|
|
This time fifty years ago was a special era for Britain: Queen
Elizabeth II was crowned in Westminster Abbey and Sir Edmund
Hillary led the world’s first successful expedition to
the summit of Everest. But it was also a special time for
sports car racing because the Le Mans 24-hour race in 1953
boasted the best ever entry in the event’s eighty year
history. Out of sixty cars allowed to start forty-eight were
“works” entries and to crown Britain’s year,
Jaguar scored a superb win against the might of all the big
contemporary sports car manufacturers - only Mercedes was
absent that year from the sport, preparing its onslaught on
Grand Prix racing for 1954. Let us therefore have a look at
Britain’s contribution to this exceptional edition of
the “Vingt-quatre Heures”.
This was Jaguar’s
big year, particularly in view of the depth of the opposition.
The Coventry marque had already scored its first of seven
wins in 1951 when the C-type fulfilled its designed purpose
but, in fairness to its competitors, many companies were only
just starting to recover from the austere conditions after
the war. Yet some two years later a new confidence had started
to emerge and manufacturers of all classes were becoming acutely
conscious of the enormous commercial benefits to be derived
from success at Le Mans.
Jaguar had,
of course, blundered really badly the year before (leaving
Mercedes to succeed) by breaking a fundamental rule: never
put a car into the Le Mans race unless it has been raced in
that format beforehand. Panic that the C-type would not be
fast enough after the Mercedes Mille Miglia performance caused
the team to adopt a last-minute modification to the normal
bodywork - a lower more streamlined front with a long sweeping
tail. This untried design quickly manifested a serious deficiency
in the cooling requirements but it was too late to change
it back and all three “works” cars failed in the
opening hours.
 |
Needless to say, this bodywork was never raced again
and the well-tried normal bodywork adorned the cars for the
1953 race. These machines were characterised by being lighter
than their production counter-parts and boasted the revolutionary
new disc brakes which Jaguar had been “playing around”
with since the Easter Goodwood meeting of 1952. Problems with
overheating fluid etc. had now been solved and the late braking
made possible at the end of the Mulsanne Straight gave the
Jaguars a huge advantage over twenty-four hours.
Furthermore,
the engines were wearing a triple Weber carburettor inlet
arrangement, a modification which first appeared early that
June on HWM’s first Jaguar-engined sports car at the
Shelsley Walsh hillclimb.
But before
the cars joined the battle there was another panic! Jaguar
had brought along to the race a spare (production) car for
their regular test driver Norman Dewis to have some experience
with as he was to be the officially nominated reserve driver
for the team. The boss, William Lyons, was not normally willing
to risk Dewis on the race-tracks although he did finally reward
him with a “works” drive at Le Mans in 1955 when
he partnered Don Beauman. Accidentally, the spare car, numbered
18, was left in front of the pits during practice alongside
the race car no. 18 and this sent the organisers into a real
state of confusion. Disqualification was threatened and it
took the best part of the Friday for the team to reassure
the A.C.O. that no attempt at cheating was intended. Thus
did eventual winners Rolt and Hamilton imagine that their
race was finished before it had even started!
However, all
was well and Jaguar, leaving the Ferrari’s to their opening
Grand Prix sprint, the Lancias to break their supercharged
engines, the Alfa Romeos to break during the night, emerged
at dawn in command to finish first, second and fourth with
the Ecurie Francorchamps standard C-type in ninth - a superb
result in the Coronation year!
|
 |
The winning Jaguar C Type
modelled by Stephen Barnett
(SBT004) |
Another British marque, Healey, also shone. The new smaller
Austin-Healey had been the sensation of the 1952 Earls Court
Motor Show and a last minute tie-up with Leonard Lord, the
boss of Austin, led to the cars being produced on the production
lines of Longbridge while Donald Healey could turn his attention
to giving the cars a competition heritage. Two very standard
models, powered by the basic Austin A90 engine, ran complete
with front bumpers and finished the race reliably in 12th
and 14th positions. Nor must we overlook the new car’s
predecessor, the Nash-Healey, which appeared at Le Mans for
the last time, scoring 11th overall with what was a very basic
production six-cylinder saloon car engine. Its predecessors
had done well at Le Mans since 1950, scoring 4th, 6th and
3rd places in 1950,50, 52, the combination of Rolt and Hamilton
accounting for the first two successes before they were snapped
up by Jaguar.
