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Originally Posted by Derwent Motorsp
I enjoyed the Flyers/Iconic race. Good mix of cars but perhaps a bit light on numbers and a lot of retirments. Was it too long or hot for these cars which maninly did shorter races in period?
What's the history of the GOMM Jaguar, a car that is new to me but perhaps should have gone a bit quicker?
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The race content was a little light although still in its 20s. Two reasons; the class structure and format was agreed rather later than ideal and 4 cars entered pulled out before the day, and we lost two more in qualifying. Two of the cars retired through the first lap accident, another with gearbox maladies and one with blown head gasket. Not sure of the other two DNFs at this time.
The Gomm Jaguar did not exist as an entity in that form in period but all the major components that make it up did. In effect it's two 1955 cars put together and done rather well I feel. The body was built by Maurice Gomm in 1955 and fitted to an Alta GP chassis and running gear. As you can imagine there was no way, when values started to rise, that the chassis and running gear would not be recovered for an Alta rebuild. The body was then dropped onto a Cunningham chassis but never ran with it. Ben Shuckburgh acquired the Cunningham chassis for his fabulous C4R and Charles Fripp acquired the body and placed it on a pretty standard 1955 XK 140 chassis/engine/gearbox dif etc. The only deviation from the XK140 running gear is that it has XK150 front suspension. Thus we have a 1955 body of historical interest mated to a 1955 Jaguar. Whilst this may bother the purists, I contend that the car is every bit as 1950s as some we see out there and that we have the opportunity of seeing this one off body in a period context when it might otherwise have been scrapped or hung up on a wall. The car, being standard XK is not going to be that quick (3.4 on twin SUs and standard head) but Charles, who just wants the fun of racing it occasionally, will no doubt get a bit quicker with seat/track time.