V16 BRM reprised by Jackiew Strewrt at Oulton Park in the 1970s.(Photo Eric Dymock)
“FOUR YEARS —18 MEN, £160,000, MUCH OF IT IN HALF-CROWNS, WENT TO BUILD A CAR THAT WOULD NOT START. British Racing Motors never got over the stark Sunday Pictorial. The thrilling supercharged sixteen-cylinder masterpiece failed on a Silverstone starting grid. It was utter ignominy. Yet three years later, at the first motor race I ever attended, I saw one win.
Efectively two V8s in tandem, 1.5 litres supercharged. (Photo Eric Dymock, Goodwood 1990s)
Like Auric Goldfinger “buying” Royal St George’s where he played against James Bond, Donald Trump liked golf so much, he bought Turnberry. The Ailsa Course par 4 Ninth by the picturesque 1873 lighthouse, is so close to the Atlantic golfers walk along a narrow ledge above the surf. But when Trump bought Turnberry it still had the ashes of an old airfield. A flat foreshore with fresh sea breezes made an ideal flying field, fog was almost unknown, so in the First World War the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) took it over. Golf championships, tourism and hospitality in the languorous hotel returned right up to 1939, when the Royal Air Force came back. Heavier aircraft needed long hard runways, six inches of concrete and acres of hard-standing were laid, Bristol Beaufort aircrew trained for torpedo-dropping.
Turnberry grid. BRMs in the middle of the front row, Hawthorn’s Thinwall Special on pole, Flockhart’s ERA No 48. (Photo from the collection of the late Bill Henderson, Autosport Scopttish correspondent)
Post-1945 British car enthusiasts were tempted by empty runways and perimeter tracks at disused airfields. They ran races at Castle Combe, Boreham, Snetterton and Silverstone. Scotland’s turn came with Winfield and Charterhall, in Aberdeen Crimond and Ayrshire Turnberry. The Firth of Clyde, with the great sentinel of Ailsa Craig two miles round, a sheer 1,114 feet above the white-capped waves made a great backdrop. The Scottish Sporting Car Club organised motor racing on a short flat course of old runway and a bit of link road. Its second event of August 1953 had front-rank racing, Mike Hawthorn on pole (see above) seemed a likely winner in Tony Vandervell’s Ferrari Thinwall Special. Two V16 BRMs made exciting noises, superchargers wailed, sixteen tiny cylinders shrieked although, alas, to not much avail. Reg Parnell was a second and a half a lap slower than Hawthorn.
A keen 12-year-old in 1946, I wrote offering support to BRM Trust Donald McCullough (1901-1978). He replied politely, sent a brochure, but by the time I paid admission to the Red Enclosure at Turnberry I was disillusioned. The over-publicised co-operative enterprise led by Raymond Mays was in decline. The famous failure at Silverstone was due to the wrong sort of steel in the drive shafts. French veteran Raymond Sommer, blameless, was pilloried and died the same year in a 500cc Cooper. Defenders said the BRM had been over publicised (true) and no car should be expected to do well on its first appearance (less true). Mays said: “We had been rushed into appearing before we were ready . . . and the public never really regained their faith in the BRM.”
Motor Sport was scathing. “After the fearful debacle at Silverstone and Boreham, some boost for BRM personnel was badly needed. Intelligent spectators realised Turnberry was not providing it.” We watched as the cars lined up on the starting grid. Mechanics fussed round Parnell’s BRM and tall blond Hawthorn got out of the Thinwall and strolled over. Anthony Cyril Rudd (1923-2005) was loaned to BRM by Rolls-Royce to work on the V16’s supercharger. Later team manager, the great articulate engineer I came to know well told me, Hawthorn said, “Take your time, they won't start without us.” Parnell waited while they fixed a broken fuel-line. Screwing up a couple of Jubilee clips they were brave amateurs aspiring to be professionals.
AC Rudd moved to Lotus following a distionguished career with BRM. (photo Eric Dymock, Hethel)
Hawthorn’s sporting gesture brought scant reward. Racing cars of the 1950s were brittle. The Thinwall transmission broke and Parnell won after battling Ron Flockhart's ERA R4D, an acknowledgement that a 20-year-old English Upright racing car was almost a match for the magnificently complex BRM. A crowd of 50,000 vaulted the scanty guard rails to cheer, ironically just before a crestfallen BRM Trust put itself up for sale or, as Motor Sport wrote, “Threw in the towel.” Still, the 50,000 and I had together witnessed a footnote in motor racing history. https://dovepublishing.co.uk/titles
JIM CLARK: Tribute to a Champion by Eric Dymock
MG Classics by Eric Dymock. Model by Model, Books 1, 2 and 3