Australia's Elfin Sports and Racing Cars

Australia's Elfin Sports and Racing Cars



Australia's Elfin Sports and Racing Cars by John Blanden and Barry Catford

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This is the limited print-run of the original 1997 publication in response to public demand.

It is a little known fact that the tiny Australian company, Elfin, was the world’s second largest producer/manufacturer of racing cars ever.

In the late 1950s, an imaginative, modest and dedicated South Australian, Garrie Cooper, realised his dream and began building a series of sports/racing cars in his small Adelaide factory. He called them Elfin, and the subsequent history of the marque is long and illustrious. From the first Streamliners, Cooper’s designs progressed through some of the most highly com­petitive sports and open-wheeler racing cars of their day, ranging from Formula Vees through to 'big banger' sports cars and the MR9 formula 5000 of the 1980s.

Champion racer, John Bowe, in his foreword to this book, expresses his belief that had Cooper been based in the United Kingdom he would have been a world class designer/constructor. Certainly his cars ran with the best, both at home and overseas, and a measure of their appeal is evident in the large number that are still competing in open competition and in Historic racing here and internationally.

The history of every known Elfin is covered in this book and register sheets give details of the current status of each car. The frank recollections of many who were intimately involved with the Elfin marque are fully recounted in this exhaustive history of one of Australia's great racing names.

In 1982, Garrie Cooper died, tragically young at 46. After his death Tasmanian Tony Edmondson and mechanic John Porter assumed the Elfin mantle, designing a new Formula Vee, the Crusader, and a Formula Brabham car.

In 1993, the Elfin name passed to Victorian Murray Richards, who set out to build a 'new generation' Elfin Clubman. In failing health, he in turn sold Elfin in 1998 to the enthusiastic and capable pair, Bill Hemming and Nick Kovatch, subsequently being taken over by the late Tom Walkinshaw.

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Bill Thompson Australian Motor Racing Champion - review by Michael Stahl

 

Bill Thompson Australian Motor Racing Champion

AN IMPRESSIVE motorsport book that latterly caught my eye, did so not only  with its daunting size and historic photography, but with its subject matter. Bill Thompson— Australian Motor Racing Champion is a lavish homage to someone of whom I, and probably you, had never even heard.
Thompson, born in Sydney in 1906, was a three-time winner of the Australian Grand Prix (1930, '32-'33). Adelaide-based historic racer Kent Patrick relates Thompson's life and career with intriguing sidetracks and wry understatement that betray Patrick's former role as a stipendiary magistrate.
William Bethel "Bill" Thompson had a comfortable upbringing, though the larrikin kid left his expensive school at 16 to commence a career with various motor importers.

A 1925 tour of England's Brooldands circuit, followed by the opening of Sydney's treacherous concrete bowl at Maroubra, only fuelled Thompson's belief that he had been born to join the era's heroes like AV. Rimer, R.G. 'Phil' Garlick and Hope Bartlett.

Through his small, specialised garage, Thompson met a patron in professor Dr Arthur Burkitt, who funded a 1.5-litre Bugatti Type 37. They had missed the first Australian Grand Prix in 1928 by three months but Thompson, with Burkitt as riding mechanic, enjoyed immediate class success in various hillclimbs, dirt ovals, beach sprints and, at his second attempt, Maroubra.

Thompson was skilled, and blessed with top-flight machinery. Patrick's accounts of all the leading cars of the day are fascinating, often enhanced by asides on their current whereabouts: the front axle of Bartlett's Sunbeam, for example, is today part of a boat mooring.

In the 1929 AGP, the Thompson/Burkitt Bugatti retired after only five laps on the dusty, packed-dirt surface. What Thompson dismissed as a "blow-up", here invites a full page's discourse on the intricacies of Bugatti monobloc engines.

Burkitt bankrolled a new Bug, the supercharged 37A, in plenty of time for the 1930 AGP. After a costly early stop to cure a misfire, Thompson stormed back from 10th to second place. He inherited the lead when arch¬rival Arthur Terdich's 37A threw a rod on the 11th of 31 laps, and won the AGP.
Thompson was forced to sit out the following year's Depression-wracked race. His 37A had been 'sold' to Hope Bartlett, but the car would return, after a court battle, to Thompson the following year. The fully rebuilt 37A started the 1932 race as favourite and, despite an oil leak, Thompson duly became the first double winner of the AGP.

Six months later, the 37A was almost written off at a hillc_limb event. Thompson left his struggling Sydney garage to join new Riley importers Empire Motors, which brought him an ex-works Brooklands Riley for the 1933 AGP.

On a wet, choppy circuit, the Riley threatened to shake itself to pieces. But ahead of Thompson, the leading trio of Bugattis failed one by one, handing him his third AGP. It would be his last AGP win, but in both 1934 and '35, driving a K3 MG for his new employer Robert Lane, Thompson would miss victory by less than 30 seconds.

So, in six AGP starts, Thompson won three times, finished second twice and failed to finish once. Four times he set the fastest lap.

By mid-1935 Thompson had largely retired from racing. He took a job with Shell and, in late-1938,
the result of a long friendship with General Thomas Blarney, became a provisional lieutenant with the Australian Army Reserve.

Officially, he was involved in the sourcing of marine engine parts. Patrick cites evidence that Thompson was recruited for espionage. In either of these roles, he was aboard a US Air Force Coronado flying boat when it suffered a mild crash-landing in the Marshall islands in March, 1945. Thompson drowned in the accident.

The book concludes with comprehensive chapters on the whereabouts of the cars significant in Thompson's career. Here is revealed why the topic of Bill Thompson is so close to the author's heart:
his own Bugatti 37A beats with many of the parts from Thompson's most famous racer.

Michael Stahl (Wheels Magazine)

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