BRITISH INGENUITY FOR SIX DECADES
In 1958, major arthur m al lock sold his first car. his dynasty is still going strong. by Paul lawrence.
Across the last six decades, hundreds of drivers have gone faster than their budgets should ever have allowed thanks to the genius of Arthur Mallock. First known as U2s and then Mallocks, the range of front-engined sports-racing cars that followed on from Arthur’s early design revolutionised national racing in the 1960s and brought incredible levels of performance within reach of ordinary working folk. He was a motor racing pioneer of his age and considered that he had ploughed a lone furrow through more than 50 years in competition.
The Mallock marque was most prolific – and still is – in Clubmans racing, but there has been success in Formula Junior, Formula 3, Formula Ford, Thundersports and even Formula 2. The spaceframe cars have been successful in Europe, Australia and North America and countless speed event successes have been taken by Mallocks.
Arthur Mallock was born in 1918 and enjoyed a successful career in the Royal Signals, but his interest in cars and motorsport was first sparked by Meccano kits and the hillclimb specials of the 1920s and early 1930s, including John Bolster’s Bloody Mary. In 1935, aged, 17, he bought an Austin 7 for £3 and was on the road.
Arthur served in the Second World War and rose to being a flying instructor. At the same time, he modified and built cars and when motorsport resumed in 1946 he started to compete in trials, sprints, hillclimbs and then races. He raced in the inaugural season of the 1172 Formula in 1953 in his famous Austin 7-based special registered ‘WJ1 515’ but towards the end of the 1950s he recognised that the chassis was not competitive.
Over the winter of 1957/’58, Arthur started work on the chassis that would become U2 Mk1. The ‘U2’ tag came from a popular Charles Atlas body builder advert of the time, saying that ‘you too could have a body like mine’. Arthur’s targets were to build a simple and very light, but hugely effective spaceframe chassis.
The 1172 Formula car was soon successful with the 750 Motor Club and two replica customer chassis were built in 1958, although it seems unlikely that either reached the track. However, the influx of funds allowed Arthur to realise an ambition to race internationally and he duly evolved his initial design into the Mk2, which was used in both Formula Junior and sports car racing. Arthur and his friend John Harwood had the two front-engined Formula Junior cars and raced them across Europe. As many as 10 sportscar Mk2s were built from the family home at Roade in Northamptonshire, and the basis of a business was established.
Through into the mid-1960s Arthur raced extensively and won back-to-back 1172 titles in 1962 and ’63 as his chassis design evolved each year. The 1964 Mk4 design doubled as an F3 car for the first year of the one-litre regulations and in one epic weekend Harwood raced Arthur’s car at Monza on Friday before Arthur took it over for the Monaco Grand Prix support race on Sunday. Arthur failed to make the final after a suspension bolt failed and the car spun up the steps of the Hotel de Paris. Jackie Stewart won the final in Ken Tyrrell’s Cooper.
Arthur’s son Richard, then 17, was on the Monaco trip and remembers Arthur chatting to Piers Courage. After the conversation, Courage turned to a friend and said: “That’s Arthur Mallock, the man who makes incredibly simple cars go incredibly quickly.”
The future grand prix racer had perfectly encapsulated Arthur Mallock. His genius was in simple but amazingly effective designs and his thinking influenced a generation of race car designers and opened up the sport to many impecunious racers. His life-long friend Mick Paris talked about Arthur’s single-mindedness. “If Arthur didn’t speak to you, it was probably because he’d got something he was thinking about,” said Paris.
Arthur’s understanding of competition car suspension was considered to be ahead of its time and future Ferrari and Tyrrell F1 designer Harvey Postlethwaite was a Mallock customer in the mid-1960s.
“I think Arthur Mallock knew more about suspension geometry than anyone I’ve ever known,” said Postlethwaite in the mid-1990s.
