Shadow, in contrast, stuck around, becoming ever more orthodox after the fiasco of its tiny-tyred Mk1. This hideously augmented big-block go-kart, with a 25/75 weight split and so low that it was said to be 2D, would not have looked out of place emerging from Thunderbird cargo bay.
‘Good’ for 250mph, its brave pilot George Follmer, legs spread uncomfortably, crotch straps done tight, reckoned 196mph to be quite fast enough – “It went down the straight like a raped ape” – as those Firestone booties stubbed on every imperfection and transmitted them shockingly via stiff friction damping.
Elford also drove it. And parked it.
Madder yet was the Mac’s-it Special, whose quartet of unsynchronised two-stroke twins, one at each corner, was ‘connected’ via centrifugal clutches and variable belt pulleys. A DAF idea, this shift-less 4WD machine never raced.
BRM, Lola and March followed more conventional paths, as did designer Peter Bryant’s Ti22 (for titanium), and occasionally put the squeeze on McLaren. But even Stewart, who won twice during 1971 in Lola’s bluff-nosed T260 – a bit of a pig despite the addition of a cowcatcher front wing – couldn’t upset the orange cart entirely.