This Fafnir Hall-Scott Special makes the ground shake
Anyone who saw a Fafnir racing in its heyday of 1908 to 1926 would not recognise the ground-trembling thunder of Guy Lachlin’s Fafnir Hall-Scott Special. Back then, Fafnir had a team of up to seven racing cars, each using supercharged four-cylinder engines. This car has a 10.0-litre Hall-Scott aero engine, so you don't just hear it coming. You feel it, too.
At its peak, Fafnir had a range of six different models and was where multiple-pre-1950s Grand Prix champion Rudy Caracciola had his first works drive. But, like many things in Germany in the 1920s, rampant inflation brought things to a halt and the factory closed in 1926. It appears that records of how many Fafnirs had been built during the company’s life have been lost, and now just a handful survive worldwide.
The chassis that formed the basis of this car was found in New Zealand, and the build to the specification it's in now took place in the UK by renowned pre-war racing car builder Oliver Way. Owner Guy Lachlan swapped it for another car with a friend of his three years ago and has been competing with it ever since. “I knew nothing about Fafnir before buying the car, I only knew this one. Now I know quite a bit about how many are left and where they are. There are only about five left in the world,” says Guy.
“All the racing Fafnirs had these funny faces and pointy hats rather than radiator caps, and nobody really knows why. It’s not a brilliant thing because it keeps the car from keeping cool properly but it makes it an appealing car to recreate because it’s so distinctive.” You wouldn’t mistake this car for anything else on the S.F. Edge Trophy grid, that's for sure.
Guy had an invitation to the S.F. Edge Trophy when he first had the car, but found the thought of tackling Goodwood among a field of other aero engined cars intimidating as a first outing. “I didn’t dare do it, so I turned down the invitation,” he says. Since then, he has had time to get accustomed to the car in VSCC hillclimbs and the club’s one annual race for this class of car.
When he first bought the car, he couldn’t use the brake pedal as his leg was too long to fit between the steering column and pedal. For the first season, he used the handbrake rather than the footbrake – which is just as efficient, these things being relative. “It was good while getting used to centre throttle – I was terrified I was going to hit the throttle by mistake, so it was a good way to avoid that happening,” he says. The brake pedal has now been modified to fit him and the brakes adjusted so they now “actually work a bit”.
And brakes that work a bit – albeit only on the rear wheels – are handy when you have a 10.0-litre engine to reign in. Power is actually modest at around 100bhp, but there’s 480lb ft of torque and it’s available at pretty much any engine speed. That said, it only revs to 1,800rpm which in top gear (fourth) is good for 100mph. It also has four reverse gears…
Guy had just returned from practice when we spoke to him, while the Fafnir gently cooled and steamed next to us. He reported that the car was going well. “I’ve changed the geometry of the front end so the handling very different to how it was before and I think quite a lot better. Because I only come here infrequently, it’s difficult to remember exactly how it felt last time.”
No matter how well it goes round corners, there’s no doubting that the ground-shaking Fafnir is nothing short of a highly dramatic spectacle. The only way it could be more dramatic is if Guy completed the race using the four reverse gears...
Images by Jochen Van Cauwenberge, Joe Harding, Paul Melbert and Janet Shaxson.