Gardner Camaro
Frank Gardner’s ’67 Camaro Z28 racecar has recently resurfaced in the UK, meticulously restored to its former glory. The big Chev boasts a racing history that spans no less than three continents, with strong connections to Australia.
One of Frank Gardner’s British Saloon Car Championship Camaros has come up for sale in the UK.
Frank Gardner is probably best known down under for his Formula 5000-inspired Chevrolet Corvair that revolutionised Sports Sedan racing in the 1970s – and his long spell running BMW’s touring car programme over the following two decades. But before all of that, Frank Gardner the driver starred on the international stage in openwheelers, sports cars, and in particular in touring car racing. The versatile Australian was British Saloon Car Champion three times, in addition to three BSCC class wins.
This car is the rst of two Camaros Gardner raced in the BSCC and elsewhere in Europe in the early ’70s. It’s actually one of the very rst race-prepared Camaros to hit the track. Built as a racecar in late ’66 by Bill Mayberry, the man who also built the Team Penske Trans-Am Camaros of that era, the car made its race debut in the ’67 Trans-Am series in the hands of Chev dealer/ racer Bobby Brown. Its rst outing, at Sebring, brought its best Trans-Am series result, Brown nishing a ne sixth in a massive 59-car eld.
At the end of that season Brown sold it to Malcolm Wayne in the UK. Wayne ran the American coupe in the British Saloon Car Championship in 1968 (won that year by Gardner using a Lotus Cortina and Ford Escort). It was
run by Mike Kearon the following year and then by Bill Shaw Racing in 1970 for ’65 BSCC winner Roy Pierpoint.
Pierpoint drove it to podium results at Thruxton and at the Guards International Trophy at Snetterton, but the big Chev was an all-toofrequent non- nisher due to mechanical failure.
Adrian Chambers’ SCA Freight team took over the Camaro for ’71, initially with John Hine and Pierpoint driving, before the arrival of Gardner a little later in the season. While the car had not scored a single outright or class win in its previous three seasons in the BSCC, fortunes would change dramatically for the SCA team once Gardner was on board.
Together with the car’s mechanics, Norman Lockwood and Mark le Sueur, Gardner soon developed the big American muscle coupe into a competitive car. He won the Silverstone round in ’71 and then again at Croft the following round, beating fellow Aussie Brian Muir (#1).
According to SCA boss Adrian Chambers, the team had struggled to sort out the Camaro before the arrival of Gardner.
“It was fantastic the way Frank came in (to the pits after his rst drive), sat composing his thoughts and then said ‘we should try this, and this, and this’ and, do you know, he was right on
most of them,” Chambers said at the time.
The ’71 title eluded Gardner due to a championship points system weighted towards class rather than outright performance – it was won that year by a Hillman Imp driver! – but the Camaro won its share of races and usually ran at the front.
The ’71 season had been the Camaro’s fth year of racing, so SCA decided to replace it with a new second-generation (1970-72) Camaro model. This is the one which Gardner drove to victory in the ’73 BSCC – with the Z28’s 350ci small block V8 replaced by an all-aluminium, 427ci (7.0-litre) ZL-1 engine, which was good for almost 600bhp (450kW) in FIA Group 2 con guration.
This was in fact the very same 427 engine (and gearbox) which had powered Bob Jane’s ZL-1 Camaro to victory in the 1971 Australian Touring Car Championship!
While the SCA team were putting the nishing touches on the new car in preparation for the ’73 BSCC, Gardner brought the older car back home with him at the end of ’72. He was in Australia (and New Zealand) for the eight-race January/ February Tasman Cup series for Formula 5000 machines in his capacity as development engineer for Lola cars, but still found time to race the Camaro in the touring car support events at some of these meetings, where he faced the likes of Allan Moffat’s Boss Mustang and Pete Geoghegan’s Super Falcon.
The rst instalment of the trip was at New Zealand’s Bay Park on New Year’s Eve. This wasn’t part of the Tasman Cup – that began a week later at Pukekohe, which also featured the sedans.
The New Zealand promoters had done well to attract a solid (and even international) eld for the Bay Park and Pukekohe races: Moffat and Geoghegan from Australia, American Joe Chamberlain in his Trans-Am Camaro and Gardner with his car from the UK, taking on the top Kiwi saloon aces: the likes of Rod Coppins’ Trans-Am Pontiac, Paul Fahey’s Boss Mustang and Red Dawson’s Camaro. Chamberlain never
gured, and the Kiwis were outpaced by their trans-Tasman cousins (to be fair, though, NZ saloon car rules were a little more restrictive than Australian Improved Production), leaving it largely a Geoghegan-Moffat-Gardner contest.
Moffat took the honours at Bay Park, winning two of the three races, but only after some torrid battles with Gardner and Geoghegan. Gardner had been a close second to Moffat in the opening race but a brake failure in race two put the Camaro in the fence.
The following weekend’s single 12-lapper at Pukekohe saw the Camaro triumph. After surviving an early skirmish with Geoghegan’s Super Falcon, Gardner’s 5.7-litre Chev outgunned Moffat’s 5.0-litre Boss Mustang down the back straight and wasn’t headed from there.
Back on ‘home’ soil, at Warwick Farm Gardner took pole but on a wet race day in the rst race the Camaro was outpaced by Moffat’s Mustang as well as Geoghegan’s Falcon. Gardner was denied the chance of redemption in the second race when water got into the Chev’s electrics.
At Sandown Gardner blew an engine in qualifying but with the spare tted went on to nish second behind Bob Jane’s HQ Monaro GTS 350. The Camaro was an early retirement in the second race.
After the Australasian summer sojourn the car didn’t return with Gardner to the UK, instead remaining down under in the hands of new owner – Bob Jane. It was later sold to John Pollard who raced as a Sports Sedan in the late ’70s (inset right). It then went to Bernie Watt, and eventually Rowan Harman, who sold it back to its current UK owner in 2010.
For Gardner, the SCA Camaros marked the end of what had been a long and successful association with Ford – in fact, he had nished a narrow second in the 1970 BSCC in a Trans-Am Boss 302 Mustang (beaten again by that pesky Hillman Imp!). In our Muscle Man feature in issue #21, Gardner re ected on the comparative strengths and weaknesses of the Mustang and Camaro in race trim: “They (Camaros) weren’t as nice a car as the (Boss 302 Trans-Am) Mustang. That was a well-balanced motor car, with its roll
centres and frequencies, but the Camaro had a bit of ‘wrong location’ that didn’t give it the anti-squat at the rear, so it lifted more.
“Unlike the Mustang, which had a lot of the right properties because of the GT40s and Ford’s racing in general, the Camaro did not have a lot to draw on, so it was a lot harder to knock into shape. You could only move the (rear suspension pick-up) points an inch either way. You could never get the Camaro as nice in the wet as the Mustang.
“You knew what you had to do, but you couldn’t get there (because of the rules). It was always a compromise of springs, anti-roll bars and things, to try and get the mechanical components to do the job, rather than geometrical application. But we worked around it and wound up with a good car. In those days, scrutineering was a lot harder; there were some pretty tough old boys there who you couldn’t hoodwink, as they had grown up with engineering companies – even if their day job was developing Humber Snipes.”
The current UK owner undertook the restoration back to its 1971 BSCC Group 2 specs (roughly the equivalent of our old Improved Production category). The car retains the original ‘67 Trans-Am championship bodyshell, original 5.0-litre engine used in Europe by the SCA Jagermeister team, and even has Gardner’s original seat and steering wheel.
It’s currently being offered for sale by Duncan Hamilton Rofgo Ltd. For more info go to: https://www.dhrofgo.com