Doug Nye: A toast to the independent racers

My son Peter or I just roll up in the thing, happen to get waved into the Show area – because it is quite an attractive Ecurie Ecosse-liveried old banger – and there it sits all day, usually with assorted kids trying the cockpit for size… I have never entered it formally because it is – after all – just a fake, albeit a nice aluminium-bodied one with many proper bits built into it. I wouldn’t be comfortable if Show attendees voted for it ahead of genuine post-war cars whose owners really care about local Show concours success, which simply is not our thing.

Well, cutting a long story short, we ended up this year by actually winning the postwar car class, and right now as I write these words standing on the mantlepiece here is a shiny little cup trophy and associated medal, almost touching in their dinky modesty. The concours organiser lady told me “No Doug – you’ve got to have a proper entry this year and even if your car’s a fake – as you repeatedly insist – it was still built post-war, wasn’t it, and that’s all it needs to be…”.

And do you know what? Looking at that little trophy for the car that my mechanic pal Terry Hall and I put together between 1989-1993ish, I do feel ridiculously chuffed. Simple things please simple minds.

My wife is Scottish-born, the reason why we chose the Ecurie Ecosse livery for our fake C-Type, but that original Ault & Wyborg paint company shade of ‘Flag Metallic Blue’ has always rung my bell. I really like it, and when the sun shines, it absolutely comes alive and simply glows.

This year at our Goodwood Revival Meeting we are featuring Ecurie Ecosse and its wonderfully well-run series of ‘Flag Metallic Blue’-liveried cars, from Jaguar XK120 to D-Type, from Cooper-Bristol and Connaught to the Group C years – there is so much to recall… and absolutely not least, of course, the Edinburgh-based team’s two great Le Mans victories with the Jaguar D-Types in 1956-57.

One of the more unusual car models campaigned by Ecosse was, of course, the later rear-engined Tojeiro Coupe originally constructed by the Barkway, Royston, manufacturer for the team to tackled the 1962 Le Mans 24-Hour race. Those cars had multi-tubular space frame chassis, a rear-mounted initially Coventry Climax 4-cylinder FPF engine and curiously long-nosed bodies designed by the artist Cavendish Morton. Cavvy lived on the Isle of Wight and had already styled competition car bodies for Brian Lister, while also penning the special-bodied AC for Le Mans in 1958.

These Ecosse cars became the first British mid-engined GT coupés, pre-dating the Lola GT which we accept as being the actual tap-root of the subsequent Ford GT/GT40 programme, as it developed during 1963. While the Lola featured an American Ford V8 engine in its rear bay, the Ecosse ‘Toj’ Coupe would be re-engined by the team in search of more power. Its original Climax engine was first replaced by a lightweight 3.5-litre Buick V8, and then by a Shelby Cobra Ford unit through 1963-64. But the cars never matched the performance, nor the glamour, of the Lola GT.

Now when American mechanic/engineer/driver Allen Grant brought his amazingly unspoiled Lola-Ford GT to the recent Festival of Speed, he most generously left me with copies of a most fascinating Ford Motor Company internal report. It was compiled by British-born Ford Detroit senior engineer Roy Lunn and is entitled ‘GT and Sport Car Project Advanced Program – Issue II’. Within its 80-odd pages it traces the story of Lola-Ford GT/Ford GT initial development through the latter half of 1963.

And Goodwood features prominently as the scene of much test-driving. The report relates how “Mr Bruce McLaren was engaged as development driver in October, and Mr Eric Broadley and Mr Roy Salvadori have also participated in the test driving…” – Eric Broadley being, of course, the creator of the Lola marque, and the master mind designer of the Lola-Ford Mark 6 GT itself. 

The programme began with a test session at Brands Hatch on August 31st, 1963 with two Lola GTs present. “The No 1 car was the Chevrolet-engined John Mecom (owned) car. The No 2 car was the Cobra Fairlane (Ford V8) powered version of the same design”. The cars ran on the old Club circuit – now known as the Indy circuit – at Brands Hatch…and the driver was Eric Broadley himself, who was quite a good hand behind the steering wheel, in addition to his engineering-design accomplishments and talent.