Aston Martin
had of course covered themselves with glory in the early postwar
races, the David Brown cars winning their class and even the
coveted Index of Performance with the DB2 coupés (see
FSW 03-2003). But, much to team boss John Wyer’s chagrin,
the sports racing prototype was taking over the chief rôle
at Le Mans and this necessitated Astons building one such
car themselves. The result was the DB3, the work of Eberan
von Eberhorst, an engineer with a pedigree of working with
Dr Porsche on the pre-war Auto Unions before joining ERA after
the war. His work was characterised by solid, cautious engineering
and the car was never as competitive as had been hoped.
During the
winter of 1952-53 it was clear to one of the firm’s senior
designers, Willie Watson, that a lighter car was needed and,
being very much a free-thinker, he submitted proposals for
an improved car to the Aston management. The go-ahead was
given and, bodied by Frank Feeley’s attractive design,
the DB3S emerged. Testing at Monza revealed a much better
car and, while examples were being constructed, the DB3 gave
final service at Sebring and in the Mille Miglia.
However, Le Mans was the debut of the DB3S but the team was
out of luck: Parnell uncharacteristically crashed one at Tertre
Rouge after only sixteen laps, the clutch failed on the Abecassis-Salvadori
car while a valve caused the final retirement for Poole-Thompson
in the 18th hour.
The other
contender from Britain for a good overall result was Allard.
This small company based in Clapham had scored a fine 3rd
place in 1950 with a Cadillac-engined J2 in the hands of Sydney
Allard and American Tom Cole (sadly to lose his life when
his Ferrari crashed at White House at dawn in the 1953 race).
Sydney had gone on to win the 1952 Monte Carlo Rally with
the P1 saloon and Allard cars were popular in sports car racing
in North America where they leant themselves to being powered
by big American V-8s.
|
The
firm’s final attempt at Le Mans came in 1953 with the
JR model, Cadillac-powered after Chrysler hemis had been tried
the year before without any success. Allard’s efforts
were noble but it can be seen that the competition from bigger
companies with much larger resources was, by the mid-fifties,
getting well into its stride, offering cheaper sporting cars
at much lower production costs, spelling the end for worthy
makers like Allard who could no longer afford to compete;
didn’t Austin save Healey?
The two JR
Allards with their 5.4 litre V-8s helped to set the early
pace, Sydney Allard actually having the honour of leading
at the end of the first lap but the cars were frail, his coming
in with a broken rear axle mounting on the very next lap while
its team-mate lasted only until the sixth hour when a connecting-rod
broke. Clearly early season racing in club meetings at Ibsley
and Thruxton as well as the Silverstone International in May
was inadequate preparation for such a demanding race.
Inadequate
testing accounted also for the disappointing first appearance
of the Bristol team. This fairly new motor manufacturer, a
branch of the world-famous Bristol Aeroplane Company, was
producing up-market sporting saloons using its anglicised
version of the famous pre-war BMW 328 engine, a unit also
used to power post-war Frazer-Nash cars and, in due course,
the AC Ace. Finding that private owners were keen to compete
with their cars, Bristol decided to do things officially,
aiming at the 2-litre class in endurance events.
A short cut
was available in the form of the ERA G-type Formula 2 car.
This had a fine chassis, very rigid which was conducive to
good road holding but had the driver alongside the transmission
which was not conducive to achieving a small frontal area,
a basic necessity in single-seater racing. Nor was the production
Bristol engine able to keep up with specialist racing engines
like those of Ferrari and Maserati despite some good showings
when mounted in Cooper chassis. It made good sense therefore
to clothe the G-type chassis in aerodynamic bodywork and Bristol
bought the drawings from ERA and constructed three steel chassis
in place of the magnesium alloy used by ERA and dressed them
in what can only be regarded as strange all enveloping bodies
with two large dorsal fins at the back of the narrow cockpit,
aeroplane influence being apparent everywhere, even down to
the cowled instruments! Two such strange machines set off
in the 1953 race but accidents owing to engine failure caused
their retirements , although one car retrieved some honour
in the Reims 12-hour race shortly after by winning the 2-litre
class. Bristols went on to win their class during the following
two years at Le Mans before withdrawing from competition.
Two Bristol-engined
Frazer-Nashes completed the British contingent in 1953, the
Wharton-Mitchell coupé coming home 13th and scooping
the 2-litre class win.
And what about
all the other “works” entries that year? That would
need much more space than the editor can spare me just now!
To be continued......
|
|
