Aston Martin DP155 shown at Wiscombe Park hillclimb today
#1
Posted 11 May 2008 - 22:31
Advertisement
#2
Posted 12 May 2008 - 11:19
RL
#3
Posted 12 May 2008 - 12:51
http://forums.autosp...519#post2401519
#4
Posted 12 May 2008 - 14:08
RL
#5
Posted 12 May 2008 - 14:13
My understanding was that the single-seater Aston Martin was turned into a DB3S sportscar after Geoff Richardson had finished with it.
#6
Posted 13 May 2008 - 11:47
#7
Posted 13 May 2008 - 12:54
#8
Posted 14 May 2008 - 19:53
Roger Lund.
#9
Posted 15 May 2008 - 08:58
#11
Posted 15 May 2008 - 12:55
#12
Posted 15 May 2008 - 13:53
I have been trying to contact Bob but I have a terrible feeling I am just too late, will keep trying as he probably has/had a host of photos stashed away. He was in business with (among other enterprises) Ken Yeates in a company specialising in Sports Racing Cars of a certain age, so there was probably more than one DB3S.
John
#13
Posted 16 May 2008 - 10:42
#14
Posted 16 May 2008 - 10:44
#15
Posted 16 May 2008 - 10:53
Roger Lund
#16
Posted 16 May 2008 - 11:56
It doesn't look much like HWM suspension either, but I have only the photos in Doug Nye's "Powered by Jaguar" as reference for the moment, so can't be quite sure.
That forged front wishbone looks as if it came from a less specialist car, but I can't say what.
The gearbox looks more like one off a Jaguar than an Aston.
#17
Posted 16 May 2008 - 14:20
Originally posted by Allan Lupton
The gearbox looks more like one off a Jaguar than an Aston.
Could the gearbox be a Maserati one like on the DBR4?
#18
Posted 16 May 2008 - 16:36
Originally posted by Gregor Marshall
Could the gearbox be a Maserati one like on the DBR4?
That one is a transaxle job, so quite different.
#19
Posted 19 May 2008 - 09:35
"DP 155 - First post-war Grand Prix car. Single seat body on DB3S chassis. Intended to have a 2493cc engine (DP155/1), but fitted with a 3-litre. See Specials (131-DB135) for more info.
Results -
1956 Ardmore 200 GP (Parnell - practised only)
Lady Wigram Trophy (Parnell - 4th)
Dunedin 75 Miles (Parnell - 2nd)
Southern Centennial Invercargill (Parnell - 3rd)
131-DB135 UUY 504
Built be Geoffrey Richardson as RRA Special, with chassis from DB3S single-seater (see DP 155), modified body from DB3S/105 and 3.4 Jaguar engine, disc brakes and coil springs. Raced in Club events in 1962 and at Curborough 1972.
1973 rebuilt by Ricky Bell with twin-plug Aston Martin engine and body restored to DB3S shape."
Advertisement
#20
Posted 19 May 2008 - 15:22
To go off thread, how many RRAs were there? I remember the ERA engined version but whar else.
#21
Posted 19 May 2008 - 17:06
The question has been discussed before, eg:Originally posted by Sharman
To go off thread, how many RRAs were there? I remember the ERA engined version but whar else.
http://forums.autosp...3&highlight=rra
#22
Posted 20 May 2008 - 09:56
"Development of the sports cars had absorbed all the resources of the small competition department, delaying the realisation of David Brown's wish to compete in Grand Prix racing. Following the annoncement that Formula 1 would be for 2.5 litre cars (unsupercharged) from 1954, work on another 2.5 litre car was started in the autumn of 1953. This car, DP155, was to have a 2493cc (83 by 76.8mm) experimental prototype Grand Prix version of the DB3S engine (DP155/1, as used in DB3S/5 at Oulton Park in 1955 and 1956) in a DB3s chassis with a single-seat body. However by the time this car was completed in 1955 it was fitted with a 3 litre engine and was raced only in New Zealand."
