Doug Nye: Never‑before‑seen shots of Goodwood Easter Monday 1951

This time I set out to find some contemporary Goodwood negatives that we most certainly have not printed in many years. In fact, it’s perfectly possible that original photographer Geoff Goddard never ever printed them even when they were freshly processed in his under-the-stairs darkroom back home in Ealing, West London. The interesting set presented this week represents that seldom celebrated – yet so influential – class of poor man’s motor racing, the 500cc Formula 3 movement, in this case from the Goodwood Whitsun meeting in 1951. 

The category was then in only its second season of full FIA International recognition – having grown up in Britain from 1945-49 before being recognised and accepted Internationally for 1950. Now as anyone who has seen the motor-cycle-engined 500s racing in recent years as a historic class it will be plain that they might just be quite an acquired taste…

Of course, 500cc enthusiasts simply won’t hear a word against them – and quite rightly so. I am all for partisan opinion (and indeed I hold dear plenty of my own) but 500s are either the most wonderfully evocative and affordable racing cars of a genuinely historic era – or conversely they are the most irritatingly clamorous, clattering, ear-splitting, peskily irritating and unremittingly weird or downright ugly-looking heaps of agricultural old junk you have ever seen in your entire life… 

In period someone characterised the sound of a grid full of 500s taking off in a massed start as “a flock of demented woodpeckers”…and that has always stuck in my mind as being particularly apt.

But although so many of these cars might not look particularly elegant or graceful, they do absolutely reflect the make do and mend economies of the austere postwar period, in which real racers just found a way of going racing – somehow – on an absolute shoestring budget. Often down-home, basic engineering skills went into manufacturing so many 500s – falling far short of the one great factory series which ultimately dominated the category with such blanket success that it – in effect – killed the golden goose. That dominant manufacturer was, of course, the Cooper Car Company of Surbiton, Surrey, and with the demise of sometimes emergent marques such as Kieft and JBS the class eventually petered out and had virtually died from lack of support even before Italian-originated, essentially water-cooled ‘stock-block’ Formula Junior arrived on the scene in 1959-60. 

Our probably hitherto unpublished GPL photos reproduced here begin with No 59 in the Motor Circuit assembly area, with that brick built toilet block – still standing today – providing the backdrop. This shot appealed to me as much as anything for the wide variety of period clothing illustrated. I can’t identify the burly chap in that splendidly louche and ill-fitting fur-lined flying jacket but the gent in the white overalls talking to him is George Wicken – fast and determined driver of Cooper No 59 ‘C’est si Bon’ – literally ‘It’s so Good’. That was the title of a popular French song of the time, originally recorded by Jacques Hélian and his Orchestra in 1948. One particularly languorous lounge-lizard version was released by actor/singer Yves Montand – and of course, he later starred (in 1967) in MGM’s classic John Frankenheimer movie ‘Grand Prix’.

George Wicken was an unusually interesting British owner-driver. He ran the family dairy business in Maidstone, Kent, and was a teetotal, devoutly-religious member of the then fast-diminishing Jezreels sect. His cars were well-prepared and well funded, and he would go on racing, with the occasional win amongst good company right up to Formula 2 days in 1958-59, and concluding his racing career in a Jaguar E-Type come 1961. The Jezreels sect had an extraordinary tower temple in Gillingham, Kent, which had fallen into disrepair and neglect and which was demolished that same year, 1961. One of the great fascinations of motor sport is the range and variety of players one encounters. If you have an idle moment, look up ‘Jezreels Tower’ on the internet. It’s quite a startling story…

But I digress. Car No 57 in these photos is the then brand-new prototype Kieft-Norton co-designed by John A. Cooper – ex-BRM engineer who had become Technical Editor of ‘The Autocar’ – and Dean Delamont of the RAC, and built by Ray Martin with the backing of enthusiast Welsh industrialist Cyril Kieft, who had been dabbling with building 500cc F3 cars for customer sale, without making much impact. 

