Special Saloons - the early cars (1965 - 1975ish!)

[cavvy]

A feature on the Rover in Australia was published in a recent issue of Australian Muscle Car. Paraphrasing the article, it was built from a brand new shell in 1970 in British Leyland's competition dept at Abingdon as a prototype for a homologation run of 1000 high performance FIA Gr2 touring car versions of the then current alloy block Rover 3500 V8. It had flared guards, wide Minilite mag wheels,a Muncie 4 speed & a Traco modified, quad Weber 4.3 litre engine.
The car raced only once in Europe, the 84 hour Marathon at Nurburgring, reaching a top speed of 176mph. It came to Australia at the end of 1970 & raced in 1971.

[Dave Brand]

Originally posted by Al Weyman
I think as I recollect the major problem with the P6 was the odd Di-jon (sorry if spelt wrong) rear axle arrangment.

De Dion! It was unusual in having the sliding joint, necessary to accomodate angular movement in the driveshafts, in the axle rather than the driveshafts, which resulted in track changes, albeit small, with suspension movement.

[Jeff Barley]

Originally Posted by Andrew Kitson

David Howes' Javelin.

I met david a few years ago.. He still had the car in his workshop covered with a dust sheet.. He'd parked it after a road crash which injured his leg (I think).. Last I heard he was dusting it down to rebuild it.. Nice guy

[Dan Rear]

Allen, was George Welly Potter's big Capri an ex-Hill/Rosen one ? He lived in Derbyshire however, nowhere near these Beautiful South places. I can;t recall many other Capris around by the late 70s.

[275 GTB-4]

I have been posting on AtlasF1 (Shhh)....hoping to help out a friend who owns the ex-Alec Poole Rover P6B V8 Traco.

He was after the Chassis number of JXC806D which was imported by Leyland Australia and raced by James Smith in 1971 and later became the Camel Rover. The log book has been lost.

Huw on Atlas said.....The ex press car (JXC808D) was the one used for rallycross before becoming the first prototype racer built by Morgan and Rose, fitted with a 4.3 Traco Olds. this was sold to Alec Poole who raced it in Ireland. This car was red.

After Lord Stokes closed the UK Comps Dept in 1970 Sydney's Warwick Farm racing circuit promoter Geoff Sykes approached BL Australia about the possibility of bringing the car and
Roy Pierpont down under, but the deal fell through. The parent company then offered one of the two racing Rovers which had been built for sale.
Jim Smith went to England and bought the car with financial assistance from BL Australia subsidiary. His purchase included both Rover V8 factory racing engines. This car was Blue, ie the second car.

"(the other works P6B racer - the prototype - had a standard V8 installed
and was sent to the US for display purposes)."

In 1972 Smith got sponsorship from Shell and Camel Filter Cigarettes and the P6 was painted yellow with a 550 bhp 5 litre Repco Formula 5000 unit . Smith sold the car to the Jarrett brothers who sold it in 1976 to David Craig and changed from yellow to blue. The Rover was severely damaged in a garage fire.

In December 1984 it was sold through Auto Action magazine to a Sydney enthusiast, but there the trail goes quiet......
However this is the Marathon de la Route car, the second one. I don't believe this is the Alec Poole car, and I'm not sure No1 went to the States straight from Leyland, suggesting maybe that there was three............
So what did Alec do with his car when he finished with it?

Paul wrote.....Mick, Graham Howard wrote a comprehensive article on what became the Rover P6 Sports Sedan in a recent edition of Australian Muscle Car magazine. From what I can recall, Mr Baddeley (golfer Aaron's father, who went on to spanner for Mario Andretti in the States) did a lot of modifications to the Rover in the "Camel" days. I don't recall the Rover's fate.

I do recall another highly modified Rover P6 3500 from a few years back that was used in classic rallying by Ron Barr-Smith (I think that's his name.)

I'm pretty sure I have a feature on the other "works" Rover (red in colour) from the long defunct English magazine "Sporting Cars" (back in the early '80s.)