#23
Posted 20 May 2008 - 10:20
There seems very little enthusiasm for the idea that it might be a 1949 HW-Alta or 1950 HWM offset chassis with an Aston Martin engine or a Jaguar engine for thet matter.
So, what is it?
#24
Posted 27 May 2008 - 09:50
Originally posted by Sharman
So can we rule out any connetions between DB3S/10 and DB3S/101 which Dutchy seems to be bent on establishing as Bob assures me that those were the only two DB3Ss he had, nether of which were blue?
To go off thread, how many RRAs were there? I remember the ERA engined version but whar else.
I wasn't trying to do that at all.
DB3Ss 10 and 101 are cars with known histories.
I was at that AMOC meeting at Castle Coombe in 1974 and remember the car. If Bob Owen says it wasn't his then I'm not in any position to argue otherwise but I distinctly recall the commentator saying the metallic blue DB3S lookalike was the former RRA Special
#25
Posted 27 May 2008 - 10:06
I'll write to Bob and see if he can throw any light on that. he seems to have everything he has done filed so perhaps he can pinpoint which car it was at Wiscombe and who it belonged to
John
#26
Posted 27 May 2008 - 10:18
Originally posted by D-Type
There seems very little enthusiasm for the idea that it might be a 1949 HW-Alta or 1950 HWM offset chassis with an Aston Martin engine or a Jaguar engine for thet matter.
Presumably an Aston engine, as the exhaust is on the o/s
The only photo of the HWM front suspension I can find has a different style of forged upper wishbone
and I can't find an equivalent HW-Alta photo
#27
Posted 27 May 2008 - 10:22
Incidentally the 2.5 litre GP engine fitted to the DBR4 had the exhaust on the n/s - obviously totally irrelevant in this instance!
#28
Posted 27 May 2008 - 10:33
Yes and no - n/s one year, o/s the other (can't now remember which way around)Originally posted by Dutchy
Incidentally the 2.5 litre GP engine fitted to the DBR4 had the exhaust on the n/s
#29
Posted 27 May 2008 - 12:42
#30
Posted 29 May 2008 - 16:51
Number one: this car is not an HWM, and has nothing to do with any HWM as far as I am aware. There were mutters about it having some HWM ancestry when it came up at the Goodwood Bonhams auction, and various HWM people looked at it and recognised no part of the chassis.
Number two: It does use the Aston Martin Tasman single-seater body. The recently sadly departed Geoff Richardson, of RRA fame, bought the single-seater Aston in the late 1950s, and because he thought the Aston engine was under-powered he replaced it with a 2.4-litre Jaguar engine (wanting to remain within the 2500cc F1 capacity limit). Autosport published a picture of him racing the car in this form at Snetterton, by which time he was calling the car an RRA. He subsequently converted it into a two-seater, I believe with a somewhat DB3S-like body. In order to make somebody lots of money, it may more recently have metamorphosed into something approximating to a proper DB3S - I am sure an Aston expert (which I am certainly not) can tell us.
Number three: Having converted the Tasman Aston to a Jaguar-powered two-seater, Geoff sold the single-seater body, and I believe this body found its way to Ireland. Maybe Geoff sold the Aston engine with the body, in which case that may be the source of the engine in this car: an engine number check may help here, because I believe the number of the Tasman single-seater's engine was noted in Aston factory records.
Number four: the apochryphal HWM connection with this car may have come about because there was a 1950 HWM which disappeared into Ireland. In 1950 HWM built four offset cockpit F2 cars: the three works cars (of which my Stovebolt Special is one, Terry Grainger's ex-Oscar Moore Jaguar-engined car is another, and the third was rebuilt into correct Alta-engined form and is now with a collector in Gloucestershire). The fourth car was a customer car built for Alistair Baring. It was sold at the end of 1950 to John Brown in Scotland, and ended up with Ray Fielding at his garage in Forres. Ray subsequently removed the body and put it on a Jaguar-powered Alta, the car later registered ND 4040 when it belonged to Nestor Douglas.
