exception. Jones set a new lap record of 2min 44sec without being hard pushed. While ‘J Archibald’ (who was he?) won the handicap classification in his MG Spl, the scratch results and Gold Star points allocations are as follows:
Fishermans Bend, Melbourne : Astor Trophy : October 14, 1956
You might think the Victorian Contingent would be out in force in advance of the rapidly approaching AGP, but not so. While Hunt, Whiteford, Neal and Gray were present, Davison and Jones were AWOL.
Then, having satisfied himself that his 250F was all tickety-boo in a 5-lapper, Reg Hunt didn’t take the start of the start of the 24-lap, 52.8-mile Astor Trophy feature.
While Kevin Neal’s Maserati A6GCM/250 was a far quicker car than Doug Whiteford’s – relatively new to him, but geriatric – Talbot-Lago T26C, there was no way Neal was going to beat the aggressive, cagey, vastly experienced triple AGP winner! Ted Gray and Owen Bailey were/are the other recipients of Gold Star points aboard Tornado 2 Ford and ex-Whiteford Talbot-Lago T26C respectively: third and fourth placings.
“Tell him, he’s dreamin…’ Count Stephen Ouvaroff aka Steve Ames offers his ex-Scuderia Ferrari/Davison Alfa Romeo P3 chassis #50003 for sale, £895 is the ask. In 2024 dollars that is $A32,700, the value of a P3 is, however, in the ‘your guess is as good as mine’ categoryMoss Mastery – high speed drift at Albert Park, Maserati 250F, AGP December 1956
1956 Australian Grand Prix : Albert Park : December 2, 1956
120,000 people watched 22 starters contest the ’56 AGP held in the afterglow of Melbourne’s staggeringly successful Olympic Games.
Furriners included a five-car squad from Officine Maserati: three 250Fs and a pair of 300S (sportscars for the Australian Tourist Trophy contested and won by Moss from Behra the week before) for works drivers Stirling Moss and Jean Behra, while Peter Whitehead and Reg Parnell raced their 3.4-litre Ferrari 555s.
Moss disappeared into the distance, winning the 80-lap 250-miles race in 2hr 36min 15.4sec, over two minutes ahead of Behra, then came Peter Whitehead.
The battle-within-the-battle was a local Melbourne Holden Dealer Derby – Davo’s farming and shoe making interests duly noted – between the 250Fs of Reg Hunt and Stan Jones, and Lex Davison’s Ferrari 500/625.
Graham Howard points out in his 1956 chapter of the ‘History of The Australian Grand Prix’ that “It was to be, surprisingly, the first encounter of the Hunt and Jones’ 250Fs, and Davison – at that stage the only driver to beat the Hunt 250F – was also there in his Ferrari.”
“Hunt and Jones had, to be strictly correct, lined up against each other the weekend before, in a short sprint race in the supporting program to the Tourist Trophy, but it had been inconclusive. With Hunt on pole position and Jones right beside him, the race had an explosive start as Jones – ‘jockeying for position’, as AMS discreetly termed it – hit the kerb and then a tree on Hunt’s side of the course within a hundred metres of the start. The car was fortunately not too badly damaged and was ready for the AGP the following weekend.”
At the start of the Grand Prix, Moss led from Behra, the Whitehead and Parnell Ferrari Super Squalo’s, then the Trident Trio: Hunt, Neal and Jones. Davison was slowed by engine maladies.
By lap 5 Jones was behind Hunt, and after two fast laps, passed him, where he stayed – with Hunt pacing himself behind – for 35 laps, “With both driving with a concentrated ferocity, which was almost tangible – no errors, no let- up, certainly no smiles.”
When Stan’s Maserati started to blow smoke from under the bonnet, he eased on lap 40, gifting his place to Hunt. Post-race the problem was disclosed as a broken breather.
The Gold Star points go to the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth placed local finishers:
Reg Smith competing at Templestowe hillclimb outside Melbourne in May 1956. His Cooper T40 Bristol was Jack’s ’55 British GP car and AGP winner. He can’t have been enamoured of the Cooper, replacing it with one of Officine Maserati 300S sold at the end of the ’56 AGP weekend
Gold Star Championship Points and Observations…
Drum roll…the winner of the 1956 Australian Gold Star Faux Championship is Reg Hunt, Maserati 250F, with 40 points, well clear of Kevin Neal’s 21 points gained with Cooper T23 Bristol and Maserati A6GCM/250, then Stan Jones, third on 18 points in his new 250F. Fourth was Whiteford, Talbot-Lago T26C 15 points, then the Davison Ferrari 500/625 on 13 points with Bib Stillwell sixth, on 11.
What does it all prove? Absolutely sweet-f-all, but I enjoyed it, which is all that really matters here.
I wish I could show you a neato little points chart or a spreadsheet of results for the year but I don’t know how to do those, so this hand-job will have to do, a remedy with which many of you will be familiar. Since publishing this, Stuart Murray – bless him – has done the vastly better spreadsheet which appears further below.
In my mind I’ve long thought Reg Hunt was the rock-star in 1955-56 aided and abetted by having The Best Equipment in the country in those two years by far. I’ve not done this exercise for 1955 yet to further prove the point, I’ll get around to it some time.
Having ‘came, saw, and conquered’, Reg retired from racing at the end of the season, aged only 33, to focus on his family and in building a staggeringly successful motor-dealership empire centred on his ‘Golden Mile of Cars’ in Brighton, Melbourne. He returned to historic racing in the 1980s with a Maserati 300S and Talbot-Lago T26C and died just shy of 100 on August 22, 2022.
Fellow Melbourne motor trader and later four-time Gold Star champ, Bib Stillwell bought the Hunt 250F (chassis #2616) but couldn’t resist the temptation of a factory freshen-up, so didn’t see it for the best part of 12 months. It’s a long boat ride between Port Melbourne and Genoa and back, and Maserati had bigger fish-to-fry, not least a World Championship to win with JM Fangio at the wheel of factory 250F’s.
