Mark 1
• A lost car came to light last year. Lola Heritage had a request from a Ken Folger of Burlington, IA for help restoring a Mark 1 that he had owned since 1966 and not used for 38 years! Gerald passed on the request to me and with a bit of detective work it became clear the car Ken owned was BR-16. BR-16 was sold originally to Canada for R M Hollinghead/ Whiz Car Care Products and driven in 1960 by Boris Janda and quite successfully in 1961 by Frank Bradley. Ross de St Croix of Montreal acquired the car in 1962 but had a big accident at the Canadian GP at Mosport as a result of contact with a Chaparral. The car was rechassied with a new frame from Lola Cars and then passed to Paul Muir before Ken. The original chassis plate got separated from the car after the Mosport rebuild, but that is another story......
• Cap Chenoweth only ran BR-4 once at the Rolex Lime Rock meeting. However, although just having to give best to a larger engined Lotus 11, most satisfying was almost lapping a Lister-Chev that for years had blocked him.
• Several cars changed hands in 2006. In the US, Greg Galdi bought BR-1 and Steven Clark took Bluebelle Gibb's old car BR-31 from Germany to Canada. John Monson had long been looking for a Mark 1 to add to his collection and managed to prize BR-27B from the owner who had had it since 1970. BR-27B had a very chequered history (including reputedly being crashed into Kelly's Pub at Dunboyne!) and I was able to put John in contact with Mike Fraser who rebuilt this, and several other Mark 1s, in period. The car is being restored by Don Haldenby.
I understand that the late Charlie Gibson's car BR-30 has been sold to a new owner in the US. So far my attempts to find out who this is have failed and I would be most grateful if anyone reading this could put me in contact with him/her. (dpratley@aol.com)
Also, a further mystery. I note from the January 'Motor Sport' that at the Tasman Revival Meeting at Eastern Creek, Sydney a "Keith Simpson in a Lola Mark 1 had some tremendous battles..." Is this the Penrite car or the Thompson Special or some car I do not know about? Again, most grateful for any information on dpratley@aol.com.
• I hear on the street that the 2007 Goodwood Revival will include a race for small front engined sports racing cars. Mark 1s against Lotus 11 and 17, Elvas, Cooper T39 Bobtails........should be great. It would fantastic to reproduce the 1-2-3 result in the Easter 1959 Chichester Cup, although it will be tough as most of the opposition now run 1500s which they never did in period.
Mark 2
• Congratulations to John Truslove who won the Formula Junior Championship in the UK in 2006. More below, but this is probably an ex-Fitzwilliam car.
• There were 20 Mark 2s built which may, or may not, include the prototype. The Fitzwilliam team ran a quasi-works team of Juniors in 1960. They had three cars nominally BRJ-1, 2, 3 and unusually, because these cars ran mostly on the Continent, they had chassis plates. However at least two cars were sold mid season but the original chassis numbers were retained for the replacement cars. Plus there are tales of the odd car being written off. One of these recently came to light in an article on Swiss driver, Michael May. 'I was invited to test one of the Fitzwilliam team cars at Goodwood. It was still front-engined but I immediately realised that suspensionwise it was another world. Within a few laps I beat the lap record set by this car, which probably made me a bit overconfident. As soon as rain began to fall I went off and virtually destroyed it'. Hence, at the moment we have at least five and possibly six cars out there all claiming to be ex-Fitzwilliam!
• One car you may have seen recently at last years Historic Racing car show and in Keith Roach's recent adverts is Ian Robinson's ex-Winkleman car. Keith has built a beautiful polished aluminium body for the car. Ian has had the car since 2000 but expect to see it out next year.
• Amazingly, for such a small production run, two 'lost' cars have emerged in the last two years. A car was found in Germany which (yes really) was a Fitzwilliam BRJ-1. This went to Roger Herrick in New Zealand and is now being rebuilt.
Again a request to Heritage from France to know more about the history of a car ended up with me. This came from Andre Barthelemy who bought the car from John Harper in 1971. I contacted John, but unfortunately he does not remember the car so we got no further on the early history. Andre, however, is Patrick Bartelemy's uncle: Patrick owns Mark 1 BRJ-24.
Mark 3
• Stefan Krinkler unfortunately crashed his car at Solitude a couple of years ago and, last time I heard, is with Chris Fox for a rebuild. This may be BRJ-39, although Duncan Rabagliati believes this was written off in Malaysia. However, Stefan also owns the ex Dennis Taylor car BRJ-36 which languished in Germany for many years.
• BRJ-35, one of the two works cars driven by Dick Prior and John Hine, spent many years in Australia with Gary Ryan but is now back in the UK with Richard Parkin.
• One of the lost Mark 3s is the other works car BRJ-34 which initially went to Nilsson in Canada. Someone suggested this year that the chassis was rebuilt as a Fishetti, but I have doubts.....
• BRJ-37 spent all its life in Sweden, in later years with a Saab V4 engine. Goran Anderberg has now completed the considerable rebuild and the car is for sale.
David Pratley
