ELVA's Legacy: From Chalk Lines to Champions

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Break Fix's History of MotorsportsSeries is brought to you in part
by the International Motor RacingResearch Center, as well as the
Society of Automotive Historians,the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
Commerce, and the Argo Singer family.
In this remastered centeredconversation, the International Motor
Racing Research Center hosts the Elvareunion at Watkins Glen, celebrating

(00:24):
the historic connection betweenElva cars and the famous racetrack.
The event featured various speakers,including Yanos Wien, who authored a
definitive book on Elva and Burette BirdieMartin, regarded as a leading ambassador
for automobile racing and the originalElva distributor for the United States.
Both presenters delve into the intricaciesof Elvis's history from the inception by

(00:44):
Frank Nichols in 1955, to its evolutionand key milestones in racing history.
Various key figures such as ChuckDietrich, Carl Haass, and Mark Donahue's
early career with Elva are highlighted.
This center conversation includes personalanecdotes from racing experiences,
descriptions of Elvis's marketinginfluence, challenges, innovations, and
its esteem status in vintage motor sports.

(01:05):
Today I'm JC Argetsinger, presidentof the International Motor Racing
Research Center, and we are thrilledto have the Elva reunion, Elvis's
and Watkins Glen go back a long time.
Perhaps we can get my brotherMichael, who's gonna be coming to
the podium to tell you a littlestory that he had 1958 with an Elva.
We have a number of Elva owners, andI'm gonna introduce them in a moment.

(01:27):
Now I know the Elva owners are going to begoing up to the track a little later on.
Thank you for being here.
I've said we have two wonderful speakershere, Giannis Wien, who's our major
speaker who has written the definitivebook on the Elva, and we were able
to coax Birdie Martin to come out.
Birdie, as you know, probably the greatestliving ambassador for automobile racing.

(01:47):
Delighted he's here.
Birdie is the original EL owner.
You know, he was theoriginal Elva distributor.
And if you saw our last newsletteror saw Jonas's book, there's a
spectacular picture of Birdiewith the Elva up on two wheels.
And maybe he'll tell us what happened.
It's frozen in in time and you wonder, didhe write it back or did he roll it over?

(02:08):
But thank you Birdie.
And maybe, maybe you'll comment on that.
Anyway, we have this wonderfulspeaker in this just incredible book.
I didn't know that there could beso much material about Elvis's.
It was so informativeand so well researched.
The photographs arejust terrific, Jonathan.
I'm thrilled to see it, but I'm not goingto say much about these two gentlemen here
because, um, Michael Argetsinger, the goodlooking Argo singer and the racing Argo

(02:32):
singer, I'm, uh, unfortunately the Argosinger who was, had the black sheep of
the family who was had a nine to five job.
My brothers, Michael andPeter have raced extensively.
Michael has raced, I probably shouldn'tsay this anymore because it dates
you, but he started when he was nine.
He's raced for four and a half decadesand think he's raced at something
like seven different countries,54 tracks, and over 400 races.

(02:55):
Not only is he good looking andhe's a great driver, but he has, uh,
produced four wonderful books on thissport, starting with the Walt Hanskin
book, which really brings the storyof road racing from its inception
here in Watkins Glen after the war.
And then he picks up with histwo books on Mark Donahue.
Mark was a protege of Walt Hanskinand Michael brings the story further.

(03:16):
Now.
Our latest book from Michael, which he andDavid Bull Publishing, have given up any
profit on it, and it's all for the profitof the Motor Racing Research Center.
It is the, uh, story of theUS Grand Prix here at Watkins
Glen from 1960 to 20 years.
Through 1980.
So without further ado, I'm going to turnthe program over to Michael r ar Singer.

(03:42):
Well, it's great to have a big brotherwho says nice things about you.
That's a nice introduction.
Indeed.
I. I want to tell you what we're goingto talk about today, and then I'm going
to introduce the speakers and before Itell you about the program, I want to
thank someone who isn't with us, buthas been really helpful, extraordinarily
helpful in putting this together.
And that's Roger Dunbar from the uk.

(04:03):
No one to most of you.
I believe he really worked alot behind the scenes and he
almost was able to make the trip.
Yano Schwimm.
Finn is going to talk a littlemore specifically about Roger,
but Roger, thank you very much.
Now the program today I is reallyexciting and I just feel terrifically

(04:23):
honored to be introducing thesetwo people who I admire so much.
Our keynote speaker is Yosh Wien, whohas come from Seattle and Bette Martin.
Brady Martin, as he is known all overthe world, came out from Chicago.
Yosh will keynote it.
Bri's going to come in a couple of timesinto the middle of the program, talk
about, uh, some of his involvement.
Birdie also was, in addition tohaving been the original Elva

(04:46):
importer to this country, wore somany other hats in American racing.
He was the series chief steward forthe CCAs TransAm in its golden days.
The 1970, which was the seminalyear for that later, was then the
uh, series Chief Steward for theCan-Am, which we all dearly recall.
This only touches on birdie'slife from 1983 actually to 2006.

(05:09):
Birdie was the President of AKIs.
AKIs is an acronym forAutomobile Competition
Committee of the United States.
It's a tremendous honor to holdthat position, but it's a really
difficult job to maintain.
The AKIs is the AmericanDelegate to the FIA.
The FIA.
As you know, doles out the internationaldates, makes all the rules.

(05:31):
It's where it all emanates from,and America has many competing
sanctioning bodies, but wherethey come together is in AKIs.
They're all on the board.
And with a man like Bernie Martinthere to keep them all talking to one
another, the international dates andso many other things are doled out.
Birdie's position with his much lovedAnne, who we dearly miss, ran AKIs.

(05:52):
And so many of you, if you applied for aninternational license during that period,
or you worked with Anne and, and Birdie,but Birdie was chief steward at many of
the World Grand Prix around the world.
He was active in Paris on the FIA itself.
He was vice president of FIA,in addition to being president
of the American delegation.
And he was in fact the longestserving vice president, uh,

(06:14):
that the FIA has ever had.
He also headed up the InternationalRecords Commission and the FIA is
the ultimate verifier, if you will,of land speed records, uh, speed
records in general, and Birdiewas president of that commission.
Again, he was one of the foundingmembers of the FIA Trust.
Now we say Chief Steward in Europe,they say clerk of the course.

(06:35):
But as I mentioned, many, many of theWorld Formula One Grand PRIs and of
course, birdie operated during that periodwhen Formula One was in a dynamic period.
It was a, it was a time of greatchange, of great controversy.
We were so fortunate as Americans tohave someone who has the wit, the charm
and the negotiating abilities to keepthese very difficult groups of people

(06:57):
all agreeing to do the right thing.
So we're gonna hear from Birdie in just afew minutes and it's gonna be a delight.
Our keynote speaker willbe an equal delight.
Yosh Wien is one of America'sgreat researchers and writers
in the world of Motorsport.
He has been a prolific writer, andthat's really something to have
published as many books as Yosh haspublished, because his books are

(07:20):
incredibly well researched, they'rein depth, they're respected worldwide.
His background is, uh, is a PhD and he's,he's an academic, but really, he's a,
he's a racer at heart, and, uh, he isknown and and admired around the world.
He's a third generation car guy, a memberof a historic Austro-Hungarian family.
Yanos came here at about age four.

(07:42):
So he is in addition to his love ofmotor sports, he's a real baseball nut.
Yanos has been to more minor leagueballparks around America, and I think all
but maybe one or two major league parks.
And even on this trip, he'salready got to the Syracuse
Stadium and the, uh, Buffalo one.
So he, he never misses a chance.
He loves minor leaguesequally with the majors.

(08:03):
Interesting family.
His grandfather held the Austriandriver's license, number one, and
in fact, in taking the test, hehad to give the instructions to the
Vienna policemen because they hadno idea what they were examining.
He learned great engineering skills fromhis father, mechanical aptitude from his
brother, and he did some club racing andhe says that taught him he didn't have
driving skills of Austrian such as LADAand rent, but we could all say that we

(08:27):
didn't have talents like LADA and Rent.
He has been consultingall over the country.
In addition to his writing, he's aconsultant regularly in, in Naples,
Florida for the Collier Museum, forthe Bruce McCaw collection and others.
And he is sought after by car owners andhistorians, literally all over the world.
I am very proud to, uh, be a friend ofJan OSHA's, as well as fellow author,

(08:49):
and we share the same publisher, DavidBull Publishing, and we were together in
Beverly Hills this past December at thePeterson Museum for the Motor Press Guilds
Award, the Dean Bachelor Award and DavidBull, to his great credit had two of the
three finalists, and the winner was Yosh.
I really have so much more tosay about both of these men, but
you really want to hear them.

(09:10):
So I am going to ask Yoshto come to the podium.
Thank you very muchboth to Michael and jc.
In fact, jcs a little issue therewith having additional elbow owners.
I'm so familiar with that syndrome thatyou work hard on something and then

(09:32):
when it's actually out there, all of asudden more information comes your way.
It's always actually apleasure rather than a problem.
In fact, of course, here, it's a pleasurethat we have additional Elva owners.
I found that from the very firstbook that I did, which is called Time
in Two Seats, that once I finishedthat and people started coming
forward, well, you either got thiswrong or you forgot about this, or.