The ex-Baring, ex-Brown 1950 HWM was rebodied by Feilding with a Rochdale fibreglass shell - the one with the same shape as the Connaught sports-racers of the day - and, still with its 2-litre Alta engine, later found its way to Ireland. The car was raced in this form in Ireland but has since disappeared. An Irish historian who I believe posts on here from time to time very kindly sent me a picture of the car at a Northern Ireland airfield circuit in the early 1960s.
It may be that this fourth 1950 HWM was crashed or dismantled or chopped up, because I have not been able to find any trace of it since those early 1960s club races. But maybe - just maybe - the owner replaced it with a new special, with a chassis built in Ireland, and used the ex-Richardson Aston Martin body and maybe also an ex-Richardson Aston engine. The HWM chassis would have had transverse leaf suspension front and rear. I have looked at this Aston-bodied car and the chassis is absolutely not like that.
Having gone on at length and sent you all to sleep, can any Irish historians throw any more light on what really did happen to that Rochdale-bodied, Alta-engined 1950 HWM? It would be great to know if its remains are in a cowshed somewhere.....If you have any clues, or ever saw this car racing in Ireland about 45 years ago, please get in touch.
#31
Posted 30 May 2008 - 08:15
#32
Posted 30 May 2008 - 09:32
Originally posted by Catalina Park
Tasman?
One day they'll understand...
I wonder if we'll live to see it?
#33
Posted 30 May 2008 - 10:41
#34
Posted 30 May 2008 - 11:31
Except South African and South American racing.Originally posted by Catalina Park
How can you trust any historians accuracy if they lump any race in the Southern Hemisphere under the name Tasman.
The trouble is that 'Tasman' is such a convenient shorthand for the generic Australia - New Zealand racing scene. It was even used journalistically before the advent of the Tasman Championship. What could you use instead? 'Australia / New Zealand' is horribly long winded; 'antipodean' is a very British usage and isn't accurate anyway as it's only approximately true for NZ and Iberia or Australia and west or north west Africa; as I pointed out above 'Southern Hemisphere' also includes southern Africa and South America; and the geographic description 'Three largest islands in Oceania', or if Oceania includes Papua New Guinea is then 'Three largest Islands in Oceania, excluding Papua New Guinea' is impractical.
OK, so Wellington is about as far from Melbourne as London is from Istanbul and Australia and New Zealand are as different froom each other as Britain and Turkey even if they do speak similar English dialects.
So what would you like us to use?
#35
Posted 30 May 2008 - 11:46
I'm assuming it's the Lex Davison car, which raced in Australia (almost exclusively). So why not refer to it as
'the Davison car'? Which had a 3-litre engine, I seem to recall.
If it's an Australian matter, refer to it as such. If it's a New Zealand matter, then 'Kiwi' would probably do. For the most part, Australian and New Zealand racing were just as far apart as Australian and South African racing... and New Zealand and English racing. The only thing that was 'Tasman' was the International series that loosely began in 1961 and was formalised in 1964.
#36
Posted 30 May 2008 - 12:00
Originally posted by Ray Bell
To answer that, we'd have to know which car you're talking about...
I'm assuming it's the Lex Davison car, which raced in Australia (almost exclusively). So why not refer to it as
'the Davison car'? Which had a 3-litre engine, I seem to recall.
If it's an Australian matter, refer to it as such. If it's a New Zealand matter, then 'Kiwi' would probably do. For the most part, Australian and New Zealand racing were just as far apart as Australian and South African racing... and New Zealand and English racing. The only thing that was 'Tasman' was the International series that loosely began in 1961 and was formalised in 1964.
The Lex Davison car you refer to was a 1959 DBR4 GP car - clearly NOT what we are discussing on this thread
#37
Posted 30 May 2008 - 12:28
The notice on the car (in the photo above) claims an origin in the car used by Reg Parnell in the (if I may use the term) Tasman races. The same notice, so far as I can read it at that resolution, seems to elaborate on the history of DP155 as it must have been, rather than the car that is there now with that "number".
