DIRTY STUFF

AFAIR while ago I worked at a service station in Brisbane. The owner, Luigi, had this huge need to race and already owned a yellow FJ Holden, reworked for competition. Then he bought a real race car, an old cigar-bodied flathead Ford-powered machine that he’d painted Monza Red, built up on a 1920s Whippet chassis.

Just after I started, Luigi decided to take the car to a local club’s sprint meeting at the Lakeside circuit. Sprint racing has been around long before drags got going in Australia, mostly on any straight piece of tar, usually in consecutive acceleration tests. Anyway, Luigi was going to win big with his new old car. It had two carburettors and pipe exhausts, so it must be fast.

He lined up to take his turn down the track. First run was okay, in the top three. Second run and he was only one away from taking out top competitor. This really stirred Luigi and his eyes were wide as he lined up again. He was only a few seconds away from scoring a trophy, so idling on the line he selected first cog, booted the pre-war mill to somewhere over 5000rpm, and dropped the clutch. He knew his car would go off like a red rocket, but then the three-speed gearbox told him enough was enough. There was a huge bang and pieces of cast iron and steel exploded from underneath the car, seemingly aiming for the official’s feet. Luigi just sat there, amid the pungent smell of gear oil, as his top-time trophy dream was destroyed as surely as his fragile Ford gearbox.

Years later, I remembered that car and discovered it had been relatively famous.

Built in 1949 by a bloke in Brisbane named of Jack Wright, its genesis was in that Whippet chassis, turned upside down and back to front. So the Ford A-model front axle was underslung, as was the stock Ford V8 rear. Jack fitted V8 hydraulic brakes, and an open driveshaft to the Ford three-slot ’box, which he hung behind Henry Ford’s cast-iron flathead V8. He made a two-seat body with a ’32 Ford grille, and thus it became his road car, which was common in that era when new cars were scarce and too expensive to buy.

Then a Breakfast Creek used-car dealer bought the car, lowered the bodyline and got it in shape for racing. There was a major competition event to be held in 1954 – the annual Australian Grand Prix – and two car clubs had won the gong to hold this longdistance race on the narrow and lumpy roads of Southport, on the Gold Coast. On the day, there was Stan Jones in the Repco Maybach, which crashed when leading; Cobden’s supercharged Ferrari, which also crashed; and Lex Davison’s HWM Jaguar. The latter outlasted the opposition to win, with the Jack Wright special (driven by Ken Richardson) surviving to place third, behind Curley Brydon’s MG. That’s the only time a Queensland-built race car has claimed a podium place at an AGP, so when I discovered this I obviously decided to try and find the special, some 20 years later.

Eventually I did discover where it went. Jack’s Ford had been re-bodied with a cigarshaped alloy shell. Old race cars were not worth much back then, so it finished its life running in speedway events until it got beat up one night and the wreckers took it away.

They fed it to a crusher.

When I got that info, I decided to build a replica. Somebody gave me a stripped Whippet chassis; I found a Ford A front axle and rear axle; as well as brakes from an English Ford Pilot, which was the same as the pre-war American stuff. A rebuildable flathead-eight came from a funeral home. I forget where I got the three-speed Ford cogbox. I converted the driveline from a torque tube set-up to an open shaft, which was used in the original car, and made a ’32 grille and an aluminium body copied from photographs. Next up, I fitted a handful of basic instruments and applied for a CAMS logbook. Once that was in hand, I began racing in events for historic cars, mainly at Lakeside Raceway and Surfers Paradise International. The only problem I had was finding enough 16-inch road tyres to fit the narrow steel wheels.

Then came a meeting at Surfers where a few historic car events were listed on the program. A couple of them were handicaps to give the slower old cars a fairer bite of the sausage. I went well in the first one, and realised that if I could get a better start I could potentially win this. Lined up on the staggered grid, way in front of the faster cars, I found first gear and revved the ring out of that old V8. The lights turned green, I dropped the truck clutch... and Henry’s three-speed ’box exploded.

You would reckon, after Luigi’s lesson, that I would have picked second gear before I dropped the clutch on that hard-revving engine. But I’m a slow learner and so it was déjà vu. C’est la vie.

sI FOUND FIRST GEAR AND REVVED THE RING OUT OF THAT OLD V8. THE LIGHTS TURNED GREEN, I DROPPED THE TRUCK CLUTCH... AND HENRY’S THREE-SPEED ’BOX EXPLODED