(09:54):
Here's some additionalinformation on this or that race.
First time that happened to me,I was kinda a little discouraged,
like, oh, did I drop the ball here?
Or something like that.
More often than not, I wouldbe comforted by other people
saying, no, no, no, you got it.
All right.
But next time around, here's a littleextra added information and, and
that's interestingly part of this wholeprocess, process of discovery, I call it.

(10:16):
I get asked a lot about sort of thewriting process and the creative
process publishing process.
All these have a lot of little nuancesto them, which I can go on for hours.
It, this maybe a separatetopic altogether, but I
think at the four of this.
Is really the joy of learning.
Just like those little tidbitsthat come to you after the fact.

(10:38):
I've learned that what really is thejoy of that is you learn something new.
There's no such thing as an olddog doesn't learn new tricks.
That's how we enjoy getting older, islearning more each day, and hopefully
that gets incorporated into these books.
It certainly is the case with Elva.
I didn't know much aboutElva to start with.
I know a lot more now.

(10:59):
There's still a lot moreto know about this morning.
People were coming up to me and giving meextra little bits, whether it was about
their car or interesting tidbits theyaccumulated that I didn't know about.
Always a process of learning.
The other maybe issue of why dowe do what we do that is have an
interest in motor sport history andis it really worthwhile after all?
It's not rocket science.

(11:20):
We're not discovering acure for some disease.
Something like that.
How important is it to society?
Well, true.
It doesn't rank up with.
Some of those other very valuableenterprises that people undertake, but
this is important when you think thatthe automobile is the 20th century's most
significant technological achievement.
It changed everything from the19th century or 20th century.

(11:43):
It was a sea change.
Most of that came aboutbecause of the automobile.
Not all of it.
Good.
Mind you, there are utopias and dystopiascreated at the same time and in some
small way, that's what we're looking at.
We're looking at that history, that 20thcentury and the most significant part of
it we're looking at from a motor sportspoint of view, particularly from the
recreational element of it, which is amajor part of automotive history, was

(12:07):
how it was used as a recreational tool.
That's not insignificant, butit's also important to have
fun while we're doing it.
And of course we're all havingfun while we're doing it.
This is, by the way, a conversationI often have with a friend of
mine in the uk, Doug Nye, whoyou may know of his books.
He's also a very well knownhistorian, Motorsport historian.
Whenever we sometimes share a podium andtalk about these sorts of things and his

(12:30):
sort of thing is, well, we in in Englanddon't do this kind of naval gazing.
We just get on with it.
Have a lot of fun and he's got aa really good point about that.
Just one other comment about thecreative process in general, and we'll
get to the meat of the talk here.
That, and this is again, because Iperiodically get asked this sort of thing
about, well, how do you do these thingsanyway, I don't know if this would apply

(12:50):
to Michael as well, his creative process.
And just like in any enterprise thatyou undertake any kinda work, you hit
roadblocks, you hit problems, you go,how do I write this next paragraph,
this next chapter, in my case, it'susually the next caption to a photo.
Those are, to me, are alwayschallenging and you hit roadblocks.
And sometimes you want topractice iron discipline.

(13:11):
I'm gonna sit here at thekeyboard until I get this right.
Just like you practice sometimes irondiscipline at fixing the leak in the,
uh, kitchen sink, and you're gonna getit done now no matter what happens.
And what often happens is you breakthe nut or whatever it is, or you're
working on the car, you break thenut off rather than accomplish it.
So you have to sort ofstep back from that.

(13:32):
And I kind of call it thepleasure principle of creativity.
I've only lately learned that there'sactually a neuroscientific aspect to this.
I don't know all the details ofthat, but you have to step back and
do something that's ultimately verypleasurable, that doesn't involve a
lot of brain activity, necessarily.
Relax and let the creativeprocess flow through You.

(13:55):
Let the two things connectedhave never connected before.
My personal preferenceis a morning shower.
Think of how many times in the showerin the morning you might be dwelling
on what you have to do that day,but it's a very pleasurable moment.
Nobody's bothering you.
You're by yourself.
You get to think about what you're doingduring the day, and you inevitably connect
two dots that never been connected beforeabout your particular problem of the day.

(14:19):
I use that a lot in the creativeprocess day before I'm stuck on some
paragraph the next morning in a shower.
Go, oh, that's a solution to that.
Sometimes by the time I get topad of paper, I've forgotten what
it was, but, but that's very muchpart of the creative process.
And like I say, I understandfrom neuroscientists that there's
actually a part of the brain thatgoes into play at those times and

(14:40):
works on connecting those dots.
The publishing process is adifferent sort of thing because that
involves a lot of give and take.
Michael mentioned he and I are really,truly privileged to share what I consider
absolutely the best publisher in theworld as far as motor racing, motor
sports books, and that's David Bull.
I think Michael has maybe a littledifferent relationship with him than I do.

(15:01):
David is very exacting and he and Ihave had years and years of debates,
just hours and hours worth of debatesabout how to do sometimes literally
a particular sentence, position ofphotographs, something like that.
And there's a lot ofgive and take on that.
But the end of the day, theproduct wouldn't be the product
without somebody like David Bone.

(15:21):
A lot of tribute to him.
Quick tribute to a couple people thatI've gotten to know, particularly here
in the center, because this is not thefirst time I've been to the center.
I think there's people like BillGreen who has just been a marvelous
in terms of helping me put together alot of the data that goes into this.
Been privileged to meet people like MaxNisha, Randy, Kevin, Josh, Glenda, all

(15:44):
the other people involved in the center.
You have a treasure here.
That's amazing.
A treasure not only in thefacilities, but a treasure in
terms of the people that are here.
There are a marvelous group of people thatdo really committed and do a good job.
That people thing is also, bythe way, something that I think
drives a lot of this history.
Yes.

(16:04):
The history of motor sports andautomotive history in general is one
about lug nuts and torque settings andcarburetors and the like, but it's really
about the people on all of this, thehistories of the people involved, people
like Birdie, Martin sitting here, andcharacters left and right are really
what this history is ultimately about.

(16:26):
That's what we carry on the nextgeneration to tell the stories of the
people who were involved there were.
Good people, not so goodpeople, characters of all sorts.
And in all the work that I've done,I've discovered I go into it with sort
of a nuts and bolts approach, and atthe end of the day, come out of it.
The respect is really for the people.
As for Elva, why Elva?

(16:46):
Well, maybe a little bit of anintroduction to Elva for those of you.
I know there are many Elva owners herewho know of many cases better than I do.
But for those of you who may not befamiliar with the Elva, mark Elva was
a British mark that existed for a veryshort period of time, from roughly
1955 to roughly 1965, although there'sa little bit of fading in and fading

(17:09):
out for and after that, but reallyfor a short period of time, it was
a contemporary of other makes, suchas Cooper Lotus, Lola, particularly
those and a few others rival to those.
It came out of a particular muu ofthe early fifties British scene.
The economy in Britain wasn't thatstrong, but the technology was there.

(17:31):
And again, in terms of the people,there was a lot of expertise
into how to go about things.
And we'll see a little bit about that.
And that's just a very, very shortoverview of what Elva is as a mark.
It's a unique mark in many ways.
It's both unique and it's also typical.
It's typical of that time in England.

(17:51):
Different automobile constructorswon't really call it manufacturer,
but it's also unique 'cause it hasits own particular peculiarities.
I came into this project actuallysomewhat later down the line.
I didn't originate the project.
A project was originated by two Falls, oneof which mentioned before Roger Dunbar in
in England and Jeff Allison in Colorado.

(18:13):
They had undertaken to producethe history of Elva and did
an amazing amount of legwork.
They interviewed many of the key people.
Thankfully, they interviewed someof the key people who were no longer
with us and passed away beforeI got involved in the project.
They did a lot of the nuts andbolts work involved in getting
the information, but they nevergot around to actually writing it.

(18:34):
So I came in, I was asked to do thewriting of the book, which of course
then as I said before, got me involvedin learning as to what Elva was.
I mean, I had a rough idea before, butto learning the real nuts and bolts of
Elva and sort of took it over from there.
There's really one personbehind Elva more than anybody
else, and that's Frank Nichols.

(18:55):
Frank grew up in SussexCounty, south of England.
He was a son of a grocer.
He was in the army in World Warii, served in Al Maine, was injured
Al Maine and gained a lot ofmechanical skills during the war.
Brought those back to Englandafter he mustered out.
So he's in the south of England,Becks Hills, the name of the village,

(19:16):
which is very close to Hastings,where William the Conquer landed in
10 66 of kind of a historic area.
Also historic Automotively.
That's where the, one of the veryfirst automotive competitions
took place in England in 1903.
So he mustered out of the, uh, military,out of the army, and quickly developed
an interest in automotive things becauseas I say, he developed the skill.