At the end of ’56 the stage was set, the key players in 1957 seemed likely to be Jones, Davison and Gray with a tight contest likely given all three were well-funded ‘pro-outfits’ by Australian standards of the day. In the end Davo’s Ferrari 500/625 crushed the opposition with five Gold Star wins in nine rounds, a story for another time…
Credits…
Australian Motor Sports all 1956 issues, ‘Bathurst: The Cradle of Australian Motor Racing’ John Medley, ‘The History of The Australian Grand Prix’ edited by Graham Howard, ‘A History of Australian Grand Prix 1928-1939’ John Blanden, VSCC Victoria Collection, David Meale-Collections Victoria, gnooblas.com, Paul Cummins/Cummins Archive, Stuart Murray
Tailpiece…
(Cummins Archive)
Champions cockpit…the 1958 one’s actually – Stan Jones’ Maserati 250F chassis #2520, not Hunt’s #2516.
Paul Cummins wrote, “On the back of the photo it reads – this is the cockpit of Victorian racing driver Stan Jones’ new 2 1/2 litre ‘250F’ model Maserati which he has just imported from Italy. When that revolution counter shows 7800rpm his engine is developing 270hp giving a speed in excess of 165mph. It is expected to be the fastest car in Australia. It cost £7,200, but with freight cost and spare parts (including a 3-litre 300S engine), the actual landed cost is expected to be nearly £12,000.”
“The Maserati which will be using Mobilgas Racing Fuel and Mobiloil exclusively was built in October last year (1955) and taken to South America for the Argentine Grand Prix Season, but it was never raced. Stan Jones will race it for the first time at Port Wakefield South Australia on 4 June.”
Veglia instruments, right-hand shift for the 5-speed transaxle, note the far-left clutch location given Stan sits astride the driveline tunnel – Jones has clearly specified a ‘conventional’ right-hand throttle and central brake setup.
Finally, while Maserati’s bullshit story to Stan may have been that #2520 was a new car, in fact it was slightly shop-soiled. It had been raced as a works-car by Froilan Gonzalez at Buenos Aires on 22 January 1956 (DNF) and by Pablo Guile at Mendoza on February 5 (eighth).
The nose of the car as landed in Australia in the earlier arrival photographs rather suggests the car was shipped straight from South America rather than via the Modena paint-shop. What is in no doubt is that 250F #2520 has one of the simplest, most straight-forward histories of all Maserati 250F’s, so too does #2516 for that matter.
Arnold Glass and Clive Adams involved in a real estate dispute at Mount Druitt in August 1956. Maserati 4CL, ex-Sommer/Vennermark/Warren #1555/1579 and HRG Holden, ex-Ravdell now Shane Bowden.
Australian Motor Sports wrote about the change in ownership of the Maserati to Glass as follows, “The Late Cec Warren’s 1 1/2-litre Maserati has at last found a new home in Sydney. New owner Arnold Glass is perhaps better known as the only person in Australia possessing a Mustang fighter for his own private flying. This is a very potent piece of equipment as its performance is far superior to its wartime counterparts now that all the armament has been removed. If my memory serves me right, Arnold and the Mustang hold the Australia-New Zealand record even in this age of jets.”
Arnold and Johnny Zero, Bankstown perhaps, August 9, 1954 (SMH-Mauritius Images)Bright-red VH-BVM Mustang Mk20 at Bankstown in 1954, complete with 1954 REDeX Air Trial (DNF) and Capitol Motors branding (H Morris Collection)
Glass’ Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation built Mustang – CAC CA-17 Mustang Mk20 c/n 1330 / A68-5 VH-BVM G-ARKD – was one of the first 80 CAC Mustangs (A68-1 – A68-80) assembled at Fishermans Bend, in Melbourne’s inner-west, from 100 sets of semi-completed P-51D components supplied by North American Aviation – powered by pre-loved Packard Merlins – shipped from the US.
Brought on by the RAAF as A68-5 at Laverton on July 6, 1945, after a sedentary life of storage at Point Cook, Benalla and Tocumwal, the plane was sold to Sydney’s Flt Lt James LD Whiteman for £100 pounds in January 1953, he planned a spot of record breaking. Those with an interest in the life of this aircraft should click here: https://www.goodall.com.au/australian-aviation/mustangs-civil/austcivilmustangs.html
Among his many accomplishments, Arnold Glass was an aircraft engineer, doing some of his time (mechanic and fitter and turner) at Butler Air Transport. During his motorcycle trading years, in 1947, he bought a Tiger Moth and learned to fly.
Enroute to building his Capitol Motors business into an automotive importing, wholesaling and retailing colossus, Arnold had plenty of cash to splash on cars, boats, babes…and aircraft. His Australian Aviation Investments Pty Ltd company bought the Mustang on May 31, 1954.
AAI’s base was at Bankstown Airport, Sydney. Amongst his early aircraft deals, he imported three Perceval Proctors from the UK for re-sale in 1951. Glass never lost his interest in aircraft, among his purchases down-the decades were Lear jets, two ex-RAAF Vampire jets in 1971, and in the days he was domiciled in Monaco, RAF Lightnings and other jet fighters…as one does.
Ron Edgerton’s caption: “Arnold (Trinkets) Glass, Ferrari, Mt Druitt” 3.4-litre Ferrari 555 Super Squalo #FL9002, November 1957Stan Jones and Arnold during the 1959 Bathurst 100 weekend, Easter. Motor traders and Maserati 250F exponents both; another 250F won that weekend, driven by Kiwi, Ross Jensen (R Donaldson)
‘Trinkets’ Glass didn’t use the Mustang much. He named it Johnny Zero in recognition of the racehorse which won him over £30,000 in partnership with Bill Duffy. During this 1955-early 1960s period his businesses grew dramatically – Capitol Motors was selling over 1000 cars a year by the mid-1950s – so too his racing, so spare time for flying would have been at a premium.
