Cars appearing at F1 races but not in GP

Cars appearing at Formula 1 races but not in GP

1950 - 1953
Allard J2
AJB
BMW
HW
MG
Riley
RRA
SVA
Healey
JP
Lea Francis
Alvis
Ardun
BJS
Buick
Ford
Hudson
Mercury
Ockelbo
Rover
TM
BL
HAR
Kaiser

who was designer, built the car, classe, sponsorship ......team ?

Originally posted by ettiwed
Cars appearing at Formula 1 races but not in GP
AJB
BMW
RRA
Ardun
Rover
HAR

(1) the AJB was Archie Butterworth's rather lethal Jeep-Steyr special with his own 4wd transmission. It's been discussed quite a lot here.

(2) BMW - a lot of "Eigenbau-BMWs" in German in the early 50s - basically 328-based F2 specials.

(3) RRA - Geoff Richardson's special - started off as a Riley, and had various engines through its long career including Riley, ERA and I think ended up with an Aston Martin in it. I think this is one of those cars that had several chassis, several bodies and several engines - difficult to tell whether there was one "entity" or many!

(4) Ardun - I assume this is Zora Arkus-Duntov's car - no idea where it ran!

(5) Rover - Spen King (better known for being chief engineer at Triumph later on) and Peter Wilks (son of the owning family) did a rather agricultural F2 based on Rover 75 parts (not the current Rover 75 - although they don't look that different!) that had a small amount of official support. It had a couple of other owners and changes of name, IIRC, then Frank Lockhart eventually got hold of it and has had it for something like 50 years, and still competes with it.

(6) HAR - Horace Richards' Riley-engined F2 special. Bertie Bradnack also had an HAR-Bristol for a while before he became involved with Coopers.

The HW-Alta was a dual-purpose F2/sports car, built by Hersham & Walton Motors, later known as HWM. It ran in a couple of minor F1 races.

The Ardun, TM, BJS, BL, Ockelbo, Buick, Hudson, Ford, Mercury and Kaiser are all Scandinavian specials - for the sake of completeness Paul Sheldon included a number of Finnish and Swedish national races in his data for the early 50s, but only because the local rules happened to coincide with the then F1 regulations. The Allard J2 (a sports car) also falls in here.

The Lea-Francis and Healey are sports cars which ran in the nominally F1 Scottish GP in 1951 - a very minor race in which even a couple of Jaguar XK120s competed. The standard of the race can be judged by the fact that the second-place car was a more or less standard BMW 328.

The SVA was an obscure one-off with a s/c Fiat engine which retired on the first lap of its only GP appearance at San Remo in 1950.

Bobbie Baird ran his R-type MG in the 1950 Ulster Trophy - a stripped sports car? A couple of MGs also ran in the 1950 Nottingham Trophy at Gamston too: another VERY minor race!

Originally posted by Vitesse2
The HW-Alta was ......built by Hersham & Walton Motors

Speaking with my pedantic hat on, can we nail this myth once and for all?
A number of respected publications state the cars were built by Hersham and Walton Motors. They weren't. They were built by HW Motors, so named because it served the towns of Hersham and Walton. The company may have started trading under the longer name, but by its car-building days it was HW Motors

Also, the R-Type MG was not a sportscar. It was a single-seater, built for racing in the 750cc class

I might be wrong David, but I'm pretty sure it still said Hersham & Walton Motors over the door in the mid-70s. But hey, let's not start an argument ...... And the sports car reference on the MG was just laziness .....

I'm mainly going on their magazine advertisements of the late '40s and early '50s, and also on the fact that, AFAIK, there was never any suggestion at that time that the company was Hersham & Walton Motors (as distinct from it having formerly been Hersham & Walton Motors).
Any period evidence of the company operating under the long title would convince me I'm wrong...

Has anyone any more information about these Scandianavian specials?

It would seem that Valdemar Sterner's "BL Special" may be the same car as Bertil Lundberg's "BKL BMW", as mentioned in uechtel's 8W articles on BMW specials, but now fitted with an engine from a Ferrari 166MM.

see http://www.barchetta...0014M.166MM.htm

No response on the Scandinavian specials yet. What of the British ones?

I'm having difficulty getting my head round the concept of a Jaguar XK120 as a F1 car!

These 'minor club events' of the early 1950s, though only slightly before my time, are completely unknown to me. It seems we are talking about a mere handful of events at Gamston and in Scotland - or were there many more of which details remain to be unearthed? And if there were merely a handful, why did these particular events bill themselves as F1? Was it simply a case of self-aggrandisement (this would possibly seem to be true of the 'Scottish Grand Prix'); were they hoping to stage a 'real' F1 race, but received so few entries that they allowed sports cars in to make up the numbers; or, on the contrary, did they surprise themselves by managing to attract a few F1 'stars', so staged a race rather than turn them away?

And what of the cars? We know, of course, of several sports cars which raced in major F1 events, even up to WC level - Porsches appeared frequently, and in S Africa there was the famous example of Brausch Neimann's Lotus 7. But what is known about these XK120s, Allards etc.? Were they raced exactly as they appeared in sports car events, or were they modified in any way? And was the formula of the time based solely on engine capacity and nothing else, or could my Morris Minor have been a F1 car? (I'm wondering whether, given the occasional dalliance with streamlining in F1, whether anyone ever thought that an enclosed, GT style body might have been a good idea, and whether anyone actually tried it).

Does anyone have any more details about these F1 events, or pictures of any of the sports cars involved?

Originally posted by roger_valentine
(I'm wondering whether, given the occasional dalliance with streamlining in F1, whether anyone ever thought that an enclosed, GT style body might have been a good idea, and whether anyone actually tried it).

Does the bubble top tried by Vanwall at Monza count as a GT?

Just a point of clarification. I don't believe Bobbie Baird ran his R-Type at 1950 Ulster Trophy. He did not own one at that time having sold RA0259 to Watson in mid 1936. Further the owner of RA0259 was Geoff McRae at this time (1950) and I have no record of he competing there either. Can anyone site a reference?

HWM I am sure I had a Dinkey Toys model of this car in the late 1950 s

Originally posted by rdmotorsport
HWM I am sure I had a Dinkey Toys model of this car in the late 1950 s

Me too -pale green,along with Cooper-Bristol-dark green,Ferrarii -blue & yellow,Maserati A6GCS-red & white(swiss) Alfa Romeo 159 -red.Talbot-Lago-pale blue.

Originally posted by RA0259
Just a point of clarification. I don't believe Bobbie Baird ran his R-Type at 1950 Ulster Trophy. He did not own one at that time having sold RA0259 to Watson in mid 1936. Further the owner of RA0259 was Geoff McRae at this time (1950) and I have no record of he competing there either. Can anyone site a reference?

On further reflection, it was most likely K3028, which Baird probably still owned at the time.

Paging Squire Straker ....

Originally posted by Rob29
Me too -pale green,along with Cooper-Bristol-dark green,Ferrarii -blue & yellow,Maserati A6GCS-red & white(swiss) Alfa Romeo 159 -red.Talbot-Lago-pale blue.

There was a picture of what looked like an absolutely mint set of these in the Financial Times 'How to Spend It' magazine last weekend ....

Originally posted by David McKinney

Speaking with my pedantic hat on, can we nail this myth once and for all?
A number of respected publications state the cars were built by Hersham and Walton Motors. They weren't. They were built by HW Motors, so named because it served the towns of Hersham and Walton. The company may have started trading under the longer name, but by its car-building days it was HW Motors

At one time didn't HW Motors stand for Half Way Motors as the garage was halfway between the two towns?