Postlethwaite was one of many drivers who raced Mallocks in the new Clubmans formula, which was created in 1965. The formula was a perfect fit for Mallocks and for half-a-century the marque has been at the centre of Clubmans racing. David Wragg and Jeremy Lord were early Clubmans champions in Mallocks and by the end of the 1960s Arthur’s two sons Richard and Ray had started racing, and winning.
The 1971 season was an outstanding year for Ray, who won 22 races and took the major Clubmans title in a Mk11. He also made his F3 debut in a front-engined MK11B, which was close to the pace of the leading cars, while Richard raced a Mk9 in Formula Ford. Typically for Arthur’s designs, the Formula Ford was also front-engined and showed excellent pace, particularly at places like Thruxton and Castle Combe.
All the while, a steady supply of customers for chassis was helping to support the family’s racing and the 1976 Mk18 design proved one of the most popular, with well over 20 cars supplied for Clubmans racing. The following year’s MK18B was equally popular and took drivers like Alex Ferrada and Alan Webb to championship titles.
As his sons’ racing took centre stage, Arthur reigned in his own competition, but was always at race meetings and was happy to offer advice to his rivals as well as customers. Frequently he would puff away on his pipe while considering a particular issue, before coming out with a gemof information. In the workshops, the base chassis design was in a state of
constant evolution and became ever stiffer, while the Mk16 heralded a move to a longer wheelbase.
While Ray’s own racing and then engineering career took him away from the workshops at Roade, Richard was now taking more and more of a lead in running the business. At the end of the 1970s there was a flirtation with Formula Atlantic and a second foray into Formula Ford with the one-off Mk22, but Clubmans racing remained at the heart of everything that Mallock did.
The Mk20 and Mk21 were very successful with at least 20 of each built, but Arthur, now into his mid-60s, was not one to rest on his laurels and constantly embraced new thinking. The Mk23 Clubmans design for 1981 featured ground-effect principles and computer-designed front suspension.
However, the Mk23 was not to everyone’s taste and Mallock customer Paul Gibson decided the time had come to build his own cars under the Vision brand. There had always been rival marques in Clubmans, but Mallock had been the benchmark for 15 years. The arrival of Vision upped the ante and for a while the Mallock family struggled to keep the business afloat against the might of the Vision challenge.
Mallock came back strongly with the Mk27 design and its variants for the 1985, ’86 and ’87 seasons when Vernon Davies, Nick Whale, Alex Moss, Nick Bridge and Peter Richings were title-winning customers. A couple of seasons earlier Will Hoy had been a multiple Clubmans champion in a Mk20 and a Mk24 in several memorable seasons with entrant Hugh Chamberlain.
Into the 1990s, Clubmans racing turned to 16-valve Vauxhall power but the market for new front-engined sportsracing cars was starting to wane. In 1993, just two new MK30PRS were sold, while the Mk31 of 1994 proved to be the last of a generation of front-engined Mallocks.
Working in partnership with racer and engineer Mike Mcdermott, Arthur’s final design scaled new heights of chassis rigidity, but he would not see it race.
Sadly, shortly after his 75th birthday, Arthur’s health deteriorated and he died in December 1993. Motor racing had lost a pioneer and an engineering genius and the Mallock marque had lost its inspiration. However, Ray and wife Sue dug deep to keep the business moving forward at a time when the flagship Clubmans category made a bold move to a rear-engined format. The first rear-engined Mallock was the Mk32 for the Supersports Vauxhall category and was the result of a joint effort by Richard, Ray and Mcdermott.
However, the rear-engined movement lost momentum towards the millennium and faded, leaving the company to focus on the core business of front-engined Clubmans cars. The market for new cars is largely dormant and the Mk36 from 2010 remains the last brand new Mallock design.
Instead, Mallock Sports continues to service, repair and restore cars from right across 60 years of the marque history. As Richard and Sue Mallock ease their way towards retirement, their son Charlie is taking an increasingly prominent role in the operation. The business that Arthur Mallock started by selling a replica chassis in 1958, is in good hands already well into its second half-century. ■