It has changed a bit in the last two years, as the 2006 photo shows, gaining wire wheels, a different exhaust system and some bodywork tidying at least. If that body really was once the Parnell car, it must have been greatly changed to become the offset-seat low-line shape it is, rather than the high centre-seat job it once was.
It should be possible for someone to identify that front upper wishbone and the quite distinctive rear suspension, but I doubt if they would prove to be from the same make/model of car, let alone from any make that has been referred to in this thread.
#38
Posted 30 May 2008 - 13:16
Ray, the car that Reg Parnell took the the 1956 New Zealand Grand Prix of course had absolutely nothing whatever to do with Lex Davison's DBR4. We are talking about DP155, the experimental factory single-seater which used a narrowed/adapted DB3S chassis and came long before any of the DBR4s. Chassis number was DP155/1 and the engine was 83mm x 76.8mm, 2493cc.
Parnell blew the engine during the second day's practice at Ardmore and failed to start. (He took over Peter Whitehead's Cooper-Jaguar in the race and finished fifth.) Another engine was found for the Wigram Trophy at Christchurch, and Parnell finished fourth a long way behind the Ferraris of Whitehead and Gaze and Leslie Marr's Jaguar-engined aerodynamic Connaught. A week later Parnell managed second place to Gaze round the houses at Dunedin. I haven't been able to trace any further activity, and gather the car came home and sat unloved in a corner at Feltham until Geoff Richardson bought it.
The body was obviously much altered before it was fitted to this mystery chassis, but from the few pictures published of it, in Parnell's hands in New Zealand and in Richardson's hands as the RRA, the nose at least is identical.
But, as Allan says, we are no nearer knowing what the chassis actually is. The body sits much lower, because DP155 had the driver sitting atop the propshaft and this is offset. Where are the Irish experts to help us?
#39
Posted 30 May 2008 - 13:39
I've heard this said before, but have yet to find any example. Can you give an example, D?Originally posted by D-Type
The trouble is that 'Tasman' is such a convenient shorthand for the generic Australia - New Zealand racing scene. It was even used journalistically before the advent of the Tasman Championship
Nothing wrong with 'Australasia'What could you use instead?
In fact the question is totally irrelevant to the car in question, which was built for a series of races in New Zealand
Advertisement
#40
Posted 31 May 2008 - 07:49
I have seen the Tasman name used to describe cars that raced in South Africa and not in Australia and New Zealand. I don't know how this can be explained but quite clearly the word Tasman is way over used (mainly by poms) Sometime is is just misuse but other times it is in a deliberate attempt to fabricate a false car history.Originally posted by D-Type
Except South African and South American racing.
The trouble is that 'Tasman' is such a convenient shorthand for the generic Australia - New Zealand racing scene. It was even used journalistically before the advent of the Tasman Championship. What could you use instead? 'Australia / New Zealand' is horribly long winded; 'antipodean' is a very British usage and isn't accurate anyway as it's only approximately true for NZ and Iberia or Australia and west or north west Africa; as I pointed out above 'Southern Hemisphere' also includes southern Africa and South America; and the geographic description 'Three largest islands in Oceania', or if Oceania includes Papua New Guinea is then 'Three largest Islands in Oceania, excluding Papua New Guinea' is impractical.
OK, so Wellington is about as far from Melbourne as London is from Istanbul and Australia and New Zealand are as different froom each other as Britain and Turkey even if they do speak similar English dialects.
So what would you like us to use?
I would like to see some evidence of the Tasman name being used to describe down under races before the Tasman Cup started.
Next we will be seeing some Tasman 250Fs.
#41
Posted 20 August 2008 - 19:41
PROVENANCE: The original DP155 - conceived in 1953 - the 2 1/2-litre single-seat Formule Libre special constructed for team driver Reg Parnell's eventual use in New Zealand, Jan/Feb 1956. Works mechanics John King and Richard Green were amongst those who built it.