(19:38):
He opened up a garage repairingcars, called the London Road
Garage on London Road in Beville.
And quickly became interestedin racing, and this was where I
would say Elva, this is a commonoccurrence that time in England.
Young men develop mechanicalaptitude during the war.
Now have a little bit of spendingmoney, maybe develop some kind of

(20:00):
an enterprise related to automobilesand get interested in motor racing.
Frank did that.
He drove a Ford 10, which is a verycommon car of that era in racing.
He also drove a Lotus Six, A Lotussix, with a Ford 10 engine in it.
Modest success.
His driving skills were never thatparticularly great, but he quickly

(20:20):
became involved with a fall namedwits and also indirectly with Harry
Westlake, who you may know of the namefrom a lot of automotive development.
In the 1960s, they developed a veryunique part of the power plant.
In addition to the Ford 10, a hopup kit, if you will, an inlet over
exhaust valve kit that you couldput on the top of the Ford engine.

(20:43):
Increase his power a little bit.
As a result of this, he also decided,well, I should really commission
a car to go with this inlet overoutlet head, and that was called the
CSM, the Chapman Sports Motor Car.
This is a one-off car and theCSM special was quite fast
again because of his driving.

(21:03):
Didn't necessarily wina lot of races, but.
It was lightning fastattracted a lot of attention.
People wanna know, well, howcan we get the same thing?
So he ended up going to businessselling those kits that you saw,
the inlet over exhaust kits, andthose actually became a mainstay of
the company for a number of years.
They were sold up until roughly 1960, 61, about the time that that

(21:25):
engine, the Ford 10 was really, becameobsolete, no longer used, but they
were popular, sold all over the world.
Not yet Elva.
The term Elva really wasn'tborn yet at this point.
But of course people liked thisconcept and they wonder, well,
where can we get one of these?
So you decided to go intoproduction actually producing

(21:46):
what became known as the Elva.
Well, the Elva name, initiallyit was just gonna be the LRG
car for London Road Garage.
Not a very pleasant name.
At one point he had this friendBill Murphy, Bill's brother.
Jim looked at the car one day and said,Elva the French, for she goes, and the.
It was contracted to ELVA and thuswe're forever have the name Elva.

(22:10):
Fairly crude, almost cycle fender car.
It was very much, again, the image ofthat era, kind of a kit car, but now
becoming a little bit more sophisticated.
Orders came in fairly quick on this.
This was indeed a very successfulcar, successful at this point, no
longer for Frank Nichols becausehe was out of driving himself.

(22:33):
He was taken over by people suchas Richard Maning fellow who was
tragically killed in the tourist trophy.
In an elbow is actually thefirst of, I believe four
fatalities ever occur in an Elva.
Now the orders began to expand.
There's another innovation here on thiscar, and that is a fiberglass body.
Not all of the earlyelves have fiberglass.
Many of them were aluminum.

(22:54):
But that was, uh, again, kindof an innovative concept.
At the time, Frank wasn't tryingto be technically advanced.
He was always looking at everythingfrom a price point of view.
And that's actually one of thethings that sets Elva apart
from some of his contemporaries,Lola Lotus Cooper and the like.
Frank was this kind of a stingysort of fellow, and he liked to

(23:15):
build things to cost the others.
Lotus typically would be going for speed,and consequently, the Lotus cars were
famous for being difficult to drive.
All those were something easy thatyou could get into right away, but
because of this kind of stinginess,there were several factors about this.
One of them was that there were no everany Elva factory racing teams, or really

(23:37):
nothing that you could really directlypoint to an Elva factory racing team.
There was adequate servicing.
In fact, he was known for beingvery good with communicating
with the purchasers out there.
The technical advances werekind of slow and coming.
It was many, many years before he wouldintroduce things such as disc brakes,
but everything was always focusedon this price point, point of view.

(24:00):
There was also another important element,and this is more external matters
than internal home market in Englandwas never particularly strong, or at
least not strong in the early years.
This has also coincided with the SuezCanal crisis when there was particularly
a clamp on the English economy, so itbecame a period of export or parish.
In order for any small manufacturer,small constructor like Elva to survive.

(24:24):
They really had to export quickly.
Looked at the American market.
Well, one of the benefits is thatthe car got really good reviews in
the English press, and of coursethe English press was fairly widely
read, at least read as a cult matterin the us and one of the people that
picked up on that was a fellow namedChuck Dietrich out of Sandusky, Ohio.
Chuck bought one of thefirst elvas into the us.

(24:45):
No one.
Necessarily the very first one, butone of the first to North America at
least, and he became quickly one of thechampions of Elva for years and years.
He was one of the main importers andthere were actually many importers
and dealers and like, it's a veryconvoluted story in that regard.
Became one of the many peopleinvolved at this early stage.
One of the key people, Chuckactually stayed with the mark for

(25:08):
many, many years in most cases.
He was actually the imported, the veryfirst of each of the successive models.
He did later on, sort of veer awayand took a little vacation and drove
a bobsy for a while, then returnedagain to Elva in later years.
He was a very key figurein the early part of this.
Another key figure who you'll meet ina moment here will be Birdie Martin.

(25:30):
But before Birdie there's also FrankBike and he had a very unusual car.
This was a car that had aChevy VA crammed into this.
My understanding is the car went greatin the straight line, but not much else.
And that was another thing about Elvis.
There are always all kinds ofexperimentation that went on.
We're moving now kind of into theMark two era of the Elva, and as

(25:52):
you can see, it's starting to geta little bit more streamlined,
a little bit more sophisticated.
Didion suspension comes into play.
You'll see shots of these very distinctiveElva black mag wheels that remain
distinctive for Elva for years to come.
Another thing about these cars is thatwhen we talk about these changes in
design and all that, all this was donein a very, very kind of intuitive way.

(26:17):
Keith Marsden was the main designeryou saw in that earlier shot.
He basically just drew chalklines on the floor and that's
what the chassis was built around.
There were no drawings,certainly no computer aid design
kind of thing in those days.
Nothing of anythingfrom more modern period.
In fact, Keith Marsden's kindof interesting character in and
of himself because he reallyenjoyed this kind of work.

(26:39):
And in later years when a company calledTrojan came into play and took over some
of the Elva production and it becamemore of a corporate environment, didn't
suit Keith Mars in particularly well,and he left at the company at that point.
But he was a criticalfactor in these early days.
To give you a little bit of a flavorof what this is like, a fell out of
Washington dc Walter Dixon becomesinvolved with the Elva enterprise and with

(27:04):
somewhat chaotic results at that point.
But when he became involved, he sentone of his people over Arthur Tweeddale,
who himself was an expatriate Brit.
Back over at England to havea look at the Elva factory and
report back as to what it was like.
Tweeddale goes over there and comesback and reports to his boss Dixon,
and said, well, you know, there'sa couple welding torches over there

(27:26):
and there's a couple guys assemblingthings over here and there's a
radiator guy over here and engineguy pulling in the engines over here.
And somehow in the middle ofthis, the cars just happened.
And that's very typical of this.
And sort of another side is, whichis also so typically English.
Uh, when Michael and I were in Los Angelesback in December, we were very happy to be

(27:48):
interviewed by Jay Leno and his website,not on his TV show, but on his website.
And part of that, Jayhad a lot of comments.
In fact, in the segment where heinterviews me, these comments didn't
quite make it into the final cut.
But it's funny because Jay startedtelling stories as only Jay Leno
could about his own experienceswith English manufacturers.
And he said he understood when Iwould point out these things about how

(28:12):
quirky the English are about things.
He goes, oh yeah, well one timeI had to call over there for
some parts for one of his cars.
They said over there we'rekind of busy right now.
Could you call back later?
And he's thinking, oh, like Thursdayor Tuesday or something like that.
And he said, well, whenshould I call back?
He says, well, maybe next November.
And that's so typically English.
And then he would go over and visit andhe goes, yeah, there's a tea kettle here.

(28:35):
And they're too busyhaving tea to bother with.
Things like getting toyour part right away.
Another instance like that where hecalled over for some part and they said,
oh no, we don't make that part anymore.
I says, why not?
I says, we are gettingso many orders for that.
It was such a bother that wejust we to stop making the part.
And I thought, what couldbe more English than this?
And this, this suffusesso much of Elva history.

(28:56):
So the mark two things are gettinga little bit more sophisticated,
but it's still very much theintuitive chalk marks kind of thing.
One of the things hereis the engine types.
I mentioned earlier on thatthe Ford engine was kind of
commonly used on the very early.
That changed fairly quickly becausereally the engine to have in those
days was the Coventry climax,FWA featherweight 1100 cc engine.

(29:19):
That was really the thing to have.
So for a while, these mark twosand the like, most of them came
with the Coventry climax engine.
There were all kinds of variants inthere as a couple people at a Maserati
and a few Alpha Rome males and like.
But the Coventry climax becamesort of the most common thing.
Well, one of the problems with theCoventry climax was that at that point,
Lotus is also becoming a big power.

(29:41):
Lotus was a competitor to Elva,and they were trying to put the
Gabo on Elva getting, and anybodyelse getting the Coventry climax.
So Frank Nichols had to look aroundfor other suppliers, and one of the
people he came to talk to is a fellowby the name of Archie Butterworth.
He was one of the most colorfulcharacters in this whole story.

(30:01):
Archie also, by the way, learnedmany of his skills during the war.
He was in a very unusualway during World War ii.
He was in charge of inventoryingand studying, captured
material from the enemy.
So by studying these, you of coursethen be able to give information
back to his superiors as to how tobetter improve the British armaments.