Glass got to know works-BRM racer Ron Flockhart on his trips to Australasia and was happy to sell A68-5 to him for Ron’s planned international record breaking attempts; the deal was done on August 25, 1960. This plane is the first of Flockhart’s two Mustangs, not the one in which he died when he crashed into Melbourne’s Dandenong Ranges shortly after takeoff on April 12, 1962. That story is told here: https://primotipo.com/2018/05/31/flockharts-flights/
Arnold Glass raced plenty of interesting racing cars: among them a Ferrari 555 Super Squalo, BRM P48 and BRM P48 Buick V8 and a couple of Coopers but he was perhaps most at home in Maserati 250F chassis #2616, a low mileage machine raced initially in Australia by Reg Hunt in 1956, then Bib Stillwell before Arnold bought it.
Despite being a bit dated amongst the new-fangled Coopers in 1959, he and his forgiving Maserati finished fifth in the Gold Star with a pair of second placings in the South Pacific Championship at Gnoo Blas and the Bathurst 100 that Easter, both standout performances.
Still in the Maser, he was equal fourth in the Gold Star in 1960 with Lex Davison and his Aston Martin DBR4/300, the front-engined pair were behind four Cooper T51s driven by Alec Mildren, Bib Stillwell, Bill Patterson and Jack Brabham.
Arnold aboard the Maserati 250F during the Queensland Road Race Championship, Gold Star round at Lowood in September 1960. Sixth in the race won by Alec Mildren’s Cooper T51 Maserati – Gold Star winner that year (B Thomas)Glass and BRM P48 #482 Buick V8 during the November 1962 Australian Grand Prix at Caversham, WA. Q7 and fifth – and a zig when he zagged type collision with Brabham’s BT4 Climax on lap 50 destroying Jack’s dice with Bruce McLaren’s Cooper T62 for the lead (K Devine)
Glass’ last Gold Star points were won in a Lotus 27 Ford twin-cam 1.5 at Sandown and Lakeside in 1964. He was second in the one-race ANF 1 1/2-litre Championship at Warwick Farm on September 26 sandwiched behind the first and third placed Brabham BT6/BT2 Ford twin-cams of Greg Cusack and Roly Levis.
By 1976 Capital were selling over 23,000 Datsuns a year, primarily from a massive seven-hectare site on Parramatta Road, Auburn, Sydney. The scale of the operation attracted suitors, and in 1977 Australian National Industries Ltd bought the company for $A28.43 million. Arnold owned 49%, he walked away with $A13.47 million or $84.5 million in today’s dollars, big-biccies.
Reporting on the sale The Bulletin characterised “Capitol’s chairman, Arnold Glass as a gregarious , flamboyant former racing-car driver and divorcee, with a stable of girlfriends, a taste for high living and a fleet of powerboats moored in front of his harbourside pad at Cremorne.”
Glass joined the ANI board as deputy-Chairman, ‘retired’ to Monaco in 1984 but regularly visited Sydney, where he died aged 83 on January 16, 2009. A man who lived life to the full…and then some!
Glass getting ready for the off during the October 1960 Craven A International weekend at Bathurst. Jack Brabham won aboard a Cooper T51 Climax, with Arnold sixth in his Maserati 250F. It was his last race in a car which had been kind to him; a Cooper T51 Maserati was it’s replacement. David McKay is the easy pick, who are the others present? (R Donaldson)Arnold Glass in 1977 (The Bulletin)
Credits…
Australian Motor Sports October 1956, Sydney Morning Herald-Mauritius Images, Geoff Goodall’s Aviation History Site, Howard Morris Collection, The Bulletin July 2, 1977, Brier Thomas, Ken Devine, Bob Donaldson, Obituaries Australia, Paul Cummins-Cummins Archive, Ron Edgerton Collection, oldracingcars.com
Tailpieces…
(Cummins Collection)
The Bathurst win that got away on the last lap, Ferrari 555 Super Squalo…
The Bathurst 100 was the feature race of the 1958 Easter weekend meeting. Arnold led a good field which included Ern Seeliger, Maybach 4 Chev V8, Alec Mildren’s Cooper T43 Climax, Bill Pitt’s Jaguar D-Type and Doug Whiteford’s Maserati 300S.
Looking good, the big Ferrari four-cylinder engine blew on the last lap, Arnold was able to roll up the rise and over the line (below) but not before Whiteford took the chequered flag, Glass was second.
Paul Cummins wrote, “The 3 1/2-litre 860 Monza engine was sent back to the factory, but it wasn’t until the end of the year that a replacement was sent back. It was a 2 1/2-litre GP engine and Arnold wasn’t happy with the performance and later sold the car.” The 250F was soon in his garage…
A steam loco probably doing the Hobart to Launceston milk-run – from the south of Tasmania to its north – blasts its way over the Longford Viaduct circa 1930. Points for the train and car make/model/year folks?
The challenge of course was then to come up with a monochrome photograph of a racing car from exactly the same angle.
Ron Edgerton Collection. As to the first shot, the fella who posted it on Facebook disappeared with his shot as quickly as he arrived. Happy to attribute whoever you are/were.
(unattributed)
Tailpiece…
Longford’s Viaduct and Railway Bridge close by to it are popular places for train-spotters.
The lattice-truss, wrought iron and steel bridge which spans the South Esk River was the equal longest bridge in Australia for a decade or so after the Welsh built structure was commissioned in 1870.
Those lovely pillars were removed during the 1960s – where were the Builders Labourers Federation when you needed them – there is a gofundme.com program to raise the $A80k required to replace the four pillars, two at each end of the bridge, an important bit of our industrial heritage.
Stan Jones’ Maserati 250F chasing Len Lukey’s Cooper T45 Climax 2-litre FPF through Tannery Corner during the March 1959 Australian Grand Prix at Longford.
