Compare the pair
S5000 in a way is the son of Formula 5000. It is Formula 5000 reimagined in a 21st century context. What that means is a modern day F5000-style car without all the problems that bedevilled the category in the 1970s.
By design, today’s cars are almost in nitely more safe, more reliable and far less expensive to run. That means a car that in many ways is almost unrecognisable alongside an old Formula 5000 – as demonstrated by these pics of the ex-Vern Schuppan El n MR8-Chev from the late ‘70s and Tim Macrow’s current day Rogers AF01/V8 S5000 machine.
There are some remarkable statistical anomalies when it comes to comparing the two. Notwithstanding the fact that the El n has a cast-iron small block 5.0-litre Chev and the S5000 an all-alloy V8, the S5000 is almost 30 percent heavier than the old car!
In terms of performance, though, they’re remarkably similar. Back in 1979 Modern Motor magazine conducted a ‘road test’ of an El n MR8, and it’s that test that provides us with a direct comparison. After destroying the magazine’s famous ‘ fth wheel’ speed measuring device in a urry of wheelspin and tyre smoke (the car had ‘more grunt than we knew what to do with’, the magazine concluded), the MR8 stormed the standing 400 metres in a head-snapping 9.8 seconds. The S5000 is slightly slower at 10.5s, but that’s still fast enough to see off pretty much anything other than a fairly serious drag race machine, F1 car or Le Mans prototype, or high-end supercar (and by supercars we don’t mean the ones that race in the Bathurst 1000…).
Elfin MR8
Our cover car is a 1976 El n MR8, one of only three made. The Adelaide-built, 5.0-litre Chevpowered MR8s were raced by an impressive array of drivers during the late ’70 and early ‘80s, including F1 stars Didier Pironi and 1976 World F1 Champ James Hunt, Vern Schuppan, Larry Perkins and a young John Bowe.
This MR8 was the Vern Schuppan car. It only raced in Australia three times: Schuppan drove it to second place in the ‘76 Australian Grand Prix behind John Goss; the following year at Calder it was involved in Max Stewart’s fatal accident, when an unsighted Stewart crashed into the back of the El n. Schuppan then converted the El n to the new single-seater Can-Am regs and raced it in North America for two years. It was an underfunded effort but the Australian car occasionally showed well, with Schuppan nishing 10th in the series in ’78 and eighth the following year, with a best race result of third at Watkins Glen in ’79.
Current owner Bill Hemming bought it in the 2000s. It had been partly returned to F5000 trim with the removal of the enclosed Can-Am sports car bodywork; Hemming undertook his own full restoration to return it to original Ansett-El n trim. Unfortunately, Hemming was involved in an accident while unloading the MR8 from the trailer for our photoshoot. The car broke loose and got away from him, running over his leg and pinning him to the ground, the car’s back wheel ending up on his chest. Bill sustained a broken ankle and torn tendons on the other leg.
“After it happened I was in hospital with the xray nurse,” Bill told us, “and she said, ‘what happened?’ I told her how my racing car ran over me while I was getting it off the trailer. ‘What was the car?’ she asked, and I said, ‘oh you wouldn’t know – an El n.’ And then she said, ‘what, an MR8?.’ ‘How do you know!’ I said, and then she told me she’d been married to John Bowe for 10 years! Turns out she was Bowey’s ex-wife!”