(30:25):
And at one point there he wassifting through some of the material
and a German bomber came overand started strafing that area.
And in typical British fashion, hegoes, oh, this is so bloody annoying.
And he scrambling around, reachesdown, picks up this Luger that's
lying on the ground points the Lugerup at the belly of the plane, boom,
shoots it, and down comes the plane.

(30:46):
And for which he wonseveral awards for that.
So that's the kind of character he was.
Later on when he became involvedin automotive things, he had
good mechanical abilities.
He built a really interesting car with aninteresting engine handle like garbage.
He ended up selling that car toBill Milliken, who heard about
before revered Bill Milliken here.
Bill basically bought that car asa good study of what not to do.

(31:10):
So he learned that fromArchie Butterworth.
Archie also had a, was knownfor carrying a fully stocked
bar and the boot of his Jaguar.
And first thing he'd do when hehad arrived at a race circuit would
be to, of course, open that up.
So at this point now, we're stillkind of early in the Elva history.
They've really onlyproduced a few hundred cars.

(31:31):
Many of them now are comingto the US though that's a
big, big part of the market.
So there's still very few cars, butnow we've got a couple of Americans
have become deeply involved in this.
I mentioned Chuck Dietrich.
Another fellow was Carl Haas.
Very, very major player in this.
He came an importer in the uh, Midwest,and another fellow was Birdie Martin.

(31:52):
And since Birdie is here,I'll let Birdie talk about his
particular era as far as Elva goes.
Yano talk here was so interesting.
I'd like to rush through whatI'm gonna say to hear more
about what he has to tell about.

(32:13):
I've got a few little comments I haveto make and I was reminded today of
something that Chris Komack, he toldme one time when he was hired to do
one of his first major race events.
He was looking forward to itand he'd studied, you know,
what talk about and so forth.
So as they came on the air, theother man that he was working with,

(32:35):
I don't recall which one it was, buthe was a well-known sports announcer
and play by play man and so forth.
And they started off and thisother fellow said, Chris, tell me
what are we gonna see here today?
He went into the study he had done.
He said, well, you're gonnasee they've just changed the
ride height on these cars.
They've done some other things hereto allow less fuel consumption.

(32:58):
He said, we've got some new drivers here.
He went on and named a numberof things that would happen.
All of a sudden the uh,technical people said.
Cut.
Cut.
Chris said, what's that?
He said, well, that we, we are justdoing a preview of the opening.
That was just it.
But we're now ready to go on live,so let's go back and start again.
So the fellow comes on who's thenetwork announcer, didn't know very

(33:21):
much about Motorsport, but he said,well, ladies and gentlemen we're here
today and we're gonna see these carsare running with new fuel rules on
it, and they've got this and they'vegot that and they've got everything.
And he repeated everything that ChrisConac he had said in the warmup.
And then he turned to Chrisand he said, now Chris, what
do you think Chris told me?
I didn't know what to say at all.

(33:41):
That's kind of the way I feel right now.
I think Yanos, you've told a lot ofgood stories here that I might have
been counting on, but with Elva andNichols and so forth, there's a lot of.
Also, I have to say, uh, after Iheard Michael introduce us and jc,
I thought, geez, I wish I couldgo and listen to those two guys.
They must know what they're talking about.

(34:02):
I was very fortunate.
I lived in a great era.
I was 21 years old in a greatera and a great time to be living
in Motorsport and so forth.
I look out and I thinkthese are Elva people.
I don't remember Elva peoplelooking this old, you know?
'cause we dealt with guys that couldn'tafford a lotus at the time and maybe

(34:22):
they could get a, uh, elbow or something.
And they were all pretty muchyounger guys just starting out.
Many of 'em went a long way too.
Unfortunately, we've lostmany of them recent years.
I have the excuse that couple monthshere, I'm gonna be 83 years old.
Fortunately, uh, I feel very good.

(34:44):
I feel my health feels very good.
My doctors tell me I'mpretty good and so forth.
I hope to be around a good bitmore because I really have had a
wonderful period in my life here.
Not many people can spend every dayworking on their passion, which is
motor sport and cars and people.
And that gets to anotherimportant part of it, people,
and that's what it's all about.

(35:05):
And the Elva people were very unique.
They were quite different than peoplethat bought Lotus's and that, and a few
of the people that bought Lotus's swungover and bought Elvis, and that they
didn't have the same engineering and thesame background as Lotus might have had.
But it was interesting.
I have to touch a biton Frank Nichols too.
Uh, you went into his youth and so forth.

(35:27):
But I was over in, uh, England in 1953.
Right after, uh, the war was over, Ivisited some of the people over there.
In fact, I bought an engine in Italyfor a friend and did a few things,
and I visited with John Cooper.
At that time.
I met John, and I believe Imet Frank at that time, but I
didn't make a big impression.

(35:48):
He didn't have an Elva nameon him or anything, but we
referred back to that time.
I did remember though, at thattime, that John Cooper said to
me, I wanna show you something.
We just got the first one, and itwas the FWA Coventry Climax Engine,
and he just had gotten the first one.
And as most of you all know, that wasreally a variation from a water pump

(36:10):
that was developed during the war, duringthe Battle of Britain and so forth.
And it was a very light engine for apump that could really put out some
water, and it was very effective.
And that's why they built anoverhead cam type engine for it.
He showed me that engine, and littledid I know how much that would be a
part of my life in a few more yearsbecause I ended up being a distributor

(36:32):
for not only the elbow, but forCoventry climax parts and so forth.
Even had Weber carburetorsat one time too.
I started my own racing actuallyin the 1947 in the very early years
right after the war, Andy Gran Elliin Chicago where I lived in that era.
Andy uh, formed a group calledthe Hurricane Hot Rod Association.

(36:53):
I had one of the first hot rodsin Chicago, 32 High Boy Ford.
So I joined that and Andywas a great politician.
He got us an opportunity to run asoldier field in Chicago and even got us
a thousand dollars purse to run there.
It turned out that this hot rod racingreally caught on and that first race

(37:14):
at Soldiers Field, we had 40,000 peopleattend and they probably paid a dollar
and a quarter or something to get in, butthe promoter made an awful lot of money
and I can tell you that the second timewe raced there, we got 40% of the gate.
Andy learned that very quickly andthat was kind of an interesting thing.
I went off to college and firstthey got got down in Albuquerque.

(37:35):
I was going to theUniversity of New Mexico.
I walked down the street.
I went by a garage and it hada midget racer inside there.
Well, I went in and I told'em that I was a great hot rod
racer from Chicago and so forth.
I found out these fellas hadjust bought this midget and
they didn't have a driver yet.
So I got a job driving.
While I was in college there, drovefor them for about a year or so.

(37:58):
I remember the first time we went outto test, I knew that you held the brake
on on a midget and they pushed youoff and your wheels were locked up.
And once it got moving abit, you take the brake off.
And I knew all that so that itlooked like I knew what I was doing.
I made about two laps and spun.
I came in and they said, what happened?
And I said, well, you know, I'mused to driving on blacktop.

(38:20):
I'm not a dirt driver really.
And so I got by that had a lot of fun.
I made some money whileI was going to college.
And of course I couldn't tell myparents that I was making this kind
of money because they wouldn't likethe idea that I was driving race cars.
And I hadn't told them that yet.
Anyhow, they eventually accepted it all.
In fact, they went to one ofmy first races in a sports car.

(38:42):
I bought an MG dc, went to a raceup at Wilmont Hills, which was a
brand new facility they had justbought or had ran and leased it for.
Number of years I drovethe TC in the race.
I think I finished back aboutfourth or fifth or something.
I broke my tail drivingthat car as hard as I could.
And I got home and my fathersaid to me, he said, Sonny, he

(39:03):
said, I like the way you drive.
You're very consistent andyou're not rushing at all.
And I thought, there's somethingwrong about this because
I was trying awful hard.
Anyhow, Frank Bike was oneof my very good friends.
We went to high school together and soforth, and uh, he was a very close friend.
Frank was very mechanicallyinclined and very handy in the shop.

(39:27):
And he did machining, he diddesigning and everything else.
He came from a family that producedcandy and, and they were a very
famous family in Chicago area, maybearound the country in those days.
The Wiz Bar, which was a chocolatemarshmallow candy and that.
But he was very good at things and he hadpicked up an Austin engine, I think it

(39:47):
was an A 40 or something like that, Austinengine, and he was doing a complete job
on it, porting it and everything else.
Frank, what you gonna do with it?
He said, well, I've seen an ad or alittle article in a magazine, a British
magazine, and there's an Elva car there.
And he said, I think maybe that'ssomething I could use to put

(40:08):
it into, in fact, I'm not sureit even had the name Elva yet.
I said, geez, that sounds interesting.
I said, let me go.
I'll write a letter back tothem and gimme the address.
And he did.
And so I wrote back and wroteto Frank Nichols and he sent
me some stuff and on the car.
I said, why don't we buy thatand then we'll buy another
complete car with an engine in it.
And so I wrote back to Frank Nicholsand Frank said, listen, we just got a

(40:32):
first of these Coventry climax engines.
And he said, this is the hot setup.
Are you still interested in two cars?
I said, yeah, but one of themwe don't need an engine for.
We just need the one.
And he said, but you're gonna buy two.
I said, yes, most days.
We sent telegrams too, you know, he cameback and he said, you're buying two,
so you're now the dealer for that area.