Geoff Wiseman uploaded onto social-media this wonderful colour shot from a spot not often used by the pro-snappers. It is a decent walk from Longford village to Tannery. Isn’t it a beauty?
That’s the race for the lead folks – a battle of old vs new technology, thankfully for we Stan-Fans, the tough-nugget from Warrandyte prevailed- Jones it was from Lukey.
The short straight leads to the quick left-hander onto Long Bridge.
(G Wiseman Collection)
This time I’ve cropped the shot a bit. I love the way the photographer has framed the action between the spectators, makes you feel kinda-like you were there.
Etcetera…
If I had known the Lukey/Jones shot was going to be posted when I was at Longford in January and March I would have taken a one from exactly the same locale, but I didn’t!
What I can offer are three shots of a planned, but not yet written, modern ‘drivers eye lap of Longford’.
The first above is about halfway along Tannery Straight – towards the corner above, our feature shots. That’s the old Tannery building on the left, these days a lovely home or accommodation.
Jones would have whistled through this flat-biccie right-kink – yes, there is a kink none of the published maps show – at about 160mph.
By this point he has been in top-gear for a long while, Pub Corner is way, way back behind us. Amongst its many tests, Longford had two, long, top-revs throttle openings. The Flying Mile on Pateena Road is the other.
The next one is very deep into the Tannery braking area.
The corner (right) would have been taken in second gear (of five), I’m guessing a corner speed of 50-60mph. He isn’t quite turning in yet, but would be finishing his final shift and having a glance in the mirror, perhaps, before initiating the turn.
The final one is immediately after exiting Tannery – the straight leads to the now non-existent Long Bridge .
The location of the farmers gate is about where Len Lukey is in our first shot. There is a stile to the right so you can easily enter the property and walk up 400-500 metres to the River Esk waters edge.
I don’t think Jones would approach the following left hander before Long Bridge in top, but mighty quick in fourth.
Towards Hell Corner for the first time. Jones’ Maserati 250F, Gray’s blue Tornado 2 Chev with Davison’s Ferrari 500/625 at left. Mildren’s green Cooper T43 Climax FPF 2.0 then Tom Clark’s Ferrari 555 Super Squalo 3.4 and Merv Neil’s Cooper T45 Climax FPF 1.7 (M Reid)
The October 6, 1958 Australian Grand Prix was regarded as one of the great AGPs- a battle between the big red Italian cars of Stan Jones and Lex Davison and the booming blue homegrown Australian special raced by Ted Gray.
In the end Davo’s evergreen ex-Ascari/Gaze Ferrari 500/625 prevailed over the 100 miles, while the attacks of Stan’s Maserati 250F and Tiger Ted’s Tornado 2 Chev fell short.
The event took on greater significance over time as it showed the front-engined Italians at the height of their power in Australia before the full force of the Cooper onslaught bit.
Lex Davison dips his fuel level before the off, Ferrari 500/625 (R Reid)
Ted Gray during his glorious run in front for two thirds of the race. Tornado exiting Murrays (R Reid)
Lou Abrahams and his team had developed, arguably, the fastest car in the country during 1958. In addition they had improved Tornado’s reliability as they addressed, step by step, shortcomings in the machines drivetrain exposed by the prodigious power and torque of it’s fuel-injected Chev Corvette 283cid V8 fitted later in 1957.
Stan Jones found the consistency he needed to win the Gold Star in 1058 but Tornado was quicker. Lex Davison, the defending champion, wasn’t seen during the Gold Star as the AF Hollins & Co crew took a long time rebuilding the Ferrari’s 3-litre DOHC four-cylinder engine which blew after piston failure during the New Zealand Grand Prix at Ardmore in January.
Gray’s promise was proved with a win in the heat which contained the quicker cars. Not only was the car speedy over a lap, he was also considerably quicker than the opposition down Conrod – 152.54mph from Davison’s 146.74 and Jones’ 139.5
Tension mounts before the start of the second heat. #22 Clark and Davison, then Gray and Jones. The dark car on the outside of row 3 is perhaps Len Lukey’s Lukey Bristol with Ray Walmsley’s Alfa Romeo P3 Chev on his inside. The red car with the white nose-roundel is Tom Hawkes modified Cooper T23 Holden-Repco Hi-Power (R Reid)
Tail of the field thru Hell on lap 1- Alf Harvey’s light blue Maserati 4CLT OSCA 4.5 V12 with what looks like, perhaps, John Schroder’s Nota Consul. Harvey’s just rebuilt Maserati won it’s heat but ‘blew a spark plug right through the bonnet’ on lap 16. The Nota was out on lap 10 (ABC)
Early in the race the lead changed between the big three, who cleared away from the rest of the field to lead by nearly a minute at the conclusion of the first 10 of 30 laps- at this point Gray was 8 seconds up on the Jones/Davison battle.
By lap 22 Ted was ahead by a steady’ish 10 seconds but pitted to report erratic handling. A messy, unplanned pitstop ensued during which fuel was topped up and slopped all over the place. A post-race examination showed cracked rear suspension mounts were the cause of the handling misdemeanors. Ted returned to the fray determined to make up the gap but in his haste, and still with his problem, Tornado glanced off the fence on the mountain, then did a couple of slow laps before retiring on lap 24.
Stan Jones then appeared set take a race he deserved to win (he did at Longford in 1959) but he had been shifting gears sans clutch for 7 laps- during his 26th lap the 250F dropped a valve and he was out. Davo completed the remaining four laps to win from Ern Seeliger in Maybach 4 Chev and Tom Hawkes’ Cooper T23 Holden-Repco Hi-Power. It was a happy day for Ern as he prepared both cars, and Tom’s was out of oil with a split sump!
Stan The Man in one of his muscle-shirts while in the lead early on. Maserati 250F exiting Murrays (I think) into Pit Straight (R Reid)
Etcetera…
(R Reid)
Credits…
‘Bathurst: Cradle of Australian Motor Racing’ John Medley, ‘History of The Australian Grand Prix’ Graham Howard and Ors, Ron Reid Collection, Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Tailpiece…
(R Reid)
A slightly fuzzy Jones, Davison and Gray through Reid Park in the early laps before Ted cleared out- Maserati, Ferrari, Tornado.