Moss’s special Kieft seen here began life as a notion to provide the 21-year old with a better F3 car than he could buy off the shelf, along with everybody else, from Cooper. It featured a very far-forward driving position and low-pivot swing-axle rear suspension. Its inherent understeer made it a terrific little car to drive. Stirling described it as being “… far more forgiving than the contemporary Cooper, and very, very quick”. They used a twin-overhead camshaft – ‘double-knocker’ – Norton single-cylinder engine and the little car was built in 14 weeks from scratch, and was ready just in time for Whit-Monday Goodwood, May 14^th, 1951.

On the previous day Stirling had driven for HWM at Monza in Italy, his friend and manager Ken Gregory having practised the new Kieft for him at Goodwood. Moss then caught the night train from Milan to Zurich and used two aeroplanes to get himself to Shoreham Airport on Monday where he was met by his father, Alfred, who then drove him to Goodwood. He arrived just half an hour before the Kieft’s first race “… which was a flop because we left a soft warming-up spark plug in its engine”. He finished 8^th, and only just qualified for the Final.

Eric Brandon won that first Heat for Cooper and told Stirling he didn’t think much of the younger man’s much-hyped new car. With the right grade spark plug fitted for the Final, Moss then started from row 4, was third ending lap 1 and second ending lap 2. Steaming on into Madgwick Corner, Moss recalled: “I relished every glorious moment as I was able to stuff the Kieft in there absolutely flat and drive right round the outside of Eric, gesturing to my car and mouthing across to him ‘You’re going to have to buy one of these’. His face was a picture…”

This prototype Kieft was later written-off in a multiple collision in Brussels, Belgium, and a replacement was then smashed-up in another collision at Fairwood aerodrome in Wales. Production Kiefts were never then rated as being half as good – and Moss would return to the Cooper fold. 

Another alternative approach to 500cc F3 design had been taken by the showman owner/driver Alvin ‘Spike’ Rhiando. His aeronautical-style stressed-skin monocoque Trimax emerged as a pioneer, long preceding the monocoque-pontoon Lotus 25 which Colin Chapman would introduce to Formula 1 in 1962 or the BRM P61/P261-series which more truly reflected monocoque principles in which the vehicle’s skin essentially performed all structural duties front to rear. Spike Rhiando’s Trimax emerged as a big car – having been designed with the notion of accommodating a range of alternative engine for alternative classes – and the one-off prototype’s 500cc engine was supported in a tubular subframe. But it was still a monocoque pioneer, and showman Rhiando presented it unpainted in polished aluminium, though many thought his chrome-plated wheel trims perhaps went a tad too far. Our GPL neg captures it on Easter Monday 1951 being towed sadly back to the paddock after failing out on the circuit. It had been entered there as the ‘Rhiando Rocket’. Sadly it looked more like a damp squib. On extension tow behind it is No 20, Norman Pugh’s equally luckless Cooper-Norton. 

And then there’s a shot I couldn’t resist, one of my favourite front-engined hybrid cars which we displayed for years in the Donington Collection, right back from 1971-72 when Denis Jenkinson and I helped Tom Wheatcroft put the museum together. It’s Easter Monday, 1951, again, and here’s Prince ‘Bira’ in his old originally 1 1/2-litre supercharged 4-cylinder engined Maserati 4CLT – by this time freshly re-engined with the Maserati brothers’ latest un-supercharged 4.5-litre V12-cylinder power unit. Entered as the OSCA V12, the sparkling car carried little ‘Bira’ triumphantly to the chequered flag, winning the 12-lap Richmond Trophy feature race for Formula 1 cars and setting fastest lap at 1min 35.6secs, 90.38mph. Although the new V12 engine was a great big lump, it was remarkably shallow and sat strikingly low within the Maserati’s engine bay. Finished in ‘Bira’s Siamese colours of sky-blue and bright yellow the car always looked the business – and its engine was 4 1/2 times bigger than all those F3 tiddlers.

Sitting in the OSCA, therefore, one could always feel, somehow, rather grand…

In contrast, I have always felt that’s a rather unlikely sensation for anyone sitting in a 'demented woodpecker’ 500…but what wonderful racing these little machines could provide, and what Historic significance they hold as a tremendous schoolroom class for drivers and engineers alike…

Photography courtesy of The GP Library