SHELSLEY SPECIALS
Unlikely as it may seem, the homebuilt one-offs known as Shelsley Specials directly influenced the design of Formula 1 racing cars forever
F1 learnt everything from these hillclimbers
MOTOR RACING VENUES feel eerily quiet when not staging an event. The noise, smells and hurly-burly gone, they lie forsaken and silent until the circus comes back to town. Visit Shelsley Walsh in the winter and you will find the paddock and pits occupied by agricultural machinery that belongs to a neighbouring farmer. The startline lights are unlit, the loudspeakers hauntingly silent, and pheasants roam the track.
So it can be difficult to imagine how Shelsley – unchanged in 113 years – could have had a major influence on modern motorsport. How did this iconic hillclimb, nestled in the sleepy, beautiful Teme Valley of rural Worcestershire, have a significant impact on the worldwide design of singleseater racing cars forever? The answer lies in the story of the Shelsley Specials.
But this is not a tale of some long-forgotten band of homebuilt racing cars that were superseded by later developments. The Specials have continued to evolve over the past 91 years and no fewer than 110 different models have been validated. The latest cars may look very different from the pioneers, but the spirit and passion that created them remains unchanged.
When hillclimbing started at Shelsley Walsh in 1905, the actual time taken to climb the hill was not the only important factor. Nearly all competitors used catalogued road cars that had few or no modifications, and results were assessed using a specific formula. The greater the vehicle’s laden weight, the smaller the engine, and the shorter the time taken to climb the hill combined to determine the result. Large touring cars loaded with passengers were commonplace.
In 1913, the concept of the outright fastest time was introduced, along with a class for the smaller cyclecars. The results from that meeting effectively ended the era of the heavy touring car in competition.
Motorsport events were halted in 1914 by the outbreak of the First World War, which was to have an unanticipated effect on the future of motor racing. Many returning service personnel had experienced driving and working on motor vehicles and also enjoyed the thrill and freedom of using motorised transport. By then motor vehicles were becoming more plentiful and less expensive to buy. Also, as the military scaled back operations, it released unwanted cars, trucks and aircraft engines onto an eager
Facing page, from top Seen here in 1936, Basil Davenport’s Spider still competes at Shelsley today; Raymond Mays showboats in the Vauxhall Villiers Special, courtesy of the loose surface at Shelsley’s Bottom Ess.
market. And so, when motorsport resumed in 1919, the manufacturers and gentleman racers of the pre-war era were joined by a new breed of mechanically minded enthusiasts eager to enjoy the challenge of speed hillclimbing.
Large racing cars from the likes of Mercedes and Fiat, along with aero-engined behemoths, were at home in Continental road races and at Brooklands – but drivers found their cars less well-suited to the unmetalled, bumpy and narrow track at Shelsley. Thus began the evolution of the cars specifically designed to compete at hillclimbs in general, and at Shelsley in particular.
One of the first people to build a Shelsley Special was Captain Archie Frazer Nash. At the first Shelsley meeting after the end of hostilities, in July 1920, he pioneered the future of cars dedicated to hillclimbing. Based on a modified GN chassis, his Moldy came surprisingly close to beating the 4.9-litre Indianapolis Sunbeam of Chris Bird and demonstrated that there was a different way to be fast up the very steep, twisty yet narrow hill.
Moldy was not a new car, however, but had raced with great success at Brooklands, frequently beating much larger-engined cars. Its two-cylinder 1100cc engine and carefully developed chassis were a revelation.
Constantly improved, it was also known at various times as Kim and Mowgli.
But really the story of the Shelsley Specials begins with Basil Davenport, a 20-year-old no-nonsense Northerner who saw the potential in building a version of Moldy/Kim. He bought a spare GN chassis and 1087cc engine from Frazer Nash during 1923 and started competing the following year with a car that he called Spider. After only modest success in 1924, he fitted the 1500cc engine from Mowgli and at the Shelsley meeting the following year he suffered engine failure 100 yards from the finish. Despite coasting to the line, he was a single second behind the BTD (Best Time of the Day).