Stan Jones and his mechanic, Charlie Dean, pose for a Mobil photograph out front of one of Stan’s ‘Superior Motors’ dealerships in inner-Melbourne during 1956. Note the babes in the slips-cordon. Look at that aluminium work, love the neat fillets or scoops to allow some air into the rear tail section, surface cooling of the oil-tank.
Jones acquired his Maserati 250F, chassis ‘2520’ that year. The machine succeeded the Dean designed and built Maybach’s 1, 2 and 3. To be more precise, Maybachs 2 and 3 were built by Charlie and his merry band of artisans at Repco Research (RR), Sydney Road, Brunswick.
Charlie was appointed Repco’s chief automotive experimental engineer in 1954, general manager of Repco Research in 1957 and joined the board as a director of Repco Ltd in 1960, a position he held until his retirement.
Jones in Maybach 1 from Ken Wharton’s BRM P15 Mk1 V16, Ardmore 1954. Interesting to see the way Repco used Maybach to plug its other products
The Repco/Maybach/Dean/Jones partnership ended when Maybach 3 went kaboomba at Gnoo Blas in the summer of ’56- the last of Repco’s stock of the German straight-sixes was carved in half after a major internal haemorrhage.
Of course they could have acquired another motor, but Stan said ‘Fuggit! I’m gunna buy a 250F’. So he did. And a 3-litre 300S engine as a spare, as you do.
The Maserati was initially prepared at RR. When Reg Hunt retired in 1956 Bib Stillwell bought his 250F and Stanley bagged Otto Stone, who had prepared Hunt’s A6GCM and 250F.
Stone was both a very capable racer and engineer. Stan’s most successful years followed. Notable wins included the 1958 Gold Star and 1959 Longford AGP. Jones’ mechanical sympathy was not rated ‘in period’. Stone prepared a robust car well. In addition, my theory is that Otto gave Stan a few ‘chill-pills’. That is, calmed him down a bit. ‘You have to finish races Cocko, just learn to read the play better. Play the percentages rather than win or bust’. I suspect he also called a few of those plays.
Jones and Stone shake after Stan’s 1959 Longford win. He finally bagged the win he deserved. John Sawyer in cap, Alan Jones sez ‘cheese’ (unattributed)
I am hopelessly biased in relation to Kevin Bartlett, Alec Mildren and anything and anyone related thereto (Rennmax, Merv Waggott etc, etc), Frank Matich, Elfin and Garrie Cooper, Repco, Stan Jones and Charlie Dean. So you should read what follows with due caution.
It’s hard to think of a more significant, resident, figure in Australian motor-racing from 1950 to 1976 than Charlie Dean.
His fingerprints were on Maybachs One to Four. Lex Davison’s 1953 Monte Carlo Rally Holden 48-215 was prepped by Chuck. He aided, abetted and developed Jones. Jones and Maybach 1’s 1954 AGP win was the first international GP won by an Oz car. Stan’s job behind the wheel was matched by Dean’s with the tools the night and day before.
Dean hired Phil Irving at RR, together, the Holden-Grey Repco Hi-Power head was theirs. Think of how many race and sportscars they powered. Many of the Holden (48-215, FC, FE etc) race developments were made by RR and then sold to all and sundry. In that sense Repco was in on the ground floor and assisted the explosion of touring-car racing from the mid-fifties.
The Maybach and Repco Hi-Power programs were critical incremental steps which led to Repco’s F1 world championships in 1966-1967. Frank Hallam’s early-sixties Coventry Climax FPF maintenance program was another.
Charlie Dean was not the Director in charge of Repco-Brabham Engines Pty. Ltd. Managing Director, Dave McGrath appointed Bob Brown. Charlie did provide Board level support throughout though. Critically, he was asked by McGrath who should design the first V8 engine which became known as ‘RBE620′- he recommended Phil Irving, the 1966 title was the result. Dean was made responsible for RBE Pty. Ltd. after Frank Hallam was shunted sideways in late 1968 as the F1 program was wound down.
Charlie saw F5000 as a cost-effective ANF1 and the means for Repco to remain in racing. When CAMS dithered about 2-litre/F5000 as Oz’ next F1 Dean invited CAMS President, Donald Thomson, to Repco’s St Kilda Road HQ for a long-lunch in the wood-panelled boardroom during which CAMS’ finest was re-programmed. I’m not suggesting the Repco heavies were the only lobbyists to ping CAMS around that particular pin-ball machine.
The Repco-Holden F5000 program followed. Dean and Malcolm Preston brought Phil Irving back from the Gulag to knock that engine together with the assistance of Brian Heard. Several AGP’s, an NZ GP or two, Gold Stars and plenty of individual race wins resulted.
Most of the Repco-Holden’s internals formed the basis of the Holden Torana L34 and A9X donks. There were several Bathurst taxi-race wins there I guess. And an Australian Touring Car Championship or three.
Dean was a man of many parts. Trained as an electrician, he started and sold his business to Repco, raced at elite level including the 1948 AGP, was VERY adept as a hands on engineer and rose through the corporate ranks to become a long-time director of one of Australia’s biggest public companies. And the rest.
Sure, he had Repco’s cheque book in a ‘golden era’ for the industry. The point is that he used it parlaying his influence to the benefit of Repco- and the sport.
Happy to hear other views to my biased one. It will have to be a good argument to knock him over in the period defined however!
David McKay, yeah-yeah, but nup.
Jones and Dean with Maybach 2 in 1954 (unattributed)
Credits…
Many thanks to David Zeunert for another great shot from his archive.
Alec Mildren’s new, fifth-placed Cooper T43 Climax FPF 1.5 during the February 23, 1958 Gold Star weekend.