Present Day...Oct 2005

My friend Rob Harrison now has the car and would love to locate the CAMS Log Book which is missing. There is some controversy with the car so far as eligibility is concerned.

If anyone knows anything about the Rover or its documentation please PM me and I will put you in touch with (no doubt) an extremely grateful British Leyland/Rover enthusiast

[John Turner]

I'm sure I took a picture of this car in the paddock at Silverstone, mid to late 60's. I'll have to dig it out. However, I have found an entry for Mike Bennion, in race 8 of the Cornthwaite Trophy meeting 1st July 1967. it carried competition number 106 and was entered as a Morris-Ford with a 4638cc, V8. It lined up with another real beastie, the Austin A40 Chevrolet V8 (4638cc) of Brian(?) Tarrant. I believe Tarrant tragically died in this car many years later.

[Nordic]

Heres your chance to relive the 70's!
5000cc Ford Escort built in the 70's to compete in special saloons for sale on ebay
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Ford-escort-ra...QQcmdZViewItem

Best check behind the sofa for some loose change.

[Dan Rear]

Who had this car originally I wonder ? I recall Dennis Nott had a big Escort, Keith Bowmaker too, are were these 1 and the same ?

[Tim Wilkinson]

Originally Posted by Nordic

on another fourm the original owner is given as Peter Thurston.

It's Pete Thurston who has it up for sale. Check the "other items for sale" for the PRelude Thundersaloon.

[peter thurston]

Sorry to disappoint anybody but neither car will sell as they have very big reserve's and were only put on ebay as it was 10p listing day and I was bored!!Thought I'd chance my arm as you never know.The car was built from a spare avo shell owned by nick whiting.A guy called maurice ryan built it in 1970 with the help of a friend and a guy working at chevron.Apart from making the engine bigger the whole car is still .raced as it was built.I have had it since 1992 but would love to know where it was from the early seventies to the late eighties if anybody knows.In all those years I have never found a period photo even ,then the first owner phone's up and I loose his number,typical.pete

[Alan Raine]

Only just picked up this thread. I just loved the Super Saloons. I was marshalling mainly at Silverstone in the 70's when they reached their peak. Gerry Marshall in the Ventora and then Baby Bertha was awesome. It was great to see how far the imagination could go with some really wild and sometimes wacky cars. Dafs, Skodas, Beetles etc all with big noisy motors.
One that really sticks out is Ian Richardsons Chevrolet Corvair. Beautifly made - a stunning piece of kit. On it's debut at Silverstone it had problems in practice and started from the back of the grid. I still have this strong memory of a full grid of cars heading down to Woodcote at the end of the first lap and this big blue thing hammering down the straight overtaking everything in sight. I think it finished the first lap in about 5th or 6th place and then promptly broke down!

[ian.stewart]

Just as an after thought, Berpop--- That was rebuilt and put onto the street powered by a 3.5 Rover on possibly Lucas or TJ injection, with massive AJ Peirce alloys fitted all round, and painted Merc silver, it looked and sounded the nuts, The shell started to show it age and after a couple of years of being driven on a regular basis and there was rust in various places, but it still looked far better than it did in that funny Teal Blue it used to be painted in. it was, at a later date, alledgedly stolen and never seen again.
Ian

[Andrew Kitson]

Originally Posted by Alan Raine

Mick Hill sold his original Capri to Tony Strawson who painted it a beautiful Metallic Brown with Strawberrys all over the roof. .

Anthony Davidson's dad might be responsible for that, he told me he was involved with Strawson's Capri. He did a lot of graphics at the time, a lot for drag race cars too. He is a member here so look forward to input.

Re: The awesome Niven Boss Capri - remember her well. She sat in my Dad's garage for a while as he spannered on it in early '76 for the guy who bought it from Doug. Only two meetings then the money ran out.

