DOWN THE WORKSHOP
F5000 GURNEY EAGLE FA74 Current owner: Frank Lyons
It has Indycar origins “The chassis was designed for Indycar racing and Dan Gurney had sponsorship from Jorgensen Steel and he originally had this mad idea to make as much of the car as possible from titanium. When he took this idea to Bill Jorgensen, Jorgensen didn’t want to sponsor a car like that.”
They were changed to F5000s “Dan had a brief spell in Formula 5000 in the early days with an Eagle so after the Indy programme in 1973 he had an idea that it would make a good F5000 car. He actually built four cars but one of the four was written off in period. The other one is in the States. They are a very well made car and it is a heavyweight compared to a Lola T330, but has incredibly good handling.”
Lyons got it in 2005 “The first time I saw this car was at Brands Hatch and it belonged to Ian Giles. I’d always liked the car and he decided he wasn’t going to race it anymore, so I ended up buying it. That was more than 10 years ago. My wife Judy started driving it and enjoyed it. Then, out of the blue, about three years ago a dealer in the US phoned me and asked if I’d like another Eagle.”
He now has two “It was the unraced chassis number 1 in the Vijay Mallya collection in California. So I went over and had a look at it, and really liked it and ended up with that one as well. When we started preparing it, there was a crack in one of the uprights so I went back to Gurney’s son to ask about another upright. He said they had loads of them but his dad would not sell anyone anything made from magnesium because of the long-term liability. So we had to cast our own uprights.”
He collects F5000s “We will race the other one at some point. We’ve owned the Sid Taylor Mclaren M18 for 20 years; we have a Mcrae and several Lolas. I really should stop collecting them and get them to people who will go out and race them. In 1975, Gurney did an FA75, which James Hunt raced but there was only one of those, which looks a bit like a Mclaren M26.”