Elfin: The Spirit of Speed (Elfin Heritage Centre)

David Dowsey

ISBN 978 0 0646807 03 4 Reviewer’s own copy

This is a large and beautifully-produced volume with 700 pages and many hundreds of photos. Author Dowsey seems to have interviewed everyone associated with Elfin cars – company employees, drivers and their entrants plus subsequent owners of the company, among others.

Elfin ran on rather a shoestring: visitors to the company were constantly amazed at how ‘basic’ the factory was in comparison to the quality of the cars being produced. What comes through the book is the high regard in which Elfin founder Garrie Cooper was held by all who dealt with him. He was a pretty decent driver and also a perfectionist, so cars could be delivered later than anticipated. As well as a few road cars, Elfins were built for all sorts of formulae, from single-seaters to Clubman cars and sports racing models such as the Lotus Eleven-like Streamliner and Andy Buchanan’s dramatic-looking Type 400. The cars did well enough to attract some decent sponsorship from the likes of Ansett Airlines for the ‘works’ team.

Sometimes only one example was built, with the company unable to gather sufficient interest, but other models were produced in bigger numbers, including around 20 Formula Juniors and a fair number of F5000s. Every single variant of Elfin gets a chapter, with the story of how it was developed, its full racing career and a superb photo gallery of how an example of the model looks today.

The book takes the story right through to Elfin’s last days and the links with Holden and Tom Walkinshaw. Elfin founder Garrie Cooper sadly died too young in 1982; however, he left a pretty amazing motorsport legacy. And the good news is that The Spirit of Speed almost certainly justifies its price.

Review by Mark Holman

Standard Edition: A$ 198; Collectors Edition: A$ 298; Limited Edition: A$ 398 (Available from: elfinspiritofspeed.com.au)