CHEVROLET FANGIO
The great champion Juan Manuel Fangio started out in a Chevrolet Coupe like this. Now Octane drives a replica that is a multiple Peking to Paris veteran
How to build the perfect endurance rally car
Wrestling the 1939 Fangio Chevrolet Coupe through a three-point turn for another run past photographer Tim Andrew’s lens is warm work. Still, at least this is Oxfordshire and not one of the Chevy’s usual habitats, such as the Gobi desert. The steering, heavy at first but easing as speed rises, features plenty of free play to focus the attention, too; maybe drivers sawing away at the wheel in those blackand-white B-movies weren’t over-acting after all. It’s challenging, but it’s also a lot of fun.
So, what is this Fangio Coupe? In its orginal life, the Chevrolet Master Coupe was a favourite with moonshine runners back in the day, its compact size and relative agility making it ideal for hauling illicit liquor from the backwoods to the cities. Unlike this example, which is designed for endurance and reliability, moonshiners’ cars would be tuned to the nines to outrun the ‘Revenuers’, their suspension beefed up to take the weight of the whiskey concealed in a second tank. Racers fancied them too; Juan Manuel Fangio raced his first one on a mixture of closed dirt and asphalt roads in rounds of the 1939 Argentine Turismo Carretera, and won the championship in his second Chevrolet in 1940.
The car you see here, immaculately prepared by Rally Preparation Services based at Witney in the UK, is a replica of Fangio’s second machine. It’s an enthralling thing to drive: rugged, raw and unforgivingly sprung. It’s designed to withstand the punishment meted out on endurance rallies such as the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge, which takes competitors over 9000 miles or so of hot, unforgiving territory.
As a youngster in the 1970s, RPS founder and managing director Simon Ayris watched rallies such as the Lombard RAC with his dad, and became hooked. His working life started in the village garage but he was desperate to get into rallying. After joining the local Witney Motor Club, he tackled club rallies, serviced on the RAC and eventually co-drove on the Rally Catalunya in a Group A Mini. ‘Then Philip Young came onto my radar when he announced the RAC revival,’ he explains.
The late Philip Young was a founder of the Historic Rally Car Register. He also founded the Endurance Rally Association in the late 1980s, kickstarting the endurance rally movement. The two got on well and Ayris began to do some rallying-related preparation work for Young in his spare time. In 2006 Ayris took the plunge, quit his job as a service manager in a car dealership and set up on his own before founding RPS in 2007. ‘At that point,’ he says, ‘a whole new world opened up. Until you get involved in something, you’ve no idea what’s there.’
In 2008 Ayris took a call from Steve Hyde, who wanted to know more about ERA’s Peking to Paris Motor Challenge, held every three years. Ayris suggested buying a Chevy Coupe on the basis that the 2007 event had been won by David and Sadie Williams in such a car.
Hyde duly bought a suitable Chevrolet in Amsterdam. Ayris didn’t do the initial preparation, but he made some modifications and supported Hyde for the next couple of years. Co-driven by Janet Lyne, Hyde entered the 2010 Peking to Paris as planned. On day nine, en route from Uliastay to Teel River in Mongolia, Ayris waited at the finish of a section, not sure what to expect. ‘We saw this vortex of sand and dust coming across the horizon, which we thought was a service crew in a pickup truck getting ahead. There was a little dip in the land and all of a sudden this yellow Chevrolet burst into view. It was mind-blowing.’ Hyde won his category in the event, his last in the Chevy before he moved on to new challenges.
Then Ayris was contacted by Phil Garratt who had bought Hyde’s Chevrolet. Garratt went on to win the 2013 Peking to Paris in it. ‘That probably put us on the map, because the car had proved itself more than once,’ reckons Ayris. ‘This was quite a different world from the one I had been used to with events like the RAC Rally and national rallying. Fangio came up with the idea all those years ago. He used to race on gravel roads and, in reality, that was rallying. He pretty much wrote the script for what followed. He was the one who cut the wheelarches back, mounted the wheel on the roof and designed the over-wing exhaust.’
Ayris sees today’s events more as ‘adventure driving’ than rallying. The cars are equipped with safety equipment such as roll cages and extinguishers, but crews don’t wear overalls or crash helmets. ‘It’s become more of a lifestyle activity for people who want the experience of driving a car they love, in a country they’ve never been to before, with a group of people they enjoy spending time and having fun with,’ he says. Business has grown steadily from the one-man-band to a thriving company. Today he has customers from all over the world, a turnover of around £2 million and 20 staff, and it provides literally dozens of cars for the Peking to Paris and back-up for many more.
A car like the 1939 Chevrolet takes between 12 and 18 months to build and costs around £150,000. ‘Or more, depending on what you want,’ says Ayris. A build begins with a donor car; for a 1939 Chevy like this one, it pays to choose the right one. All have a live axle at the rear, but some have a rear dickey seat and there are three variants of front suspension: coil springs, an odd knuckle arrangement, and a leaf-spring suspension with a beam axle. The last of these is the one to have.
The 1939 Chevrolet was powered by the second-generation ‘Stovebolt’, a 3.2-litre straight-six introduced in 1937 with 85bhp. This car has the later 3.9-litre ‘235’ version; introduced for trucks in 1941, it was used in cars fitted with Powerglide automatic transmission from 1950, and in the first Corvette of 1953. Solid-lifter Stovebolt 235s developed 123bhp, hydraulic-lifter versions 136bhp. Both featured a gear-driven camshaft.
In early Stovebolts, the white-metal big-end bearings were integral with the connecting rods. There was no fully pressurised lubrication system; instead, the bottom end was lubricated with oil squirted from a trough in the sump and scooped up by ‘dippers’ attached to the connecting rods. As you would expect, RPS uses the full-pressure system introduced in 1953, plus modern connecting rods with separate bearing shells.
The engine has Fenton inlet and exhaust manifolds, the latter attached to a dramatic, Fangio-style straight exhaust system fabricated by Hayward and Scott. ‘Otherwise it’s in standard tune to avoid over-stressing,’ says Ben Harris who, with Brooke Matthews, does most of the build work. Careful building and attention to the engine’s breathing lifts power to 130-140bhp, even though solid valve lifters are fitted for simplicity.
The Daytona carburettors currently fitted will soon be swapped for a pair of period Strombergs. A Dynator alternator (it looks like a period dynamo) provides reliable electrical power, there’s a WOSP high-torque starter motor, the ignition leads are specially made by Aldon Automotive and the wiring loom is bespoke. An electric cooling fan and a modern