OUR PICK TO BUY NOW-
WHEN CARS WERE STARS
IN THE SUMMER SOFT HE ’50 S AND ’60 S, MOSS, BRABHAM, MCLAREN, H ULME , AN DAMON WERE HOUSEHOLD NAMES, ALONG WITH THE CARS THEY RACED. BUT, AS THE NATURE OF THE SPORT CHANGED, SO DID THE CARS. GR A HA MM C RA E’ S 1972 GM 1 EXEMPLIFIES THE ERA OFF 5000 RACING
As Formula 1 (F1) became ‘Ecclestonized’, those days of famous-name drivers coming down here for their summer in the sun faded to just good memories. Most New Zealanders knew the names of those famous drivers, but they couldn’t have told you the names on the cars being raced.
With the demise of the Tasman Series, which was what had brought the glamour teams and their drivers here, the New Zealand and Australian motor sport administrators settled on a new international formula as a replacement. This time, they went for an F1-style car powered by a motor with a capacity limit of five litres. These were fire-breathing monsters almost as fast as the F1 cars themselves.
The well-known driver lists also faded and, apart from Mclaren, most of the brand names on the starting grids were not so well-known now either. In place of Ferrari, BRM, Cooper, Lotus, and Brabham, lesser known names appeared, such as Elfin, Lola, Begg, Chevron, Matich, Surtees, Leda, and then Mcrae. The Begg cars were built locally, others were built in Australia and the UK, but, over the seasons that the Formula 5000 (F5000) series operated, the star of the show was a car that carried a local name even if it had been built in England.
A few name drivers came to our part of the world to race these cars, but mostly we no longer recognized the driver roster. Across the years, though, the manufacturer names of the F5000 cars became well known, and, 45 years after their introduction, the cars still compete in series here and internationally.
A new beginning
Graham Mcrae’s part in this story has been well documented in this magazine in the immediate past.
In New Zealand, Mcrae built and raced his own cars, and raced a couple of Mclaren F5000s, which had been bought for him by Crown Lynn’s Sir Tom Clark, winning the 1971 Tasman Series in one, but, by the early ’ 70s, Graham was building cars in the UK and racing them in Europe, the US, Australia, as well as here.
Mcrae had a car of his own design by 1972 and was racing successfully in Europe, the UK, and here. He had wanted to purchase a current Mclaren F1 chassis and graft his F5000 pieces onto it, but Mclaren wasn’t interested in this proposition, so Graham decided at that point to build his own car.
When it came to design, Graham followed a simple and straightforward philosophy, which would provide good handling and reliability. He used his old Mclaren 10B as a reference but made a stronger monocoque. He then mounted the engine as low as it could possibly go to give the car a lower centre of gravity.
This became the car that brought him the most success both in competition and commercial terms. Initially designed by Len Terry for Malaya Garages, the Ledabranded car was then adapted significantly by Mcrae to his design parameters, and became immediately successful.
In the 1972 Race of Champions at Silverstone — a race that mixed both F1 and F5000 cars — the car finished as the first F5000 and in front of several F1s, and Graham also successfully competed his own car in the US F5000 series while building customer cars back at the factory in Poole, Dorset, in England.
And while here for the Tasman Series, Mcrae won four of the races and the series title that year, and the cars were winning everything in the various F5000 series. If not for a technicality, he would have won all three international championship titles on offer for these cars in 1972. As it was, he won titles in the US, Australia/ New Zealand, and was second in the European championship — even though he’d won enough races there to take the title.
Initially designed by Len Terry for Malaya Garages, the Leda-branded car was then adapted significantly by Mcrae to his design parameters
Back in the UK, Mcrae’s insurer, John Heynes, bought Leda and Malaya Garages and set up Mcrae Cars Ltd, operated and run by Graham. The name on the car was changed from ‘Leda’ to ‘Mcrae’, and model in production was then badged the ‘GM1’.
A star is born
Eventually, 14 of this series were produced, each one made to the specific requirements of the customer. One of those cars was delivered to English racing driver Alan Rollinson, who was driving for Alan Mckechnie racing — the car featured in this story.
This car’s chassis number is 007. With a slow smile, Graham Mcrae says that it was probably the fourth or fifth car built, but the team at Mcrae Cars wanted to give Rollinson a car numbered 007 because of his reputation as a bit of a lady’s man, in the style of James Bond.
Alan campaigned the car here for the ’ 73 Tasman season with mixed success. He won the Teretonga round and was second in the other two other races that he finished.
From here, the history of this car becomes a little confused, although it ended up in the US, where it may have competed once or twice in historic events. At some stage, it was laid up in a shed in California, where it rested there for another 18 years before it was found by former–new Zealand racing driver Dave Mcmillan.
And then reborn
New Zealand racing team owner and driver Michael Morton of Mad Butcher fame had been looking for just such a historic car for some time and jumped at the chance to own and restore this machine.