Stan Jones won the 28 lap, 50 mile ‘Victorian Trophy’ race in his Maserati 250F from Arnold Glass’ Ferrari 555 Super Squalo and Doug Whiteford’s Maserati 300S sportscar.
Many thanks to Melbourne enthusiast Peter Jones for sharing his photographs taken during a number of Fishos’ race meetings in the mid-fifties when he was in his mid to late teens. Thanks to Stephen Dalton for painstaking research post-publication to nail all the meeting dates.
Don’t Peter’s marvellous colour shots bring a drab airfield circuit to life? Many of the photographs were taken at this Victorian Trophy weekend, the second of nine Gold Star rounds, the title won by Stan Jones that year.
‘Patons Brake Replacements’ were omni-present at the time, a major trade supporter of our sport, they were ultimately absorbed within the Repco Ltd automotive manufacturing conglomerate. See this piece about the inner-suburban Melbourne airfield track; https://primotipo.com/2016/04/15/fishermans-bend-melbourne/
October 1957 (P Jones)
Tornado 2 Chev, the most successful form of the Lou Abrahams/Ted Gray/Jack and Bill Mayberry two racers. Bill and Lou are at far left.
Ted led the race early and was running in the top 4 when he pitted to address throttle linkage problems on lap 10. He rejoined and was third by lap 20 but the engine lost its edge, finally retiring after 26 laps.
Tornado won the Longford Trophy the following weekend. It was without doubt one of the fastest-if not the fastest car of 1958 together with Jones 250F, Ern Seeliger’s Maybach 4 Chev and Lex Davison’s Ferrari 500/625 when it raced. It was not the most reliable though.
Sabina Motors entered, Reg Nutt driven Cisitalia D46 Fiat 1,100, October 1957 meeting. Bailey’s Talbot-Lago T26C alongside.
This car was imported by Melbourne’s Dale Brothers in the early fifties but seems never to have been raced ‘really intensively’ in period. I recall it appearing at Sandown in the mid-seventies in one of the historic events which supported the annual taxi-enduro. At that stage it was part of the Leech Brothers Collection in Brighton, Melbourne. Long since departed our shores.
Owen Bailey’s ex-works-Whiteford Talbot-Lago T26C from ace racer-engineer Otto Stone, MG K3.
The French machine won AGPs for ‘Dicer-Doug’ in 1952 and 1953 at Mount Panorama and Albert Park before it was replaced by an older and supposedly quicker machine.
Owen Bailey lined up for the start but transmission failure meant his race ended before it started. He did not have a great deal of luck racing this car.
The car first raced at the 1956 March Moomba meetings at Albert Park. Meeting date 13/14 October 1956, Jack Davey was the next owner in early 1957. See this feature for a full history of ‘XKD520’; https://primotipo.com/2020/04/17/stillwells-d-type/
(P Jones)
(P Jones)
Terry McGrath advises the XK120 #45 above is Murray Carter’s car.
(P Jones)
Poor Arnold Glass is stuck in the intake of his glorious ex-works-Reg Parnell Ferrari 555 Super Squalo ‘555-2’ during the ’58 Gold Star weekend. ‘It’s arrived not long ago from New Zealand, still has the NZ rego #495795 on the nose’ said Dalton.
Glass was second behind Jones’ 250F and in front of Whiteford’s 300S.
Australia’s ‘Big Red Car’ era ran from the arrival of Reg Hunt’s 2.5-litre Maserati A6GCM in 1954 and ended, say, after Stan Jones AGP win at Longford in March 1959. The little marauding Coopers were well on the march by then but not yet dominant.
The fans were excited by Lex Davison’s Ferrari 500/625, the 250Fs of Hunt, Jones, Bib Stillwell and Glass, the 300S of Doug Whiteford and Bob Jane and this car raced by Glass. It wasn’t the quickest thing around, he got on better with his ex-Hunt-Stillwell 250F but it was still a fast, spectacular car the very successful motor dealer drove capably.
Bib Stillwell discusses progress with a mechanic, ex-Hunt Maserati 250F chassis ‘2516’.
He ran well in the first couple of laps with Stan Jones but then pulled over at Matchless Corner with bent valves. Bib raced with his usual race number 6, these shots of the car the October 1957 Fishermans Bend meeting.
October 1957 (P Jones)
October 1957 (P Jones)
Stillwell’s preparation and presentation was five-star, it is intriguing why he has not re-painted Reg Hunts luvverly Rice Trailer in his own colours. Make and model of the American car folks?
Reg Hunt tested and acquired the machine at Modena in December 1955, first racing it in Australia at Gnoo Blas. He won the South Pacific Championship in it and ‘was the class of 1956’ behind it’s wood-rimmed wheel. Who can fault his choice of early retirement to focus on his growing dealership empire but our grids were robbed of a great competitor. See here; https://primotipo.com/2014/07/19/reg-hunt-australian-ace-of-the-1950s/
October 1957 (P Jones)
By this stage of his career Stillwell’s Kew Holden dealership and related enterprises were spitting off serious wads of cash, the quality of his racing cars reflected this.
An arch enthusiast, as well as an elite level racer- no driver other than Bob Jane had so many sensational racing cars ‘in period’ and later in his life when he returned to racing ‘historics’ globally.
(P Jones)
With a keen eye on the growing speed of Coopers, Bib bought the T43 Climax (above) Jack Brabham raced in the 1958 New Zealand Internationals and South Pacific Championship race at Gnoo Blas in January. Jack won the Levin International and the Soupac Championship in the 2.2-litre Climax FPF engined machine.
Bib practiced both the Cooper and Maserati at Fishos, he elected to race the 250F.