(40:53):
So.
But he told me that he had dealt withChuck Dietrich, and I knew Chuck because
I had raced Mgs against him and Susie,his wife, and that I said, that's great.
We will work together on this andI'll help and we're gonna get some
parts and stuff in and so forth.
And Chuck was a good friend and,and a very accomplished driver.
Very, very good.

(41:14):
The market area in Chicago at thatpoint, economy was pretty good and so
forth was a lot better than it was inSandusky, Ohio, where Chuck was located.
So I think we sold a lot morecars and he did a lot more racing.
The problem for me was whenthese two cars came over.
And you saw the one that Frank Bikeended up putting the Chevrolet engine

(41:34):
in and took five years to finish it.
And the other one, when it arrived,Frank Nichols came over at the same
time to the United States and he wasgonna visit us and visit somebody in
Texas that had been riding to him.
So we arranged to meet Frank at theairport in, uh, New York when it arrived.
And we picked up the car the nightor so before and got it loaded

(41:56):
and on a trailer and so forth.
We went and we met him at the airportand he said, I'm going to Texas
and then I'm gonna come back to youall because you'll be on the road
going back to Chicago with this.
So he said, could you takeme over to Newark Airport?
And I said, sure.
That's no problem.
We can do that.
So we went over to Newark Airport andwe were asking a lot of questions about

(42:18):
what was happening in the racing scene.
And believe me, in in England,the uh, 1100 G modified we
called here in the United States.
Was a hot class over there.
I mean, they had the futurerace drivers driving in that.
So, uh, we were talking about the racingand waitress comes back and brings
breakfast that we had and Frank got hisgrapefruit and it had a sparkler sticking

(42:41):
in it and it was glowing like this.
And I always remember that 'causeFrank said, I really don't know.
He said, is this how youeat grapefruit over here?
Other than his war ventures,which I don't think got him
to very many nice restaurants.
He hadn't really been in aplace that was a little fancy.
So anyhow, we did that.
Frank came back from Texas.

(43:01):
I don't think he was terriblysuccessful with that venture.
But anyhow, he came backand we met him in Chicago.
We had a great time with Frank.
We talk about what he wasable to do and what he did.
He wasn't really a greatengineer, but he was capable.
But he didn't reckon thathe was an engineer anyhow.
He figured that somebody, they, you'llhave to hire or use who he already has.

(43:24):
But there was something about Frankthat you had confidence in him
that he could do what he was sayinghe was gonna do and he had plans.
He wanted to run right up there withLotus and with Cooper and so forth.
And I have to tell you, evenin his greatest success, well,
Colin Chapman, I, he died.
I actually talked to him afew hours before he died.
I was in Paris at the time and hewas coming out of a meeting of the,

(43:47):
uh, what was the Foca at that time?
The Formula One people?
I was with Max Mosley and acouple other people I knew Max
from Watkins Glen here in that.
Chapman was never veryaccommodating to anybody.
I mean, he, he really, he almostthought you had to have a slot where
you could put a quarter in and thenhe would talk to you or something.
Years later when Lola was firstcoming along and started to win all

(44:10):
the races in England, I remember Iasked him at Sebring that year, what
do you think about this Lola car?
He said, oh, it's fly by night.
They just built a couple carsand they're not gonna matter.
They're not gonna mean very much.
Which was interesting because a thirdfriend that I went to school with at
that time was a fellow by the nameof Al Ross, who was my mechanic.

(44:30):
And he wasn't a very good mechanic,but he was a good worker, which
you really need at that point.
And he imported the very firstLola into the United States.
I, he didn't tell me, in fact,until after it was well on
the way and I went with him.
In fact, when he cleared it throughcustoms in Chicago, it was a super car.
But I always thought of whatChapman had said earlier that year

(44:52):
when I talked to him about it.
Frank was always verygood about people, but.
He re recognized he was workinghis way up in the pecking order of
motorsport, but he did very well.
He impressed a lot of the journalists.
I don't know, he got some reallygood write-ups on his things and
that did very well with that.
It was an interesting time and I startedto say when these cars came over, it

(45:14):
seemed like Frank Nichols would alwayscome over 'cause he knew he'd get another
order from me when he came over and.
I would generally take that new car thatI just got, which was like the mark one
that we ordered complete with an engine.
And I would sell that car because Iwanted the later one, and then I'd get
the later one and then I would sell thatone because somebody else would buy it and

(45:35):
I would get the newer one all the time.
But I did squeeze a few races inon some of them when they were new.
And I was very fortunateand it did pretty well.
And the truth of the matter is, thesuccess of of Velva was the fact that
the people that got 'em were peoplethat were willing to work on them,
willing to learn how to set it up.
Frank really delivered you a car that wascomplete in all the pieces, and they were

(46:00):
all bolted together one way or another.
He didn't really do an awful lot.
Most of the guys that were driving Elvisin, in England even were guys that were
doing all their own work, and that therewere no big factory teams as s just said.
It brings back an instant later onafter the Dixon era when, uh, we
were gonna run an actual team atSebring and Dixon arranged everything.

(46:22):
He arranged the rooms for the cars andthe mechanics and everything, and I
sold two of those cars to two peoplethat each were gonna drive them at
Sebring and as part of the Lola team.
Another interesting point, Frank wasa really good public relations man
too, from those first cars we boughtwhen he shipped them over here.

(46:43):
They had our names on the doors,all written by a sign painter.
Really done nicely,which was kind of neat.
It really thought that was nice.
You might have liked to have doneit, but in those days you probably
wouldn't do that on your own.
People would make a big issue.
But when they came on an Elva with yourname on them generally was pretty nice.
And if you got one that you didn'tbuy ahead of time, but you bought

(47:05):
it from the dealer, you would alsoget somebody's put their name on
the same way because it was prettycommon on the, uh, Elvis at that time.
I had a mark two that I drove.
I had a mark three that I drove.
I had a, one of the first Mark fours.
Generally he would send Chuck and Ithe first cars that that would come out
until he got Dixon involved and thenDixon would get the first cars there.

(47:28):
But I got a Mark four thatyear and that was 1959.
And I got it earlier in the year, Ibelieve, because I raced it several times.
Actually, it's the one I soldto Bill Jordan at the time.
That was the Sebring car that Mark four.
When I saw it, I knew exactly wherehe got the design for it that I had.
And Abarth 2 0 7, I had that.

(47:49):
And when Frank first cameover, he saw that car.
He really liked the looks of it.
That is where Frank got the ideafor the knife edge on the, uh,
bodies of the, uh, marked IV cars.
And it so happened in 59 thatthose were the cars that we were
gonna race that uh, Sebring.
And you could always tell those 'causethey had an extra set of headlights
built into the, uh, bonnet of it.

(48:11):
We picked up, ours went with Bill Jordanand I and his wife, and we went to,
uh, Washington to pick up the Mark iv.
We were gonna drive at Sebring.
They were bringing down the other onethat I had sold and one that was gonna
be driven by, uh, Frank Batista, whowas the national champion in G Modified,
was a very good Lotus driver, very good.
Arthur Tweeddale was gonna be theother one who worked for Dixon also.

(48:36):
They were bringing those cars down.
We went to, uh, Dixon's placethere in, in Washington and
or Baltimore, I guess it was.
And got the car and that we got downthere and first time we took the
car out it, it handled terrible.
It was awful.
And Frank was there, had arrived and gotdown to Seabring Fellow that I knew very
well, who was a Lotus driver, who was verygood mechanically, was down at Seabring

(49:00):
and he wanted to help us set up the car.
And he was very good in settingup the front end of the car.
But I always rememberhis name was JC Kilburn.
He was from Rockford, latermoved down to at Dallas, Texas.
And that.
Still races at Monterey and that anduh, junior, I guess he told me that,
he said to Frank, what kind of camerasetting do you set up on the front end?

(49:22):
And Frank said, howthe hell should I know?
I only make the cars.
I don't set 'em up.
And that was typical of him.
Listen, I'll skip on andcome back a little later.
Sorry to take up.

(49:50):
Delightful indeed.
And you know, birdie has touched on,of course, the name Walter Dixon,
who's a, a major player in this.
Not always in the best way.
One of the key things that happened,Walter Dixon, as Birdie mentioned, he
was, he's actually a Washington area.
I'm a Baltimore Washington areadealer of a number of different cars.
In an early meeting with Frank Nicholssuggested to him that you ever thought

(50:13):
of something like an MGA MGAs were quitepopular at the time, very successful
car, and that you might want toconsider building something like an MGA.
And Frank thought that a really good idea.
That's what became then the courier.
So the courier was really born outof a discussion between the two, and
that became the production car thatlater actually to some extent led
to a temporary downfall for Elva.

(50:36):
Continuing on with the story here.
I just wanted to quickly mentionArchie Butterworth and there's another
key person in in that particularperiod, and that's Archie Scott Brown.
So the Tale of two, Archie Archie,Scott Brown was one of the real iconic
English drivers of that era, and he was,as far as the Elvis saga goes, he drove

(50:57):
several elves of the more particularMark gre and he also one of the few who
could drive this Butterworth engine car.
Archie was born withonly a stub of one hand.
Left hand was fine, right hand was justAUB, and yet drove in ear along before
political correctness and all that.
He was a very successfulhandicapped driver.