[Peter Mallett]

Originally Posted by John Turner

So, remind me of the evolutionary process here. We had a few 'special' saloons in the 60's which ran in Libre and allcomers races; the earliest one I remember was 'Doc' Merfield's Fraud Cortina.

Tat'll be this one (Taken by Fred Scatley)

[John Turner]

The first time I saw that beastie, was at Silverstone, May 1966, entered in the Radio London Trophy for, and I quote from the programme, 'A 10 lap scratch race for saloon cars'. Saloon cars didn't have to be 'standard' even then!

[big andy]

special saloon car races started in the late 1960s 68/69 .i think the theory was modified road cars .then people like doc merfield started putting V8S in cortinas and the like (this car used to do a 170mph ) buy 73 things really started to get silly the turner 5.0 skoda ,big bertha, boss capri etc these cars were still very modified road cars not silhouette type cars .the first sihouette cars started to appear in around 1974 spaced framed minis , imps around this time john maqurie started producing his spaced framed cars which won just about every championship they was to win ,in one year( late 1970s) a maquire car won every special saloon championship in the country .this is the type of car people think of when thinking of special saloons.buy the 1980s 95% of a s/s grids would of been sihouette cars (ie not a modified road car) which in the end killed s/s in 1993

[Rennen]

Originally Posted by Alan Raine

Strawson paint job was quite adventurous at the time but I think he, like many others, run out of money in the end. I wonder where he is now.

Ah!...yes I was involved in the graphics...for Tony Strawson as Andrew Kitson guessed.
Tony Strawson was a nieghbour in Finchley (North London) I had just moved into a flat and my garage backed onto an block of pre-war garages where he kept his race cars. One day washing my TR6 I heard this wonderful reving V8 and climbed over the fence to be faced by Tony and his mechanic Gary, tweaking the 4 downdraught twin choke Webbers of the Gurney Westlake V8 which was in an American Ford Falcon. In the corner was his previous car the famous ex-Graham Hill 'BUY12' Mk2 Jaguar which now sported huge fat wheels and wheel arches. In another corner was a very tatty but complete Ford GT40 which belonged to his solicitor Mark Finburg. Basically I had fallen over the fence into enthusiasts heaven...and soon was enlisted as a 'gofor'!

The neighbours hated him as on most fridays he would prep his car for weekend racing and would run up the unsilenced engines, to minimise conflict with the nieghbours he would shut himself in to reduce the noise and would later emerge like Houdini from a dense cloud of exhaust smoke without flinching or complaining just looking like he had had 10 Pints!
He had a small repair workshop business nearby where he specialised in exotic car repairs. I always remember him saying "Why change a clutch on a Triumph Herald for 40 quid when for the same effort you can change one on a Maserati for 300"? His customers included Marshall Wingfield (Gerry Marshalls car sales business) they sold exotic cars and actually sold the original ex Mick Hill Boss Capri to Strawson for the princely sum of 6 grand for which he remortgaged his house to buy it! Would loved to have seen his application form...reason for loan?

After pulling the 4.7 Gurney Westlake motor out we took the Capri up the hill to Liam Churchills paintshop in Barnet. The Churchill brothers were into Drag Racing, building the UK's first 'Funny Car'..."The Sting" which had a fiberglass Capri body but had a blower hemi as dragster tend to do! Tony's brief was for his ex Mick Hill car to be painted "BLACK with Strawberrys on it"...however as they were into painting trick Hot Rod/Custom Car paint jobs it ended up a sort of metallic brown, which didn't impress Tony much but he grudgingly accepted...yours truely did the signwriting and put the stickers on. I also refurbised all the the Lola T70 suspension parts and the Jag diff and repainted the engine block Ford blue.

I helped prep the car for many races and once had a very hairy lift (no seat!)in it at Brands Hatch when "Strawb" without warning floored the throttle to clear the plugs on that little road under the tunnel to the pits...I went bowling backwards into the empty shell...donging my head on the diagional roll bar! It was raw stuff in them days when 'men were men' in sandals!

