22 replies to this topic

[slotbaker]

OK chaps, I'm interest to know how many race car builders competed in cars of their own design and manufacture, on a national or international level.
 
People like:

Jack Brabham,
Dan Gurney
Jim Hall
Colin Chapman
Don Garlits
Henry Ford
Carroll Shelby
Frank Matich
Bruce McLaren
Max Balchowsky
 
Cars built and raced could be one-offs, but raced in national or international events or significant historical motoring event.
 
There has to be stacks more.  Who can you add?

[Cheater]

Going way back, Walter Christie is another.

Marcel Renault as well, I think.

J. Frank Duryea, too.

[Tex]

McKee?

[TSR]

McKee was a crew chief and a mechanic but  do not believe that he actually raced any of his own cars.

 

Add to the list:

 

JEAN RONDEAU

ETTORE BUGATTI

Several of the MASERATI brothers
AMEDEE GORDINI
GABRIEL VOISIN
LANCE REVENTLOW

 

And there are plenty, plenty more...

 

But few actually succeeded in winning either big races or championships in their own car. Of these, Brabham, McLaren, Gurney, Rondeau and Hall shine.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Louis Chevrolet

[chaparrAL]

Did Pilbeam ever drive to the British Hillclimb championship in one of his cars?

[Phil Hackett]

Henry Ford
 
Tommy Ivo
 
Did Briggs Cunningham drive?

[TSR]

He sure did... winning too!

[Bob Kurkowski]

Bobby Allen - Knoxville Nationals

 

Jim Shampine - Oswego Classic

 

K.

[Duffy]

Duffy Livingstone!

[Rick Davis]

Nat Adams - Chinook Can-Am (was reminded of it watching the Goodwood coveraage Sunday night).
 
Also there was a backmarker Can-Am called the Wolverine but unsure of the builder.

[chaparrAL]

Drino Miller   Baja 1000  The first winning single seat off road racer he made in his shop in Orange County.
 Parnelli Jones with "Big Oly", also in the same race. But he and Vel  have talented craftsmen make his faux Bronco.

[TSR]

Nat Adams - Chinook Can-Am

 
Rick,

Adams never either designed or built his Chinook. He merely bought it in 1967 and raced it before selling it...

The cars were built by Hungarian brothers Rudy and George Fejer. It never won a race until it won at the Goodwood revival two years ago.

[Bob Kurkowski]

Duffy,
 
How's this for some of Mr. Livingstone's handiwork, a original 'Mole'.
 
The car is a era-correct piece featuring tiller steering running on a Wiesco modded K-77 with the McCulloch brand expansion can.
 
Shorty after that photo was taken I almost cried when I realized I was too tall to ever drive it.
 
Things changed rapidly after I received the check from its sale and I laughed all the way to the bank.
 
K.

[slotbaker]

#10 + Eliminator.

[BackAgain]

Didn't Peter Brock hand build his first race car...the Austin?

How about Larry Perkins?  He was engineer for the cars and engines.

[slotbaker]

Yep, (Aussie) Peter Brock did build his first two race cars, but from existing chassis and components.
 
Larry Perkins was a good racer and vehicle builder, but again built them from existing vehicles.
 
Don't think they designed, built and race their own cars like Sir Jack, Dan Gurney, Jim Hall, Carroll Shelby, and others mentioned above.

[BackAgain]

That's true, Steve, but, at least as far as Brock is concerned, the existing car was more for convenience than anything. The final product didn't share very much with the original donor car.

He certainly wasn't in the same class as say Brabham, who started with a clean sheet of paper...
but he shouldn't be excluded given the amount of design and construction work he did in the early years.

Perkins: I agree with your comment, he was more of a developer than a designer

[Russell Sheldon]

There were quite a few South African designers/builders/drivers.
 
Louis Douglas Serrurier (9 December 1920 – 4 June 2006) was probably the most prolific constructor. He participated in the South African National Championship series, as well as in three Formula One World Championship South African Grands Prix in the 1960s, in his LDS single-seaters.Serrurier's best SAGP result was 11th in the 1963 event. There was a field of 20 cars, the GP being won by Jim Clark (Lotus), from Dan Gurney (Brabham) and Graham Hill (BRM).
 