(51:17):
Very few people even knewthat, that he was handicapped.
Quite a success story during that period.
I'll talk more here about the couriers.
The courier was, in some ways was an MGA,if you used an MGA engine originally.
Later on the MGB, it wasNichols's big move into being
a proper producer of road cars.

(51:39):
And ultimately though, theseweren't really road cars, they
were road cars meant for racing.
Again, there was thiselement of no compromise.
They weren't particularlycomfortable for creature comforts.
They were famous for the enginebeing located somewhat further back.
So the cockpit was rather cramped.
So the courier was quite a cramped car,but it had a really good advantage.

(52:02):
The power to weight ratio was spectacular.
Even though it was cost a little morethan the competing cars like the MGA,
like the Triumph, TR three, it becamequite popular among people who wanted this
kind of no nonsense race car, somethingthey could drive to the track, race, and
drive home in the production categories.

(52:22):
In many ways, the design of thecourier presage the Spitfire many.
In fact, somebody who came upto me this morning said, yes.
A friend of mine sent me this photo,says, oh, look at this interesting
spitfire that ran at violin in NewJersey, but it wasn't spitfire.
It was a courier.
They were often mistaken for that.
When the courier came online, there wasa kind of a problem with Elva because

(52:43):
they weren't really equipped to remember.
They were just drawingchalk lines on the floor.
Now they actually had to doactual drawings and they had
to move to a bigger facility.
It was no longer they werebehind a fish and chip shop.
Initially they had tomove to a bigger facility.
Initially they moved to facilityin a drill hall that rented out,
eventually moved to Hastings itself.
I mentioned.
That's where the Battleof Hastings took place.

(53:04):
Later on, production would move on toCroyden near to London and be taken
over by a company called Trojan.
Frank Nickles had, I think, kind of anambivalent relationship with the courier.
Hoped that they would be a cash cow.
They never turned out that way.
He never really wanted, I mean,he expected people to race
them, but wasn't really thereto support the racing activity.
This is a period now, 1959 to61 that the courier was built.

(53:27):
So it was a period ofrapid growth for Elva.
The couriers themselves were built onlater on, 62, 65 in different stages, and
they were raced for many years after that.
In fact, uh, as recently as 2002,a courier won the e production
National Championship with SCCA.
One of the key things about the courierare some of the drivers involved.

(53:48):
And we talked earlier about driverssuch as Chuck Dietrich, can't forget
Susie Dietrich, who was in that raresorority of really fine women drivers
of there is Susie Dietrich, DeniseMcCluggage, pinky, Rollo, Donna May Mims,
Margaret Wiley would be another one.
Her husband, doc Wiley was alsoMajor Elva driver of that era.
A few others of that era, but now we'reMo we're moving on to the courier.

(54:09):
The courier also was a great startingpoint for a number of drivers.
People like John Quartz, John Cannon,Peter Revson, Jim Downing, who became
a big more recently and and Insaracing, got a start with a courier.
John Osteen, anotherIMSA driver much later.
Gotta start with courier.
Nobody bigger than MarkDonahue, of course.

(54:29):
If Michael has written quite a bit aboutMark Donahue, got his start in courier,
this very kind of brutish car, and whichhe won a national championship with.
Couriers weren't, of course,the only thing going on.
In fact, this became a very,very busy time for Elva.
They were producing couriers stole thesports racers, and they would slowly,
surely move into Formula Junior as well.

(54:52):
They produced and Birdie touched onit, the, um, later sports racers.
And these became actually the last ofthe front engine Elvis sports racers,
which were the Mark four and the Mark V.
This is really where FrankNichols's passion remained, was
still with the sports racers.
The Mark IV was first independentrear suspension car that Elva built.

(55:14):
It was actually acompetitor to the Lotus 11.
The Lotus 11 was, in termsof mass members, was the most
common car as Birdie mentioned.
That class of racing wasparticularly popular in England
and the Mark IV was to some degree,a competition with the Lotus 11.
Mark IV was a more aerodynamicversion of the earlier Elvis.

(55:35):
Most of them were now fiberglass.
Not all of them.
Most of 'em were fiberglass.
Very low built.
Again, mostly climax engines, few alphamales, even one Buick engine, in fact,
that spoke with the fellow here who,uh, has that car with the Buick engine.
Bernie Keller was theoriginal owner of that.
One of the differences though, withsay the Mark four, the Elva, mark Fours
and the Lotus, is that the Elva wasalways considered a true club racer.

(55:59):
As Birdie mentioned, you had toknow what you're doing with an Elva.
You had to tinker with,you had to work with it.
It was meant as a club racer, notreally as a stepping stone kind of car.
The Mark IV was also important.
That was the first car that CarlHaas really got involved with.
If I'm not mistaken, uh, birdiementioned that that car won
its class at Sebring in 1959.
Second place to that car wasthe car driven by Birdie.

(56:22):
That was driven with Carl Haas and wasmanaged by none other than Tex Hopkins.
Also, another famous figurehere at Watkins Glen.
One of the interesting comments, Ithink always about these early elvas,
as Birdie mentioned, that they were kindof just put together, but even so, Chuck
Dietrich was one that always thought thatthe Elvas were better than the Lotus's.

(56:45):
Lotus's would have to be weldedtogether between qualifying in the
race, Elvas at least held togethera little bit better than that.
After the Mark IV came to the Markfive, the LA very last of the front
engines, it was even lower than theMark IV had arched wheels because it
still retained the old 15 inch wheels.

(57:07):
One of the things was that, again,Nichols and his conservative way
didn't move to the smaller wheelsthat were common at that time.
The 13 inch wheels, as I mentioned,that there was really three different
kinds of production going on.
Here we have these couriers.
They're really gearing up, talkedabout the sports racers, and
then there's Formula Junior.
Remember in motorsports there'salways this kind of tension

(57:29):
between cost and competition.
You try to keep the cost down, peopledevelop new technologies, be more
competitive, the cost goes back up.
So it's always this kind of battle backand forth to try to keep costs down.
And there were a number of formulasalready existing in the 1950s that were
intended to keep costs down, but they wereusually basic used motorcycle engines.

(57:52):
500 cc would be one such classyearly Formula three was such.
Johnny Ani from Italy came up withthis idea of the formula Junior.
Essentially, why not buildmore or less spec cars?
It'll be a thousand cccars later, 1100 cc.
Use production components, have themas single seater cars, have the races
on a kind of a national championshipbasis, get this approved by the

(58:16):
FIA and spread it around the world.
The idea really caught on andfrom about 1959 to 63 Formula
Junior was the stepping stone.
Of motor sports in thatera, stepping stone.
Also, a lot of club racers, it was,you could be a junior fungi or scar
or what have you in your formula.
Junior, they looked like race cars.

(58:37):
Italian cars typically had one literfiats in them were garage built.
Around that.
There were French cars with DB pan hards.
There were German cars with D threecylinder, uh, two stroke D kws.
And then the English carstypically use BMC Austins.
Nobody really jumped to the foreright away and built them in England.
In fact, none of the countries hadreally constructors of formula juniors.

(58:59):
But then Frank Nichols jumped in and Ibelieve some of the early conversations
with that actually took place inBirdie's kitchen, where Frank saw a
midget that Ed Crawford had broughtover from the west coast, a small
midget racer from amusement park.
And that kinda gave frank someideas that later germinated in
becoming the formula Junior.
Frank Nichols.
Elva was the first to produce FormulaJuniors in any kind of significant

(59:23):
quantity and beat Cooper and LotusCooper and Lotus at that time were
very busy with their Formula Oneprograms and really didn't pay
much attention to Formula Junior.
Also, the Formula Junior that FrankNichols developed had an advantage when
it came over to the US 'cause the UScaught on to Formula Junior right away.
They were a little bit larger.
Cockpit area was a little larger.

(59:44):
Americans tend to be a little largerpeople than most Europeans, and it was
very comfortable and convenient for that.
I would like to go backto one moment there.
Sure.
Because you were talking aboutthe, uh, there he is again.
I'm back again.
Oh, there he is again.
Oh, this was, that was where the Markfour too, but that was my own one there.
That's one I did withthe Lolas at that time.

(01:00:06):
But the thing that happened waswe had a number of friends in
Chicago, in the Chicago region.
Eddie Crawford lived quite close tome, and he was one of my best friends.
We used to go over there andit started out in his yard.
He had five acres there and thepeople had raised horses and that,
and so they had jumps in their yardin when he bought it, well, he left

(01:00:27):
them there and we laid out a racecourse around those jumps in his yard.
And we started out because somebodybought a Henkel uh, moped and
somebody else had something.
And we started racing in those mopeds.
And one Sunday we were going up toMilwaukee, about six of us in the
car to a champ car race up there.
And we were saying, wouldn't it be niceif we had some little cars we could race?

(01:00:50):
And I said, wait a minute.
I know I saw an ad in the paper for acompany that makes these things for a
carnivals and for, uh, off-road racing.
They have a little Wisconsinengine in them and so forth.
And so at that moment wesaid, well, who would buy one?
And I said, I'll order 'em ifyou, you know, get enough guys.
Well we got six guys together.