[Strawb]

Originally Posted by Rennen

Ah!...yes I was involved in the graphics...for Tony Strawson as Andrew Kitson guessed.
Tony Strawson was a nieghbour in Finchley (North London) I had just moved into a flat and my garage backed onto an block of pre-war garages where he kept his race cars.............. !

The neighbours hated him as on most fridays he would prep his car for weekend racing and would run up the unsilenced engines, to minimise conflict with the nieghbours he would shut himself in to reduce the noise ........

Hi
I remember those days down Holden Lane in Finchley but I was quite young when Dad had the Falcon and the Capri but i remember it was all fun for me anyway. Dad did buy the Capri of Mr Marshall and did remortgage our house, but he didn't tell by Mum until he brought the car home on a trailer, i think i was more than likely sent to my room while he explained that.

[John Turner]

I'll need to check but I'm pretty certain that this car raced with a Traco 4.3 (development of the Buick/Rover 3.5) in period. It was certainly a Traco built engine anyway.

[John Turner]

Originally Posted by d-b

.... don't know if your interested but i have found some information on the v8 p6 racers.

it's in a copy of the book=
THE ROVER V8 ENGINE (2ND EDITION) by DAVID HARDCASTLE
published by HAYNES PUBLISHING
ISBN 0 85429 961 0
(pages 81-84)
there are also 5 pictures of the shaw/pierpoint car

it says 2 were built (JXC806/808D) in 1970

JXC808D was run by BILL SHAW & ROY PIERPOINT & developed by JOMOCO RACING,BROOKWOOD,SURREY
the engine was called a TRACO-ROVER but was a TRACO-OLDSMOBILE prepared by MATHWALL ENGINEERING,COBHAM,SURREY
engine was 4.3litres/360hp
body was mostly aluminium with fibreglass wheel arches

JXC806D basically the same but it competed in the 1971 NURBURGRING 86 HOUR MARATHON DE LA ROUTE,leading for 16 hrs before retiring
this car afterwards went to AUSTRALIA (1971?)where it raced before being restored

hope this might be of some interest

d-b

I found this post in an old thread which I think should help. I have Hardcastle's book; according to him, the preparation of this car was 'contracted out by BL's Competitions Department at Abingdon', which makes it at least a quasi works car, and that 'it was the responsibility of Bill Shaw and Roy Pierpoint ....... to campaign the car' This was JXC 808D and was used in 'one-off' national saloon car races since nothing like enough could be built to enable it to be homologated for Group 2. In fact only one more was built and that was JXC806D. It was 'essentially the same but built to Group 6 prototype regulations'. As Ian says, it would be an irony if neither of these cars could be raced in any of the current historic classes.

These really are two most spectacular special saloons, pushing out about 360bhp at the time and it would be superb to see either or both in action again.

[KA]

Originally Posted by John Turner

Viva GT, I have the relevant Sporting Cars issue (Vol 2, No.4 - Feb 1984) in front of me. The article is about 'Wild Rare Rovers' and doesn't devote much (and certainly not enough!) to these cars. It says one of them (but doesn't tell us which one) was indeed built at Solihull, although that could have been simply a standard car that was sent out to Shaw and Pierpoint to develop. Hardcastle is not clear on that (see my earlier post)

According to the Bill Price 'BMC/BL Competitions Department' book, the car was built by Bill Shaw (although he contracted much of the work out as he was in the process of moving his workshop) at the request of Peter Browning of the BL Competitions Department- the base car was supplied by Abingdon and had been previously used in a number of rallycross events, driven by Geoff Mabbs. The book earlier mentions these rallycross outings, and refers to the car as having been 'borrowed from Solihull'- that could explain the Solihull reference in the Sporting Cars article.
The Price book suggests that Peter Browning had the Rover P6 in mind as the successor to the Mini- it's interesting to wonder what might have resulted had BL not pulled the plug on the Competitions Department- the closure decision was made only days before the team competed in the Marathon de la Route with the car...
The engine is described in the book as a 4.3 built by Mathwall Engineering using some Traco parts- 365bhp. Traco wwre asked to supply a pair of engines for the project, but these were less powerful- Price quotes 295bhp. The book implies these were built to a lower spec, as it says Traco were asked to tune them 'to give the best power output available with off-the-shelf parts'

[jonners]

Originally Posted by jonners

I don't think the Merfield/Sanger V8 Cortina had much to do with Mustangs - for example the V8 was actually a Coventry Climax...