A total of 9 LDS single-seaters were built to the 1.5-litre Formula 1 (1961-1965) regulations, and one 3-litre F1 car, which was entered by Team Gunston in the 1968 South African Grand Prix. 
 
The LDS-Repco, along with team mate John Love's Brabham BT20, were the first F1 cars to be fully liveried in tobacco sponsorship in a World Championship Grand Prix. This opened the door for other tobacco companies to follow and Imperial Tobacco soon signed up Lotus, who raced as Gold Leaf Team Lotus from midway through the Tasman Series, with Gold Leaf liveried Lotus 49Ts, driven by Jim Clark and Graham Hill.
 
Tobacco companies became the mainstay of F1 sponsorship for more than three decades, until governments began to place a ban on cigarette advertising. In fact, only as recently as the 2010 Barcelona Grand Prix, due to pressure from the anti-tobacco lobbyists who accused Marlboro of subliminal advertising, Ferrari stopped using the ‘bar-code’ stripes on their cars.
 

 
1967 LDS - Climax
 

 
 

 

 
Tingle's LDS - Climax (back) leads the field off the grid in a South African championship race at Kyalami from John
Love's Brabham BT20 (front).
 

 
Sam Tingle's LDS - Repco 3-litre at the Rhodesian GP, December 1967.
 
Another was Gordon Murray, who was also a slot car builder and racer!  He built and raced his own car full-size car, the IGM Ford, in South Africa during 1967 and 1968.
 
At the end of 1968 he went to England, looking for a job in motor racing.  He was employed by Brabham as a draughtsman and in 1972 was appointed chief designer. The result was the Brabham BT42, which was driven by Carlos Reutemann and Wilson Fittiapldi in 1973. The design was further developed the following year into the Brabham BT44, in which Reutemann won three Grands Prix. Reutemann and Carlos Pace drove BT44Bs in 1975 and both drivers won a GP and scored other good results to move the team to second in the Constructors' World Championship.
 
Murray's most innovative design was the BT46B -- the Brabham 'fan' car. It featured a large fan at the rear of the engine, which sucked air from under the car through a radiator, providing cooling for the engine and at the same time creating downforce. In the hands of Niki Lauda the car won the Swedish GP, but was later banned by the FIA. The cars were modified again and with the fan removed, Lauda won the Italian GP. The team finished the year third in the Constructors' Championship.
 
As ground-effect technology developed, it became clear that a new engine was required because of the need for underbody aerodynamics at the rear of the car. Alfa Romeo designed a new V12 engine for Murray's next offering, the BT48. The car was not very successful, although Lauda won the non-championship Dino Ferrari Grand Prix at Imola. Murray then hurriedly designed a replacement - the BT49 - using Cosworth engines. The car appeared for the first time at the end of 1979 and was developed for the 1980 season, when Nelson Piquet became a frontrunner and won three GPs. In 1981 Piquet scored another three wins and consistent finishes resulted in winning the World Championship.

For 1982, Brabham had a deal to run BMW turbo engines and Murray designed the BT50, which won the Canadian GP. Murray's next design was the BT52, which enjoyed much success in the hands of Piquet and Riccardo Patrese, taking the Brazilian to the World Championship. This was developed into the BT53 for 1984 and while Piquet was still able to win with the car, it was unreliable. The development of the BMW engines continued with the BT54 in 1985, but the team's decision to use Pirelli tyres was not a good one, although Piquet had one GP victory.

Murray's last Brabham was the BT55, a another radical design which needed BMW to build engines which were tilted over to one side. This resulted in the car being very low and it soon became known as the 'skateboard' Brabham.
 