(01:01:10):
We ordered six of them.
I mean, we even included WackyArnold who was the MG distributor
in Chicago without telling them.
'cause we knew he'dbuy anything, you know?
And anyhow, we bought those and they cameand we had started racing in his yard with
these things and we had a ball with it.
And then we actually even went on andhad the fellow who built Meadowdale,

(01:01:32):
Leonard Binger, who was a reallya housing builder at that time.
And he built a, a shopping centerand he invited us out to race at
his shopping center on Sundays.
And he would get a great bigcrowd of people coming out there.
And we were using up all of thewheelbarrow tires that we could find.
And because they'd only last a coupleraces or that, and that's how we got into,

(01:01:56):
uh, that Frank Nichols was coming over.
So I took Frank over to Eddie's house.
And we had a little race there, andFrank drove one of those little cars.
He thought this was a lot of fun.
And we said, Frank, what weneed now is we need one with a
shifter in it and we need a car.
And at that time, the van wall wasthe hot setup in Grand Prix racing.

(01:02:16):
So we said, Frank, I said, I'vegot a picture of a van wall.
We just want to shrink that downand have it look like a van wall.
You put some kind of a motorcycle.
Any, any motorcycle engine that's gota five speed gearbox or something.
We don't want a big one.
We want, we said two 50 andwe said, go ahead and do this.
This was kind of in the spring.
Well, he started work on that carand I remember the time he sent a

(01:02:40):
letter to me and said I was down to,uh, Italy and Johnny Ani has this new
program down there for Formula Junior.
He said, I'm gonna make the cara little bit bigger, because then
they can use it for Formula Junior.
Also, when we got the first ones in,we said, my God, this is the biggest
little car we ever saw in our life.
But it was neat and they drove nice.

(01:03:02):
When I said I was an owner, I still ownthe first one I got, and I still own that.
It's at my son's race shop and that,and he's been going to restore it all.
It's probably only run in about 10 races.
Major thing was I drove it in thefirst US Grand Prix at Sebring.
I drove it in the preliminary race thatmorning for the uh, formula Juniors.

(01:03:22):
Which was the first big formula,junior race, I shouldn't get into
going further, so I'll stop right now.
But the thing was, it was aboutthat time I decided I really wasn't
gonna do that much more racing.
I'd just been married and mywife was pregnant and I thought
I, I'll just stop for a while.
And Carl was anxious and this issomething I should have talked

(01:03:44):
about before, how Carl got involved.
Carl was a good friend of mine.
We raced together and so forth.
He was driving a Porsche and he camedown to Nassau with us one year.
You know, in those days Nassauwould give you two rooms.
So Al Ross and I had, were sleepingin mine, but Carl didn't have anybody.
With him, and so he had an emptybed in his room at the hotel.

(01:04:05):
Frank Nichols came over.
We didn't know for sure that hewas coming, but Frank came over.
He said, Carl, can you putup Frank in your bedroom?
He said, sure.
Well, they got talking at nightwhen they were laying in the bed,
start talking, and Frank Nicholssold Carl a car at that time.
He had a Porsche and he soldhim a car, and Frank told him
about this wonderful thing.

(01:04:25):
He had been to Massachusetts, the fellaCandy Pool was his name up there, who
had designed a four emo carburetormanifold for the Coventry climax
engine, and he was sure that that wouldgive you 15 horsepower more than you
were getting out of the stock one.
Carl wanted the car like that withthe candy pool manifold on it.

(01:04:46):
Well, when it came, it wasn't thatmuch faster, if it was any faster at
all, and that was in a Mark three body.
But Carl got very interested inthis thing and he wanted to get
involved in the sale of those cars.
At the time, he was working for theFord Motor Company in a, uh, training
program for middle line people.
Carl came to me and hesaid, I wanna get involved.

(01:05:08):
I said, okay, Carl, you now work for me.
You're a salesman and you geta commission when you sell 'em.
We didn't make muchmoney on the cars anyhow.
We made more money reallyon the parts in those days.
So Carl came, at this time, Nicholswas having a bit of a problem.
He had some cars that hadbeen ordered by a dealer to
Houston Game rhymes with Dixon.
They were sitting on a, uh, dockdown in Florida and I said, Carl,

(01:05:32):
here's your first assignment.
You go down there and you see if you can'tsell those cars down there somewhere.
And he did.
And he went over because heknew Jim Hall pretty well.
He went over to Texas and he sold JimHall one and one of Jim's other friends,
not Sharp, but another fellow that hesold two juniors that were sitting there.
So that's how Carl got involved.
When he came back, I said, Carl, I'mgonna step out of the sale of the cars.

(01:05:56):
Why don't you just take it on?
You can pay me whateveryou want out of it.
Whatever you make something.
I don't know.
He did give me some money, believe itor not, but it was pretty informal.
But I said, I want to keep the CoventryClimax business and that, and so I
did that for quite a while beforeI sold that part of it to him too.
So that's how Carl got involved.
Sorry.
Oh, I love it.
I, we didn't ever get enough time toreally spend time to get together.

(01:06:19):
Right.
No, that's great.
I I, I never knew the end of that storyas to what happened with that car.
Just outta the phone.
I know it became an ad for Johnny Walker.
B Bourbon though.
Yeah, that was Well, we've alludedto these problems with Walt Dixon and
basically issue there is, rememberyou got a shoestring operation, Elva,
it's basically living hand to mouth.
Nichol have been living hand to mouth.
So for that matter was Walt Dixon andwith his dealership in the DC area.

(01:06:43):
And in fact he started playingquite a shell game with his cars.
And his deal with Nichols is he wasgonna prepay for this big order of
couriers, but after a while the checksweren't coming or they were bouncing.
Well, the same thing was happeningwith the creditors that Dixon
had, that he wasn't paying them.
And after a while he was doingshell games where he would to get
more loans to get, increase hisletter of credit with the bank.

(01:07:06):
He would do these games where hewould use the cars as collateral
and then have his customers comeback with the cars to do servicing.
And then when the bank came around tomake sure that the cars were actually
there as inventory, there they were,but they had already been sold.
So he had all sorts of ways to do this.
Well, eventually that caught up with him.
And in December of.
59. He was visited by a certainteam of US Marshals and that

(01:07:31):
closed the Dixon Enterprise.
And that had immediate repercussions onFrank Nichols and Elva back in England.
He was basically left holding thebag, no more income coming, and
it was the worst possible time.
'cause the production was rampingup with all the couriers, formula
juniors, the various sportsracers was at the end of Elva.
Well, of course not.

(01:07:51):
It was really just kind of thein, in some ways, the midpoint.
Elva recovered quite quickly, reallythanks to three different people
or three different organizations.
One is we heard Carl Haas.
Carl Haas stepped to the plate andinvested a lot in the restructured Elva,
which is called Elva Cars, 1961 Limited.
Another fellow was a guy namedFrank Webb, who ran a company

(01:08:11):
called R Tune Engineering.
He stepped to the plate and built some ofthose last of the front engine formula.
Junior cars, as you saw,those were called Scorpions.
They were built out ofthe, uh, the Elva plant.
But because of this liquidationprocess, they couldn't be called Elvis.
They were somewhat differentactually than the original Elva
one hundreds, as they were called.

(01:08:31):
Juniors.
And then the other companythat came into play was Trojan.
Trojan had been around sincesomething like 1910, involved in a
variety of automotive enterprises.
Most recently at that time was theimporter of Lambretta Scooter from Italy.
And they also, in fact, wereinvolved with a big go-karting
operation in the United States.

(01:08:52):
Sold many, many go-karts.
They took on theproduction of the couriers.
So essentially all the post 1961 courierswere actually built by Trojan, which
is located in Croydon near London.
Pretty soon now, Elvis's back on itsfeet and they're producing cars again.
They're producing anotherround of formula junior cars.

(01:09:14):
And you kind of quickly saw some of those.
These were the rear engine formulajunior cars, because by that
time, front engines were obsolete.
And Formula Junior, as they were.
In Formula One, the rear engineformula Juniors called the 200 later
the 300 200 ones with the, thatvertical fin, the three hundreds
with the very, very low boxy ones.
The thing about all the formulaJunior cars is they came to be

(01:09:35):
driven by some significant people,particularly in the United States.
Bob Bonderant drove one at one point.
Charlie Kob won a championshipwith the Formula Juniors.
The later the rear engine formula Junior,one of those was driven by Mark Donna.
You didn't have as much success withthat as he did with the courier, but
it was a major, major stepping stonefor Donahue that carried forward

(01:09:56):
later into a single seater career.
It also kind of coincided with moreor less a general fading of formula.
Junior Formula Junior suffered this fateof a lot of these low cost formulas.
Basically, somebody got inthere and took it all over.
In this case, it was Lotus Lotus18, and not only was it the Lotus
18 more successful VAR or anybodyelse and dominated the formula, but

(01:10:17):
they also brought in factory teams.
Jimmy Clark, a number of others,drove Formula Junior Cars.
So it really defeatedthe very purpose of that.
Now we have this shift tothe rear for, uh, Elva.
Very significant timeto join the modern age.
You have the engine in the rear.
So there were now two things going on.
The formula Junior era was over.
Trojan is taking over theproduction of the couriers.