He entered the Cooper in the Bathurst Easter meeting where the 1.7-litre FPF engined car (presumably Jack took the 2.2 back to England) was very fast. In a 3 lap preliminary Bib started from pole but his new Cooper jumped out of gear. He quickly plucked it and set off amongst the mid-field bunch but touched wheels with Alec Mildren’s similar car (our opening shot machine) in the first turn- Hell Corner. The car somersaulted several times before landing back on its wheels. Bib was ok with facial cuts and abrasions but the Cooper was a tad worse for wear. After repair it was sold to Bill Patterson who raced it for the first time at Lowood in August.
Stillwell raced the 250F throughout the rest of 1958 and sold it to Arnold Glass in early 1959 after a good run to sixth in the Ardmore NZ GP. Carroll Shelby’s 250F was the best placed front-engined car that afternoon, two laps adrift of Stirling Moss winning 2-litre Cooper T45. It was very much time to sell, Arnold did very well with it in 1959-1960 all the same!
October 1956 (P Jones)
Paul England and Bill Hickey’s Ausca Holden-Repco is one of the sexiest and quickest of Australian sportscars of the period.
Ya can’t go wrong with styling nicked from the Maserati A6GCS! The ladder-frame chassis machine was built after-hours by Paul and Bill at Repco Research in Sydney Road Brunswick. It used a Holden front-end, rear axle and engine. It was the rolling test bed for the Repco Hi-Power Holden Grey-Six engine developments.
England’s skill at twiddling a wheel did the rest. Happy to have this little baby in my garage. Not sure of the meeting date.
October 1956 (P Jones)
October 1956 (P Jones)
Hedley Thompson’s Edelbrock Special.
Thompson, a highly skilled welder/fabricator employed by Trans-Australian Airlines operated from a workshop behind his home in Melbourne’s inner-eastern Deepdene. The car used a ladder frame chassis and Ford V8 with lots of Vic Edelbrock bits within- hence the name. The gearbox was also Ford, the rear end incorporated a quick-change Halibrand diff. A Delage donated the brake-drums which used Holden cylinders and Holden worm and roller steering.
The car made its debut sans-bodywork at Hepburn Springs in 1956 and later passed to Barry Stilo who made it sing. It exists today, a quite stunning car.
(P Jones)
Ern Seeliger’s Maybach 4 Chev in the ’58 Fishermans Bend paddock.
This thing was still quick in 1959, Stan Jones won the Port Wakefield Gold Star round in it.
Seeliger did a mighty fine job replacing the Maybach SOHC-six with a Chev Corvette V8. Additionally, considerable changes were made to the rear suspension and other refinements- Maybach 3 became Maybach 4.
Ern was like a rocket at the Bend! He hassled Stan early then passed he and Glass for the lead. The look on the face of the cars owner- Stan Jones would have been priceless! But it was not to be. Ern started the race with worn tyres, he was black-flagged when the stewards caught sight of white breaker-strips on the hard worn tyres!
Doug Whiteford’s Maserati 300S was one of the best prepared and presented racing cars- all of the work done by the three-times Australian Grand Prix winner himself.
Bill Patterson’s Cooper T39 Climax, wouldn’t it have made an ideal road-car.
Patterson’s outer-east Melbourne Ringwood Holden dealership was not too far from Templestowe and Rob Roy hillclimbs, close enough for a bit of lunchtime practice or failing that a romp through the Dandenongs.
The plucky racer was one of the very fastest of his day, a Cooper man throughput after his formative MG stage. See here; https://primotipo.com/2017/02/02/patto-and-his-coopers/ Stephen reckons the side view of the car alongside the T39 above is Brian Sampson’s Morris Special- ‘Sambo’, was very close to the start of a long, diverse and successful career which was only finished by a road accident not so long ago.
He won the Gold Star in 1961 aboard a Cooper T51 Climax, the machine below is the T43 Climax FPF ex-Brabham-Stillwell #5 referred to above, perhaps in 1959.
(P Jones)
Note John Roxburgh standing at right and what looks a bit like Bib Stillwell in the cream jumper? Holden Ute and wonderful colour gives us a perspective on male fashion of the coolish day- October 1958 or February 1959 meeting.
(P Jones)
Len Lukey’s Cooper T23 Bristol, probably, ace Cooper historian Stephen Dalton thinks, during the October 1957 Fishos meeting where the car carried #33.
He surmises, based on AMS magazine reports, that Len’s team fitted the longer nose in an attempt to make the car more slippery before the Commonwealth Oil Refinery (C.O.R. later BP) sponsored speed-trials held at Coonabarabran, New South Wales in September 1957.
Reg Hunt’s Maserati 250F below, it is chassis #2516 featured above, bodied as it was when Reg first imported it in early 1956, this probably the October 1956 meeting.
(P Jones)
Peter with a modern Yamaha, above leading Eric Debenham and Eric Hindle at Oran Park on the TR500 in 1970. With ‘mo’ after a win on the TR500 in 1970 (Old Bike Australasia)
After completing the piece to this point via to-and-fro emails I gave photographer Peter Jones a call to thank him and find out a bit about him. To my pleasant surprise I learned he was an Australian champion motor-cyclist in the sixties and seventies, so lets have a look at his career! What a fascinating journey Peter’s has been.
Born in 1942, he was raised in Melbourne’s Kew and then Beaumaris. Qualified as a fitter and turner he commenced his racing career aboard a a Yamaha YDS2 jumping in right at the deep end- his first meeting was at Bathurst in Easter 1964, third in the 250cc Production race was a good start on this most daunting of circuits!
He progressed through an Aermacchi Ala d’Oro 250 pushrod single as below. ‘Built 1963 or 1964, I bought it second hand from the distributor. It was a toss-up between this and a Yamaha TD1-A and I went with this. Great handling and brakes but in my ownership it was lacking in reliability, which in hindsight was a combination of me and the bike.’
‘The battery has a Yamaha logo on it, I knew the Yamahah importers well and had owned two Yamaha 250cc road bikes so when I needed batteries I went there. Back of the photo says Calder February 1965. That’s my Holden FC Ute behind.’
