Quote:
Originally Posted by Jesper OH
Class C: 3001-6000 cc
Erle McRae Motorsport
BMW 635CSi
Queenslander Charlie O'Brien and Erle McRae payed for this British Ted Grace International 635. A lot of words has been used on this and closely related cars on this forum, so I'll stick to what is immedeate about it's Australian 1985 season. The car debuted at the Castrol 500 at Sandown with Andrew Miedecke. The handling setup proved to be a problem, but after DNFs at both Sandown and Bathurst, O'Brien scored a 2nd at the AEC Surfers Paradise final and 3rd a week later in the streets of Adelaide.
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How was this deal reported from the Australian end, because it poses a few puzzles?.
According to the Bathurst annual, as you say the car came from the UK, and was an ex-BMW GB car bought from Frank Sytner- (the book actually refers to it having been raced in the BTCC and some ETC rounds by Sytner) which was rebuilt in Ted Grace's workshops before being shipped to Australia, arriving 'fully rebuilt and ready to race' just before Sandown. The reference to Ted Grace certainly fits with the car being bought from Sytner, as he prepared Sytner's BTCC cars
Does anyone have a pic of it at Sandown- or can at least say what colour it was? It was certainly yellow at Bathurst
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...agic/85044.jpg
...but was it resprayed before leaving the UK, or did it race at Sandown in it's European colourscheme (I'm guessing either plain white or white/grey?)
It's clearly RHD, which suggests it's one of the ex-CC Motorsport/BMW GB cars (2 RHD race cars and an LHD spare), which Sytner bought at the beginning of the year and subseqeuntly sold on- (IIRC the conclusion we came to in the 635 thread) rather than Sytner's regular BTCC mount which was LHD.
Did the deal to buy the 635 have anything to do with O'Brien's appearance at the Donington ETC round in April '85, driving a leased Swedish Volvo under the 'Erle McRae Racing' banner? Autosport at the time suggested that O'Brien/McRae might have been planning to take the Volvo back to Australia, which clearly didn't happen...
Additionally, Miedecke was in the UK about a week before the 635's Sandown debut- he was at Silverstone for the TT, where he co-drove Czech Milos Bychl's ASP Racing Corolla- I think this was reported as being a last-minute deal.
I'm tempted to wonder if his presence in the UK had anything to do with taking delivery of the 635, and he picked up a ride in the Corolla into the bargain. The timescale's a bit tight though- the TT (8th Sept) and Sandown (15th Sept) were on consecutive weekends, so presumably the 635 was already in transit- unless it was airfreighted that week and arrived at Sandown straight off the plane....?