In the middle of the 1986 season Elio de Angelis was killed testing one of the cars and at the end of that year, Murray decided he had had enough of F1 and joined McLaren, where he was responsible for the McLaren F1 GTR sports car, although he headed the design team which produced the 1988 Honda-powered McLaren MP4/4, which won 15 of the 16 Grands Prix and gave Ayrton Senna his first Drivers' Championship. Murray continued to work for McLaren until early 2005, when he decided to pursue an independent career.

Kind regards,
Russell

[Guy Spaulding]

Don Thomas - CRA and USAC sprint champion

 

One of his old cars was located and restored here

[slotbaker]

Russell, many thanks for the great post. There's a stack of stuff in there I didn't know about.
BTW, the link from your website to Jim Allen's website seems to be broken.

[Russell Sheldon]

Thanks, Slotbaker. I'll get it fixed.

 

As mentioned, there were quite a few South African sports car designers/builders/drivers. The Protea (named after the South African national flower) was built in 1959 and had a tubular chassis and Triumph TR2 engine and running gear. It won the South African Six Hour Race in 1959, on its first outing, driven by its builders, John Myers and John Mason-Gordon. About 16 'production' Protea's were built, with glass fibre bodies. Most used 1,172cc Ford engines.

 

A rather more radical car was the Lolette, which used an old Protea chassis and was fitted a 4.6-litre plus V8 Chevy engine.

 

Builder Eric Brockhoven took the car to the UK in 1963 and raced it at Snetterton and Oulton Park. While in the UK, a coupe body was fitted.  The Lolette Coupe was entered in the 1964 Rand Daily Mail 9-Hour race by Scuderia Los Amigos and driven by Eric Brockhoven and Frank Rundel.

 

 

Then there was the GSM Dart and Flamingo. During the early to late fifties, two friends, both studying Engineering courses at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, had a vision that would affect the lives of countless motoring enthusiasts during the five decades that followed.

Bob van Niekerk and Willie Meissner had visions of not only designing but also producing a sports car. They formed the GSM company and started manufacturing the first prototype in 1957.

On the 1st of January 1958, the GSM Dart appeared on the starting line of Cape Town's premier race meeting at Gunners Circle. The car proved to be almost unbeatable. A scant four years later a more sophisticated GT version, the GSM Flamingo saw the light of day.

Both models proceeded to make a name for themselves, not only in South Africa but all over the world. In England the Dart was produced as the Delta, where they proved successful with race wins at Goodwood, Silverstone, Aintree, etc. to the astonishment of many, including Colin Chapman, who could just not understand how such a simple design could beat his Lotus’s.

Some 116 GSM Darts were built in S.A. and over 60 GSM Deltas in the U.K, some of which have surfaced lately in Canada. Approximately 128 GSM Flamingos were built in Cape Town.

 

Another home-built special was the Mirage sports racing car, built and raced by South African Air Force fighter pilot Steve Mellet.

 

 

Possibly the best known South African engineer and car designer, but who never raced his own cars, was Rory Byrne, most famous for being the chief designer at the Benetton and Scuderia Ferrari Formula One teams.

 

After winning two World Championship titles at Benetton, Byrne joined Ferrari in 1997.  The Ferrari F1 cars he designed won over seventy Grands Prix, seven constructors titles and six drivers titles, making him the most successful Formula One designer of the last decade.

 

Kind regards,

 

Russell

[NSwanberg]

Our own A.J. Hoyt designed, and for the most built, a mini stock car Ford powered Mercury Bobcat that he campaigned in southern California for a few years. I do not think he won any major championships but I can attest to the ruggedness of his design work.

 

I think we should mention Carl Seaberg, who raced slot cars for many years and raced a TR4 in E Prod in SCCA races and several races at Waterford Hills Road Course in Clarkston Michigan. His car always received first class reviews during tech inspections. He went on to be the designer for Carbir Cars and their highly successful S2000 car. Although Carl was the designer I do not think he has ever raced one of his cars. Long story on that one, he got his start working with Auto Sketch on an old 8086 computer in my basement. He designed a Formula Ford and had it print out on a dot matrix printer in three different levels of for a full size drawing of the chassis. I knew then he was headed for great things.