...how do I know this? Having bought a book on Coventry Climax engines recently where there's a photo of a V8 in a Cortina my Dad phoned up his old mate Terry Sanger to see if it was Terry's old car - and it was....

Profuse apologies to all. Have just spoken to my Dad and I was on the wrong end of the stick on this one.

The first V8 Cortina was the Dobson car that ran a V8 Daimler. This car kept breaking its axle except when Mrs Dobson drove it...

Then there was the Fraud Cortina - Merfield/Sanger - which DID run an American V8 - a Falcon 4.7 litre. Terry Sanger raced this in '66 - '67 winning the Redex Trophy in '67. If anyone out there feels like ticking me off for suggesting that the Fraud Cortina ran anything other than a Ford engine - don't bother...Dad's already given me six of the best...

As for the Coventry Climax V8 this was the abandoned 'Godiva' 2.5 litre Formula 1 project. Derek Merfield (presumably the Australian dental surgeon known as 'the Doc') bought the Godiva engines - there were only ever 2 - had them prepared by Bill Lacey (he of racing motorbike engine fame??) and fitted one in a 2 door Mk 1 Cortina prepared by Ray Harris. Merfield raced this car in 13 races over three seasons ('67 - '70??) and then retired. So on the assumption that there's only one Merfield, he raced a V8 Cortina twice using 2 different engines - the question is whether the car was the same one.

My Dad discussed this with Terry Sanger quite recently but he can't remember precisely what Terry said - it's possible that it was the Fraud Cortina AFTER its famous exploits that appears in the Coventry Climax book (there's only a photo of the engine bay) but Dad is sure Terry will know and he'll probably speak with him soon.

Can one of the moderators please post a link on my previous message directing people to this message???

[Andrew Kitson]

Pretty sure the Merfield/Sanger V8 car then went to Brian Bolton. Recall him winning by miles in it with Albert Betts' Jag, Graham Bean's Anglia and Roger Taylor's Dagenham Motors Escort in a good second place scrap at Snett in '69. The car my old man was spannering on fell off at the hairpin on lap 1. Yet another problem with the 'seat to steering wheel interface'.

[Jonners Dad]

I have just had a long chat with Terry on the phone and the Merfield car and his car were different cars. The Merfield car predated Terry's car, had the Climax engine in it, so the dates in the Coventry Climax book are wrong, according to Terry.
His car was being built by Tony Drury and Terry bought it and finished it off. It had the Ford 4.7 litre V8 in it and a Jaguar back axle, plus some original aerodynamic tweeks at the back to give downforce. Terry was timed (by the Police!) at 166 mph down the straight at Snetterton, not bad for a Mk 1 Cortina. He made FTD at this Formula 2 meeting! In view of the "aerodynamics" of the Mk1 shape, it shows what sheer bhp can do! From memory, the Merfield car was the first Fraud Cortina, a mantle Terry took over with his car-hence the confusion.

[John Turner]

Welcome, Jonners Dad!

So to clarify we have two V8 Cortina Mk1s and 3 engines:-

1) The Doc Merfield Fraud Cortina originally fitted with Coventry Godiva F1 V8(what a pity that was never developed; I understand that it had much promise!) but subsequently fitted with a Ford 289 unit, in which form it had success.
2) The Terry Sanger Mk1, a separate later car but also fitted with a Ford 289.

I wonder if they ever shared the same grid or had Merfield stopped racing his by the time the Sanger car emerged?