The car was freighted home to New Zealand with all the associated bits, pieces, and spares. And so, for the second time, this car so closely associated with this country came back — this time to be restored to its original condition.
This is where another New Zealand car builder and racing driver enters the story. Gary Pederson, who had built and raced some notable cars at the same time as Mcrae, began work to restore this machine. Gary had built and raced the fearsome Gemco Oldsmobile (now apparently in New York) in sports car racing and also drove a New Zealand– made Begg F5000 car in the early ’ 70s.
Look at me now
The GM1 was in good condition, more or less, even if it had sat ignored for a few decades.
Once he had stripped the tub back to begin work, Gary was immediately impressed by the quality and craftsmanship. He was amused to find that the now-bare tub bore some of the original builder’s instructions, written in felt tip on the bare aluminium monocoque — directions to slightly reshape the tub here or there.
The car is immaculately riveted and bonded together, with the lines of rivets and visible seams in the aluminium looking
machine-like, and the car reminiscent of a military aircraft of the same era, possessing some of the same threatening, aggressive, or brutal attributes.
Gary carefully restored the car back to its original condition, wherever possible, retaining the original pieces. When age or wear demanded replacement parts, such as rubber hoses, these were replaced with period-correct items. Even new, but period, Jubilee clips were used (Gary came across a supply of those), and even the enginemaker’s plates on the rocker covers were riveted on with the specified aviation-grade rivets — every piece on the car has been used because of its originality.
The driver sits behind a steering wheel that is just that: no flashing lights, indicator systems, computer screens, or enginemanagement options. The actual dashboard is a dashboard, too. It has a three switches: engine on, fuel pump on, rain light on, and just a few more gauges for oil and water temperatures that are centred on the rev counter. Likewise, the gear lever is just a gear lever, mounted to the right side of the driver, where they used to be located before steering-wheel paddles. It controls an H-pattern five-speed box manufactured by Hewland.
The inside is all shiny aluminium that actually looks as if it has seen plenty of action. Once the driver is installed, his feet are somewhere down between the front wheels. There’s only room for precision use of those appendages as well — the car being from an era well before the days of hand-operated clutches, the driver has three pedals for his two feet.
The suspension and suspension mounting points are places where it seems that science and art meet. They tie the parts of the car that control so much of its grip on the ground — or transmission of forces that include acceleration and braking — to the part that carries the motor and driver. The physics of all these is as beautiful to look at as it is effective, even though a full understanding of it would bypass most of us.
Mcrae set out to do this in a simple and reliable way, and these suspension parts make that easy to see. There’s a symmetry to the clean and very beautifully machined parts that are all nickel plated — chrome might have looked brighter and more spectacular, but the originals were nickel plated, and so these have been kept. It is interesting to note that this car has dual suspension pickup points, the only Mcrae built like this. It could have been to give different set-up options, but the more likely
Racing cars are almost machines of war, but most of them are also works of art. From the beautifully crafted individual parts to the sum total of all those parts, they are beautiful to look at.
explanation is that, while the car was being built, the sporting administrators were still deciding which of two different sized tyres were to be used in the coming season. By putting the two sets of points on the monocoque, either option was covered.
Gary found that the ‘brand new’ Bartz engine installed in the car had been left with its coolant in, and, by the time he started work on the car, the magnesium-alloy pieces of the motor had melted and were beyond repair. Happily, among the spares was another motor — another Bartz engine, which happened to be the unit originally installed in the car. This motor, which is also a five-litre Chev-based unit, was also faithfully restored before being reinstalled in the car. Other Mcraes used the Swiss Morand motor based on the same Chev block.
A thing of beauty
The now assembled and complete car looks astounding. Mcrae was impressed by the BRM F1 car of this era, and his design was influenced by that. The car looks fast even sitting still. Rather than the tubular shape of many of the other cars of the same era, the GM1 has rounded haunches that give it beautiful proportions. They are practical as well, because they conceal the fuel cells.
The motor is not just a beautiful object to look at — it goes. It goes, incredibly! The fuel pump makes that mechanical whirring before the motor turns over, sounding almost dry before it clears its throat with an incredible roar that is much more heavy metal than symphony. It’s a sound that is almost from another dimension. The exhausts themselves are things of beauty, too. The first time that Gary fired the motor up, these pipes were directed at the bench where all his nuts, bolts, washers — all those smallest bits and pieces that had been carefully cleaned and resurfaced — were sitting waiting to be refitted. The belch of all 550 horses escaped out of those pipes, and he says that it took him the rest of the day to collect them all up from where they’d been blasted around his workshop.
Racing cars are almost machines of war, but most of them are also works of art. From the beautifully crafted individual parts to the sum total of all those parts, they are beautiful to look at. This is something very evident in this car, now restored to the condition in which it left Mcrae Cars Ltd in Poole more than 45 years ago.
Owner Michael Morton doesn’t intend to race this car, so, for now, it will take pride of place as a display in his man cave. Quite a talking point when your mates are around.