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By 1964 it was obvious to European drivers that while fame
could be won in Europe, fortune was most easily found in American
racing. “Professional” sports car racing was coming
of age in the United States, where the “West Coast Races”
at Riverside and Laguna Seca paid big money by European standards
and Indianapolis paid really big money by any racer’s
standards. Most Americans hadn’t seen a foreign driver
until Jimmy Clark came to Indianapolis in 1963, but more and
more “sporty car” drivers made their way across
the Atlantic as first the United States Road Racing Series
and then the Can-Am series made it possible for a driver to
earn more in one or two races than he could in a full season
of Formula One.
One of the first to see the light was Bruce McLaren. By 1963
McLaren, a works Cooper driver, had aspirations of building
his own car and had pulled together a small team of dedicated
“car nuts”. Roger Penske had run away with the 1963
West Coast races driving a barely legal “two seat Formula
One car”, the Zerex Special Cooper Climax. McLaren bought
that (after all, he understood Coopers!), made it comply with
the new 1964 rules, and replaced the Climax engine with an
aluminium-block Oldsmobile V-8. It was a good idea, but the
early 1964 “Pro” races showed it to be a year or
two too late.
Not daunted, Bruce and his friends quickly designed and built
a simple tube-frame rear engine chassis that was both lighter
and stiffer than the old Cooper and raced the “McLaren
Mk 1” in the final 1964 USRRC races. Although the McLaren-Olds
was usually the fastest car in the field, it failed to win
a race against Chevy and Ford-powered Anglo-American hybrids
and Jim Hall’s new Chaparrals. By now there were quite
a few would-be racers who wanted a competitive car for the
USRRC and for the Can-Am races on the horizon. Hall made it
very plain that there would be no “customer” Chaparrals,
and the next-best thing appeared to be the McLaren.
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McLaren didn’t
have any “production” capability, so a deal was
struck with Elva Cars to put a slightly revised Mk 1A into
production. The team cars remained “McLaren Mk 1’S”
while the Elva-built cars would be sold as “McLaren-Elvas”.
There were two changes; McLaren-Elvas would have fibreglass
bodies instead of aluminium and they would be built to accept
Chevy and Ford engines as well as the small-block Olds. Elva
built and sold 24 Mk 1A’s before switching to the more
aerodynamically effective Mk 1B and the stiffer Mk 1C. Although
in truth there were only two “true” McLaren Mk 1’s
built, all marks of the McLaren-Elvas were simply called “McLarens”
over here in the USA until Bruce unveiled the M6A that would
make everything, including the lovely Lola T70s and those
early McLaren Mk 1’s, obsolete.
Given the number of McLarens (OK, McLaren-Elvas) built expressly
for American racing, it’s not surprising that many racing
stars were seen in one of them at one time or another. That
includes Graham Hill, who qualified John Coombes’ “McLaren-
Chevrolet” (yes, it was really a McLaren-Elva) in fourth
place for the 1965 L.A. Times Grand Prix at Riverside and
was holding his own until the car shed a wheel on lap 24.
Having already modeled Roger Penske’s original “Zerex
Special” Cooper-Climax and Bruce’s more legal Cooper-Olds,
Marsh Models has now released several multi-media kits of
McLaren Mk 1’s and 1A’s. This one (MM066) is the
car driven by Graham in that 1965 USRRC “Times Grand
Prix”.
The kit’s contents should be no surprise to anyone who’s
built a Marsh kit in recent years; I counted 65 parts starting
with a very smooth, well-detailed resin body. In addition
there are 20 white-metal castings, 4 black resin wheel/tyre
castings, 4 turned alloy outer wheel halves, 6 chrome-plated
pieces, 22 photo-etched parts including 4 heavier “chassis
tube” pieces, vac-formed windscreen and headlight covers,
and the usual screws and axles.
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The decals are quite
simple but include excellent period “Firestone”
sidewall logos complete with yellow circles— more about
these later. Finally, there’s a double-sided instruction
sheet with an exploded view, complete parts listing with painting
information, three color photos of the complete model, and
a real paint chip.
It took only a couple of minutes to get the body ready to
be washed; there was a tiny mould line under the tail and
some “ragged edges” inside the radiator exit duct.
The white-metal castings were equally good and took only a
few more minutes; I found no problems of any kind here. I
glued the rear spoiler to the body before priming everything,
and was delighted to find that a single primer coat was all
that was needed. No filler of any kind was required. I didn’t
find an exact match for the paint, described as “ghostly
grey” in “Riverside Raceway, Palace of Speed”.
It’s very definitely an “off white” but with
a grey tint rather than the brown hue of the much more common
Ford “Wimbolden White”. I mixed a very small amount
of black into some “refrigerator white” to match
that very handy colour chip.
The interior tub is folded up from a single photo-etched piece
with the seats, “chassis tubes”, dash and other
details added. Although the instructions indicated building
this up on the baseplate, I found it was easier to fit the
tub to the body (check to make sure the baseplate will fit)
and then add the rest of the interior before attaching the
baseplate. Everything else fitted just as it should until
I hit the wheels— or more specifically, the rear wheels.
The inner diameters of the rear wheel/tyre castings were about
a millimeter greater than the outer diameter of the machined
wheels, leaving a noticeable gap between the wheel and the
sidewall when the wheel was glued in place. After scratching
my head for a while, I mixed some Testor’s Model Master
acrylic flat black into a couple of drops of Kristal Klear
(MSKK) and used that to fill the gaps. It worked like a charm,
and I’d think that Tamiya paint would work for those
who live where Testor’s water-based paints aren’t
available.
I drilled holes to mount the mirror supports in the windscreen
before cutting it from the vac-formed sheet. Once cut free
the big windscreen fitted well, as did the tiny headlight
covers.
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The decals were very
simple and easy to apply but the side number disks were slightly
too large and had to have a “notch” cut out for
the fender scoops. It wasn’t until after I had the model
completed per the instructions that I found an excellent photo
of Hill and this car in the “Riverside” book mentioned
above. I don’t like to disagree with John (I invariably
lose!) but that photo shows somewhat different markings and
two more small rear fender scoops just above the black lower
panel; brake cooling scoops, I’d bet. The number disks
(same number) are on the door, not the rear fenders (there
are no “G. Hill” decals), and there are three small
sponsor decals on the rear fenders, with the “extra”
one being a Goodyear badge, making those beautiful Firestone
sidewall decals somewhat out of place. That photo shows the
fresh-air cockpit ducts that are on the model and a large
“ding” on the bottom of the nose, so I suspect it
really is a Riverside race-day photo. My guess is that the
model is based on the car as it showed up at Riverside. Practice
(it was always hot at Riverside) showed the need for more
brake cooling. The added scoops required moving the numbers
to the door, replacing Hill’s name, and evidently either
Goodyear tyres were faster or they paid more sponsorship money.
Like I’ve always said, race cars change, not from race
to race, but from practice session to practice session!
(We’ve checked with Marsh
and they say that the information they had was supplied by
an avid Graham Hill collector who was sure that the photographs
were from Riverside. They are now looking into it in even
more detail and we’ll let you know what the outcome is.
Ed)
The overall lines and other details match that photo (and
in major details, photos of other McLaren-Elvas of the time)
and all dimensions are within 0.05 inch or less of perfect
1/43 scale. Except for the rear wheels, this was pretty much
a “shake the box” kit and with that photo in hand
it would be easy to add the rear fender scoops and move the
decals to model the car “as raced”. Marsh’s
excellent multi-media kit is available from GPM, of course.
Lists of all CanAm or McLaren
subjects are available on request from GPM.
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