Sold after brief use by Parnell to Geoff Richardson - equipped with Jaguar engine to form a new RRA ('Richardson Racing Automobile') -
In 1957 bought from Richardson by David Gossage on the condition that Geoff Richardson converted it into a sports car. Geoff fitted the body from DB3S chassis '105' then owned by Lord O'Neill. He also modified the front end of the body and restyled it with a simple oval radiator air intake. The car was then road registered 'UUY 504' -
David Gossage later sold the car to Greville Edwards who crashed it -
Geoff Richardson bought the damaged car back - He repaired it by building a replacement chassis (this is of course a significant point) using "main tubes supplied by Aston Martin" - Richard Green stated in October 1999 that during this work Richardson also installed a Salisbury 4HU diff and converted the rear suspension to coil-springs (car Jaguar powered) -
A hiatus then ensues in this provenance until 1973 when "the car" was acquired by Richard Bell who restored the front end to original shape and built-up a twin-plug-headed Aston Martin DB3S engine for the car -
Then after another hiatus - 1986 to Claus Oechsiln (? spelling?) of Geneva -
October 1986 to Erich Traber (Swiss dealer) -
June 1987 sold to Nicolas Springer - work carried out by Roos Engineering of Berne, Switzerland, modifying the bodywork to 1955 team car configuration, painted midnight blue -
1996 for sale by a London company with a four-letter word for a name, which subsequently went into liquidation, then started up again almost immediately under a fresh name, but with the same principals (and apparently principles) leaving a number of former clients unpaid -
Car then seems to have gone into American ownership (reputedly in Georgia) - subsequently acquired in the USA by Jimmy Dobbs of Memphis, Tennesee, and still - I understand - retained by him, 2008.
Can anyone plug the holes in this provenance, for what I would assume is a strong rival claimant for the 'UUY 504' 'identity' attributed to the UK-owned subject of this thread, and of course to its works New Zealand-raced predecessor?
DCN
#42
Posted 20 August 2008 - 19:51
Originally posted by Catalina Park
How can you trust any historians accuracy if they lump any race in the Southern Hemisphere under the name Tasman.
While I sympathise with the simple pedantry and national pride expressed here, I cannot recall ever having seen 'Tasman' applied to Seth Efrikan racing. 'Springbok' for SA, 'Tasman' for Australasia is the way I was brought up in racing - 'Tasman' indicating Australia/New Zealand, 'Springbok' for the Union. What's so wrong with that? All you colonials, be told. It's the Empire speaking.
DCN Govrnr Gnrl (dismissed)
#43
Posted 21 August 2008 - 08:38
Quite what the car at Wiscombe is I don't know. It had a cooking DB2 or 2/4 engine fitted.
#44
Posted 21 August 2008 - 09:25
How does the Empire feel about races in Malaysia and Japan being described as Tasman races? (I have seen it done on this forum )Originally posted by Doug Nye
While I sympathise with the simple pedantry and national pride expressed here, I cannot recall ever having seen 'Tasman' applied to Seth Efrikan racing. 'Springbok' for SA, 'Tasman' for Australasia is the way I was brought up in racing - 'Tasman' indicating Australia/New Zealand, 'Springbok' for the Union. What's so wrong with that? All you colonials, be told. It's the Empire speaking.
DCN Govrnr Gnrl (dismissed)
CP (not out).
#45
Posted 21 August 2008 - 09:59
I thought we were trying to establish the identity of an unknown Aston Martin.
#46
Posted 21 August 2008 - 20:24
The Governor General was not dismissed ....the democratically twice elected government was dismissed by the Governor General..the latter was hounded out of office eventually.
Just a lil pedanticity to go with the Tasman debate
#47
Posted 25 August 2008 - 18:14
The car was on offer in 1983 with Rod Leach's Nostalgia and then in 1996 with Talacrest, Coys and latterly Symbolic in San Diego.
Cheers,
Damien
#48
Posted 25 August 2008 - 18:39
#49
Posted 25 August 2008 - 19:25
Jimmy Dobbs took the car to Laguna Seca in August 1999.
Cheers,
Damien
#50
Posted 26 August 2008 - 06:37
It was blue with a DB3S body on it when I saw it at Castle Coombe in 1973 too.
Edited by Dutchy, 28 February 2020 - 16:59.