FROM THE BACKBURNER
When you’re handling hundreds of classic car stories, and ideas for stories, it’s perhaps inevitable than not all of them will make it to the printed page – some may not be up to the magazine’s standard while others simply fizzle out due to a lack of information and/or suitable images. Meantime, there are those that simply simmer away on the backburner, sometimes for years, before being nurtured to completion and prepared for publication.
I look through my ‘future projects’ folder every few months to add in a snippet of freshly received information or to simply check through the list to see if any of the projects may have evolved enough that only a few more steps might be required to finish them off.
Possible feature cars currently ‘maturing’ in my current future projects folder include a ’72 Datsun 1200 SSS coupé, a Pontiac TransAm, a Cisitalia, a handful of Lotus sports cars, a Ferrari 250 Europa and an impressive Lancia line-up. And then there are the Nash Metropolitans that were originally supposed to be on the front cover of this very edition of the magazine but, like a few other cars on my list, Auckland’s Covid19 lockdown has delayed that idea.
One project is a two- or three-part feature along the lines of the history of Alternative Cars (the local company that gave us the longrunning T Car as well as the larger Swallow) we printed back in 2016. This particular project revolves around Stephen Beattie, the man behind the lovely Beattie Clubman (later renamed the Redline Sports after Stephen sold the car’s manufacturing rights).
Back in the mid-’90s, Stephen ran Formtool Engineering based in Howick, Auckland, and it was here that I first met him. On that day I was checking out the very first Beattie Clubman, his Ford-powered prototype. A long and memorable test drive followed and I was immediately impressed with everything about this gem of a sports car. Over the following years, I followed Stephen’s progress with interest and the next of his creations I was lucky enough to sample was the SR. Unlike the Clubman, this more modern sports cars was mid-engined. From there he moved on to the LM, a Le Mans-type endurance racer powered by a mid-mounted Subaru engine.
Alas, Stephen’s life was then derailed when his son, Paul, died and his interest in designing and building sports cars waned.
For a long time I heard nothing from Stephen until a few years ago when, reinvigorated, he was enthusiastic that there would be a display of Beattie cars at the annual Ellerslie Intermarque Concours – with one of the cars on display being the chassis of his latest creation, the Paolo, so named after his son.
Some time later, Stephen sent me some photos of the completed Paolo, a midengined sports car designed to invoke the spirit of Can-Am racing cars of the ’80s but with an Italian twist. Powered by a 1712cc quad-cam Alfa Romeo engine – fitted with Webers rather than the more usual fuelinjection – the Paolo weighs in at just under 600kg and Stephen reports that he’s more than happy with the car’s performance. As yet, I haven’t sampled the Paolo myself as Stephen is now based in the South Island.
As a bit of a lockdown project I’ve been digging through my archives to salvage all my past scribblings on Stephen and his cars. With some input from Stephen himself, hopefully everything will eventually come together for a feature in a future edition of NZ Classic Driver.