His fastest lap time in the No 2 Ford-powered Coupe was 60.5-seconds, and after that initial foray an ‘Indianapolis’-spec Ford V8 engine was installed, and both front and rear suspensions were modified in line with Ford thinking. 

What is described as their “modified” Lola GT was then brought to Goodwood on October 9 that year. The report relates how “Goodwood is a fast 2.4-mile circuit. A vehicle such as the GT will attain maximum speeds of 150 to 160mph. The circuit combines both slow and fast corners. The present GT record held by Graham Hill in an E-Type Jaguar is 1min 28.4secs”.

The weather that day was clear, sunny, 65-degrees but the track was “wet in spots”. Eric Broadley drove again, and he reported: “In general the engine ran well and felt very strong; however, in cornering it had a very definite miss which almost certainly could be attributed to carburetion. The fact that the engine did not run well in cornering made handling somewhat difficult, in that it gave a power-on, power-off condition.

“Although the car was not cornered to the limits of its capability, it was felt to be stable and holding well.” Bruce McLaren also drove and Lunn commented: “Both drivers commented that the suspension felt a bit soft, but not necessarily to the detriment of the handling. More detailed testing of the suspension was hampered by the failure of a half-shaft”.

On October 13, 1963, the Lola-Ford was back at Goodwood when drivers were again Eric and Bruce. They returned again on October 16 by which time Hilborn fuel injection had been fitted to the V8 engine, but ambient temperature was only 45-degrees F, with “Heavy rain continuously – track wet with water standing in areas”. The drivers reported “The car feels very stable and comfortable. Feels very good in the rain. Definitely understeers (!)”.

However, in investigating oversteer on occasion in the car, a geometry check was made of the suspension, “…with the following findings: The wheelbase left side to right side was unsymmetrical by 9/16-inch. The left rear wheel had 3/16-inch toe-in while the right side had 3/8-inch toe-in and as indicated above the left-rear camber was -1 1/2-degrees, the right-rear -2 1/4-degrees. The rear suspension was then completely re-adjusted so that it was symmetrical…”.

October 21 back at Goodwood was then “damp, overcast, approximately 45-degrees F, track is wet in spots”. This time Roy Salvadori joined Bruce McLaren in the test-driving role, and both Lola’s “No 2 car and the Prototype fitted with larger disc brakes were tested…”. The No 2 car had the Hilborn-injected ‘Indy’ V8 engine, and it proved nearly impossible merely to start. Once running Bruce set fastest time at 1min 36.8sec.

And on October 24^th the team was in Italy, at Monza, for serious high-speed testing which extended over several days, with drivers McLaren, Salvadori and Eric Broadley again. The fuel injection system gave further trouble and was dropped, to be replaced by Weber carburettors, with great assistance from the Italian engineers in their Bologna factory. The drivers were agreed that “Car feels good in some corners, but feels somewhat unstable on very high-speed corners such as the Curve Grande at 145-150mph… a decided lifting of the rear end was felt over low-frequency bumps, almost to the extent that the rear shockers may be reaching the rebound stops. This rear-end lift then induces an oversteering effect…”.

And so Lola-Ford and the genesis of the Ford GT continued into 1964. Goodwood became favoured test base for the Ford Advanced Vehicles programme and slowly, painfully, the cars approached the Le Mans-winning form which Ford Detroit had thought and expected to have come so easily during that first year. It took a while for Ford’s executives to realise that motor racing at such top level was, in fact, a hard nut to crack and that toppling Ferrari from its endurance-racing pedestal would indeed take more than merely money.

Eric Broadley soon tired of working with the big corporation, and particularly of having his racing car design philosophies challenged, trimmed and clipped by Roy Lunn. He would opt out of the Ford programme and re-establish Lola Cars Ltd’s full independence, not least with the predominantly Chevrolet V8-engined Lola T70 sports-racing programme – and in effect, while Ford floundered and struggled through 1964-65 into 1966, Eric Broadley and Lola raced on independently in relative triumph. Just like Ecurie Ecosse at Le Mans in 1956 after the factory Jaguar effort had disintegrated. So let’s hear it for a bit of independence…

Photography courtesy of The GP Library