A winter engine rebuild with lighter pistons greatly improved reliability and, on 4 September 1926, Spider broke the outright record with a time of 48.8 seconds – the first sub-50-second climb. The car would dominate the results table for four years and eventually lowered the hill record to 46.2 seconds in 1928.
Spider would later become recognised as the first and perhaps most renowned of the Specials, and author John Bolster – himself a renowned Shelsley Special builder – in his book Specials described Spider thus: ‘Well, there you have it: a high pointed aluminium bonnet, with a clumsy great cylinder sticking out each side, and a small pointed aluminium tail, well scratched and dented; a chassis and wheels with very little paint, and perhaps a patch or two of rust showing beneath the dirt. Even a car breaker would turn up his nose at this scruffy contraption, this winner of well over a hundred firsts, this seven times outright victor at the greatest hillclimb in the world, this Spider…’
Success is the driver of inspiration, which often takes different directions. Some will choose to imitate closely, with a view to replicating a winning design; others will add to or modify the template in the hope of improving the original. Inevitably there will be more-radical thinkers who consider the design seam has been fully mined and that a fresh direction is needed. Indeed, the next Special would be in stark contrast to the primitive and down-at-heel Spider.
The Vauxhall Villiers of Raymond Mays started life as one of three Tourist Trophy special racing cars in 1922 and, after major modification and the addition of a supercharger in 1928, became known as the
Villiers Supercharge. Having been radically re-engineered, lowered and re-bodied, it would later be accepted as a Shelsley Special. In 1929 Mays skilfully manhandled the large car up the hill to achieve the first time of less than 46 seconds and BTD for almost four more years.
The term ‘Special’ had first appeared in UK magazines around 1925, referring to the ‘Thomas Specials’ created by Parry Thomas, and it was also used pre-war by some manufacturers attempting to bestow cachet on certain models. But the first mention of the term Shelsley Special as a distinct entity was in Motor Sport magazine in June 1937, when a new award was established by the Midland Automobile Club. Its president, Sammy Newsome – who competed in the
Becke Powerplus Special – introduced the Newsome Trophy for the fastest Special at each event. It is still awarded to this day.
MAC rules stated that a Special should be ‘specially built from an original design or built from components forming substantial parts of two or more vehicles’. Even so, those eligibility criteria have not always been official, agreed, adhered to or consistent, and robust discussions continue to this day.
It would be 1949 before a Special would again break the outright record at Shelsley, as the intervening pre- and post-war years were dominated by ERAs. This does not mean that the special-builders downed tools during the ERA supremacy, and the next notable challenger was the inveterate special-builder John Bolster. His car, Bloody Mary (featured in Octane 76), was started in 1929 but became competitive once a more powerful engine by JAP (an acronym for JA Prestwich and Company) was fitted in 1933.
The following year an additional, identical engine was fitted, which made Bloody Mary even more potent, although his next venture into combining multiple powerplants was a four-engined 1938 Special, which proved a step too far in complexity. Lightweight aircooled motorcycle engines were powerful and easily available but transmission of their power, mostly by chains, was problematic. Positioning the engine at the rear presented an elegant engineering solution that was truly portentous.
It was to be a rear-engined special that would finally break the supercharged ERA Above left Archie Frazer Nash wows the crowd with the speed and agility of his fragile GN Special in September 1921. He crashed it the following year, but after replacing a couple of wheels had an impromptu duel with Count Louis Zborowski in his straight-eight Ballot Grand Prix car, to the fury of those officiating!
‘FRAZER NASH’S
MOLDY SHOWED THAT THERE WAS A DIFFERENT WAY TO BE FAST UP THE VERY STEEP, TWISTY YET NARROW HILL’
‘LIGHTWEIGHT MOTORCYCLE ENGINES WERE POWERFUL BUT TRANSMISSION OF THEIR POWER WAS PROBLEMATIC’
monopoly of BTDs that ran from 1934 to 1948, albeit with a six-year hiatus during WW2. It was built in 1936 by David Fry, who was only 18, and Dick Caesar, and was notable in having its engine behind the driver’s seat. Caesar had previously built a conventional special with a GN chassis but took his rear-engine inspiration from the new Auto Union GP cars. With a nod to the German cars and the political situation of the time, Fry and Caesar playfully named their car the Freikaiserwagen. Engine upgrades and chassis improvements followed and, by the outbreak of WW2, regular driver Joe Fry – David’s cousin – held both the supercharged and atmospheric Special records at Shelsley.