(P Jones)
(P Jones)
Peter then bought a Yamaha TD1-B which allowed him to demonstrate his talent and progress to B-Grade, the bike is shown exiting Griffins Bend at Mount Panorama in 1966 above.
‘I enjoyed this bike a lot, had some success with it while still learning my way. I had a very experienced racing mechanic, Les Gates of Murrumbeena, looking after me so reliability was not a problem. A great weekend was 4 or 5 riders working on our bikes in his backyard with us doing the simple things and Les the more complex. The machine was painted in standard Yamaha colours of white with a red stripe. My Cromwell jet-helmet was white, I painted it blue on each side. The emblem on the front of the helmet is the Sandringham Motorcycle Club- spoked wheel with wings, the club still exists today.’
Graham Laing at Melbourne Motorcycles invited him to assemble a batch of Suzukis which had arrived in December 1965. This led to a full-time gig and the offer to race a Suzuki TR250 production-racer in 1966, I looked after this bike. After a lot of work to improve the performance of the bike Peter hit the big time at the Bathurst Easter meeting. He finished second to Bryan Hindle’s Yamaha TDC-1 in the B-Grade Junior and then second to Eric Debenham’s big Vincent in the B-Grade Unlimited. He was second behind Ron Toombs’ Yamaha in the Junior GP. Better still, a slow-starting Toombs gave Jones the break he needed to win the Lightweight GP in 1969.
The Auto Cycle Union of Victoria provided a grant for Peter to represent the state in the Australian Championships at Surfers Paradise- he was nominated in the 250, 350, and 500 races, all aboard the TR250. The young rider won the 250 and 350, and then the 500 as well. Ron Toombs led on the latter aboard his Matchless but then DNF’d.
(P Jones)
‘The shot above is my first meeting aboard the Suzuki TR250 at Mallala in January 1966. It must be during practice as the engine mounts cracked so I didn’t start. It’s the left-hander after the hairpin, the bike in front is a Kawasaki 250 production racer.’
Peter built up a 500 from a road-going T500 on which he won the Jack Ahearn Trophy at Amaroo Park. A promised TR500 which was due for early in 1970 finally arrived late in the year but without the rear wheel assembly including Ceriani rear brake. Suzuki sent it anyway! and Peter completed it with road parts.
Determined to race in Europe in 1971, Graham Laing agreed that Jones could take the TR500 with him. En-route to the UK Jones ordered and bought a TR250 from Ron Grant (which turned out to be a very poor replica which brings a twitch to my left eye when i think about it!) who was racing at Daytona. He also took his T20 roadie on which he learned the Isle of Man course in the week before the race!
Jones was awarded a Bronze Replica for his performance on the 250 and a Silver on the 500 but admitted, ‘for me, the races were sort of fast touring’. He also rode a Suzuki GB entered T350 in the Production Race.
Later in the season Peter and very-good British rider Keith Martin, aided by Australian mechanic Dave Hall rode the same machine to seventh in the 24 Hour classic at Montjuich Park, Barcelona. ‘Dave Hall was touring the UK and Europe on his BMW. We first met up at the IOM but he assisted in the meetings I raced including manning our Barcelona pit for the full 24-hours, an amazing effort. He later worked for the Suzuki GP team and sponsored riders on a 250cc production bike when he returned to Australia.’ Other non-championship internationals were at Hengalo, Holland and the Southern 100 at Brands Hatch.
In 500s ‘The only works team at the time was Ago and the MV’s, but even that was just a van and some mechanics. The biggest team was the Dutch Van Kreidler team in the 50cc class.’
‘On the 500’s the guys chasing Ago were Keith Turner, Robert Brom and Jack Findlay on his TR500 engined bike. I did the TT, the Swedish GP in torrential rain and the Spanish GP at Jarama where i got seventh in the 500 GP for four world-championship points. The shot below is at the Isle of Man in 1971 aboard my 1970 Suzuki TR500, it was a great bike, easy to ride, I enjoyed it a lot.’
(P Jones)
Back at home with new wife Lyn early in 1972 with the overseas racing bug out of the system, the TR250 and 500 were converted to run on methanol in an attempt to keep them competitive. Later a water-cooled TR500 was little better.
Peter contested the Amaroo Park Castrol 6-Hours in 1970 and 1972 but lap scoring which left a lot to be desired was no incentive to maintain his interest. Peter won the 1973 ‘King of The Weir’ at, you guessed it, Hume Weir.
Peter’s waning interest was piqued with the purchase of a fabulous Suzuki RG500 square-four in time for the infamous Laverton RAAF base February 1976 Australian Tourist Trophy meeting. This was headlined by Giacomo Agostini’s works MV Agusta 500-four.
Jones qualified second behind Ken Blake’s RG500, ahead of Ago on the 5.3km circuit. In the race he muffed the start and finished fourth behind the victorious Blake, then Agostini with Greg Johnson on another RG500 in third.
‘Below is the RG500, now that was a racing bike! Square-four, great power delivery and handling, everything you could ask for. Here braking for Laverton’s far-hairpin, we did a U-turn around the hay-bales and then back up the other side. My last racing motorcycle as I retired during 1976.’
(P Jones)
It was time to hang up the helmet for the Service Manager role at Melbourne Motorcycles. Senior executive roles followed at Suzuki Australia, Yamaha’s Milledge Brothers and Yamaha Motor Australia where Jones had a support role in the early 2000’s with the companies’ Australian Superbike and Moto GP rounds.
Retired in Sidmouth, Tasmania, Peter has his TR250 and air-cooled TR500 to restore and in more recent times has been carefully sorting rather a nice collection of his photographs…
Photo and other Credits…
Peter Jones- many thanks for sharing your story and photographs with us
Peter Jones Old Bike Australasia article by Jim Scaysbrook, Stephen Dalton, Terry McGrath
Tailpiece…
(P Jones)
‘I obviously like the colour of it’ Peter quipped, there were quite a few shots of the same car. N Ronalds, MGA, during the October 1956 meeting.
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