The pace of development increased on resumption of hillclimbing in 1946 and ‘Freik’ became faster and lighter, with
Anti-clockwise from top left Starved of motorsport during World War Two, a huge crowd of enthusiasts watches Joe Fry tackle Shelsley’s Bottom Ess in the Freikaiserwagen in 1947; John Bolster’s Bloody Mary returns to the fray a year later; Reg Philips built many Specials, including the 1500cc Fairley Climax that he’s driving in this 1958 photo, and was still competing in his eighties.
independent front suspension and rubber springing at the rear. Great success followed in 1948 and ’49 after two-stage supercharging was added, which raised the power-toweight ratio to over 500bhp per ton. This is equivalent to that of the Auto Union GP racers, but in a much smaller and more nimble car. On 11 June 1949 Joe Fry achieved the Special-builder’s dream of the outright Shelsely record in a time of 37.35 seconds. The following year he rolled Freik on Crossing Bend and, when a nurse asked if he needed smelling salts, he replied: ‘Brandy and soda, please.’ His luck, however, did not hold and later that same year he crashed heavily at the Blandford hillclimb and was killed. The Freikaiserwagen was broken up.
In addition to great success at Shelsley, the Frys had also been active members of CAPA – a Bristol-based informal motor club, formed by Dick Caesar amongst others (the initials standing for its founders’ names). The principal aim was to promote low-cost motorsport, typically based on mildly tuned Austin Sevens with reduced bodywork. It is believed that Dick Caesar, drawing on his Freik experience, first suggested using lowcost motorcycle engines in racing Specials. The plan was a to create a formula to which cars had to conform in order to limit cost.
Some of the CAPA members worked at the Bristol Aeroplane Company and formed a motor sports club, BACMSC, which kept alive the spirit of racing during World War Two, but in autumn 1946 the BACMSC was wound up and – embracing the pre-war vision of the CAPA members – the 500 Club was formed. Its fundamental rules were a minimum weight of 500lb, single- or multicylinder air-cooled engine, four-wheel brakes and a one-gallon fuel capacity.
In a matter of months a number of cars appeared, including – most significantly for the future – the Coopers of John Cooper and Eric Brandon. In 1948 the newly formed Cooper Car Company produced seven cars, including one for Stirling Moss, which he raced at Shelsley. Being a series production car, this was not classed as a Special.
Amazingly, only nine years later, Cooper entered its first Grand Prix car and two years later won the F1 World Championship with Jack Brabham. At a time when other manufacturers – notably Ferrari, MercedesBenz and Lotus – were continuing to develop front-engined cars, Cooper built on its 500 experience to create larger and more powerful derivatives. Its 1959 rear-engined winning F1 car was truly a game-changer and, although Enzo Ferrari declared that he would never build a rear-engined car, within a season the front-engined GP car was dead. The Freikaiserwagen truly had pointed the way.
Development of Specials has never ceased, however, and they continue to exhibit the ingenuity and ‘out of the box’ thinking that was pioneered by the likes of Archie Frazer Nash and John Bolster. Today, the definition of a Shelsley Special is largely down to the subjectivity of the eligibility scrutineer, and a heavily modified production car that retains its original major components does not qualify. The car must be a one-off, but it may have later adaptations, either due to further modification or a total engineering re-think. These are sometimes prompted by component failure, accident damage or by experience gained in competition.
A notable feature of Specials has always been their bodywork. The difficulty for amateur builders in producing complex
curves in metal or making moulds for glassfibre means that bodywork is often rudimentary, angular or absent altogether. In the days when aerodynamics were not a consideration, bodywork could be seen as adding weight and impeding access to components, and so many early Specials looked extremely basic.
The motivation to build a Special has not changed in almost 100 years, however. Whether the constructor is an enthusiast with more passion than money, who creates something from parts acquired at little or no cost, or a creative engineer with exciting, fresh ideas and the skills to produce a uniquely innovative vehicle, the cottage industry of Special-building is still very much alive. Here’s hoping it always will be.