(01:10:41):
Elva, meaning Frank Nichols, KeithMarsden themselves can focus a little
more again, what they really love, whichis two seater sports racers, and now
they're all rear engine from here onout the mark, six being the first one.
The Mark VI is, again,very often climax engines.
They were successfulpretty much from the onset.

(01:11:01):
One of Elvis's heydays came at Boxing Day.
That's day after Christmas in 1961 whenChris Ashmore almost defeated Graham
Hill's, Testa Rosa at Brands Hatch, andthis is a real high point, it really made
people take notice again, just like theydid very early on with the Elva potential.
The Elva and Elva got a lotof orders as a result of that.

(01:11:23):
Also, a lot of characters, again,though endlessly stories of
characters and all this, you'llsee in the moment Dan Blocker.
But before Dan Blocker, there was afellow Tony Land, Frankie in the uk,
who was another one of these characters.
He came to Frank Nichols and boldly said,I want to be the your factory driver.
Frank Nichols said, no,I don't do that land.
Frankie went out to the casino downthe road, won a bunch of money that

(01:11:46):
night, and came back the next dayand bought his car with all the
coins and all, and went racing.
At one point his transporter broke.
He's on his way to an internationalrace in the uk and his transporter
broke down along the way, sohe did the only sensible thing.
He pulled his Elva out of the backof the transporter and started
driving through the circuit.
Un muffled and all.
Well, the local constabularydidn't take kindly to this.

(01:12:08):
Stopped him.
He convinced the policeman thatrather than book him, it would really
be best interest of England in thismajor international race if he would
receive a police escort to the race.
He did.
So that's shows you akind of talking point.
It could be another character.
A whole story of Elva here is, is asyou can see, Dan Blocker, I believe

(01:12:29):
that's Linda Vaughn with him and DanBlocker, of course, the Bonanza actor who
became involved with the Elvin Mark vi.
He had a couple of Mark Sixes, one of 'em,which he put a Maserati engine into it.
And in fact, both of Hi his carsfeatured in this particular film, Viva
Las Vegas with Elvis and Ann Margaret.
Uh, so we have Elvis and Elvatied together conveniently enough.

(01:12:51):
In fact, it's interestingbecause Blocker's Maserati engine
never ran particularly well.
So for the film, they actually hadthese two identically painted Elvis,
this one with I believe, a Coventryclimax that was actually used in
the action sequences in the film.
And the other one, whichwas only in the garage.
And you see the engine lifted outta that,which is the Maserati, which is very
appropriate because that's usually thecondition that that particular car was in.

(01:13:15):
Another thing about Dan Blocker'steam is he very often used the
driver by the name of Bill Harris.
Bill Harris was actually a stuntman from the Hollywood area, but you
know, Dan Blacker, of course, knewhim from his professional connections.
And if any of you have read.
Sylvia Wilkinson's, great book.
The stainless steel carrot, whichis pretty much mostly about John
Morton, but there's this greatlittle vignette in there about

(01:13:38):
Bill Harris and Bill Harris wouldorganize these stunts for the movies.
And he had this one particular stunt, andI think it might've been a Daytona, where
he had to catapult the car over the rail.
So he arrange us all with a catapultand put a dummy in the car and all that.
And the film crew ready in thecar got vaulted over the the rail.
And then he went out in his pickuptruck to go retrieve this car.

(01:14:00):
Well, as he went outside thetrack, he noticed that a crowd had
kinda gathered around civiliansfrom driving around the area.
They thought that, oh, you know,here's this terrible racing
accident that just has happened.
Of course, bill Harris saw,figured out what's going on here.
He runs up to this car, thiscrash, pulls out this lifeless
driver and starts punching.

(01:14:20):
This says, you dirty so and so,look what you did to my race car.
So there all these characters, this,this particular album, mark six that
you see here, nothing particularlysignificant historically about.
This is actually driven in aseries in the Midwest Midwestern
Council Sports Car Clubs.
You might have noticed in some ofthese shots, it has kind of a, almost
a Ferrari esque rebo to it that wasdesigned by these two brothers, Dave

(01:14:44):
and Dean Cozy in the late 1960s.
And the Coys were known where theyjumped into the big doune buggy craze
that was going on at that period.
Wanted to make a lot of moneyon dune buggies, so they
built a bunch of dune buggies.
The only problem is that theirsource of the chassis for these
dune buggies were stolen VW beetles.
They just go out in the street,steal VW beetles, convert 'em

(01:15:04):
into dune buggies and sell them.
They quickly graduated into manufacturinglicense plates after that so that they,
that was a short, I love these particularsequence of shots because this is now
the courier marks three and four thatwere built by Trojan, and it shows you
some of the advertising that was used.
Don't ask me why they did thisparticular pose, but there

(01:15:27):
are all these, these shots.
They're also, I think some, maybesome shots I don't have in there
of bathing beauties in the Englishwinter holes on some of these cars.
As you can see, not allthe couriers are Roadsters.
Couriers had a very unique, thisreversed rake coop that they developed.
Very few of those were built and they areamong the most sought after cars right

(01:15:47):
now in the courier collector market.
Couriers were also somewhat similarin concept to the sports racers
that virtually no two were alike.
There were constant variationsof the suspension types.
So there were two plustwo seating arrangements.
There were the coops or the Roadsters,all these constant variants.
'cause I was never quitesure, is this a road car?

(01:16:08):
Is this a race car?
Is it primarily a road car?
Primarily a race car?
Nobody ever quite came to grips withthat, which was actually, in many
ways it's failing, if you might say.
And in fact, it's something thatfrustrated Carl Hala because he
was the principal importer of thecouriers to the US and he was really
frustrated by this idea that wasconstantly switching back and forth.
There was one last courier thatwas kind of a, an interesting story

(01:16:32):
that this is a Lama courier coup.
There was two American expats inFrance, one military, one non-military
who raced couriers with each otherand they had a really good time.
And over uh, some Van Rouge.
One night they decided theywere gonna enter Lamont.
Ron Lu, Dick Goldstein.
And they hatched this idea over napkins.

(01:16:53):
But this one sort of worked unlikemost napkin hatched ideas that we have.
They ordered a car from, well,that point, Peter Ag from Trojan
came as more or less a bag of bits.
They got a local technicalcollege to put it all together.
Found when they got to LA Ma, thatwindscreen cracked right away.
They got a renewalwindscreen to replace it.

(01:17:13):
The problem, and still was thatthe windshield wipers wouldn't even
touch the screen, but they kindof solved these things one by one.
They also had the interesting things thatwent on that day that they had a problem
with a badge shimmy in the alignment.
So they took it to a local shop.
That was just kind of the beginningsof electronic alignment for wheels.
Didn't help at all.
And there was this guy in the nextpaddock stall over, heard all this

(01:17:36):
going on and said, I think I can fix it.
As a Dunlop technician, I think he justgot, picked up the wheel, put on a stand,
rolled it, took a weight off here, puta weight on there, gave it back to him.
They expected the worst, andthe car handled brilliantly.
After that, they still failed.
They still didn't make the start, andit was kind of the last, one of the last
times that Elva tried to run at Lamont.

(01:17:57):
The last of the rear engine seriesthat were pure elvas were the
Mark Vi's and the Mark eights.
These were now thoroughly modern cars.
At this point, they weremuch more professional.
They were lightweight, very,very lightweight, really designed
from scratch as rear engine cars.
Whereas the Mark Vi was more or lessa front engine car turned around.

(01:18:19):
They were dealt with actuallyproblems such as grip.
And the like, which was anew concept at that time.
They still use primarilyClimax and Ford engines.
In fact, it's interesting 'cause lateron in history of many of these cars, they
got Hondas, Dotson, VWs installed in them.
But what really became interesting iswhen the sevens became the mark seven
S's, this is about 1963 or so, again,there was an engine supply issue.

(01:18:44):
So Nichols at that point opted forBMW engines, A BMW, which is not
yet a household name in the us.
It was considered to be a veryreliable, very easy to fit in the car.
It was quite easy to reconfigurethe car for the BMW engine.
It was a two liter drysump engine that they used.
Tony Le Frankie again comes into play.

(01:19:04):
He was a champion with thisparticular BMW engine here.
The BMW engine also is about thatsame time that Ali Schmidt, who
was the Porsche importer to the us,watched an Elva race of Puerto Rico
along with Ska Van Stein of Porsche.
They were quite impressed by that.
They thought, Hmm, maybe we shouldadopt some of these concepts to the

(01:19:26):
Porsche, because at that time, thePorsche spiders as sports racing
spiders were a little long in the tooth.
They were reliable, but they were heavy.
They were not doing particularly well.
So they took this idea, actuallyback to Ferry Porsche, about maybe
doing something together with Elva.
Porsche was always very conservative aboutany other constructor using their engines.

(01:19:46):
But they thought, well, maybethis is a good idea, and thus
was born the Elva Porsche.
The Elva Porsche became actually sortof the last great highlight of Elva
history, came with the Elva Porschedeveloped partly by Herbert Linga.
The very famous Porsche test driverhelped a lot in setting this up.
There's a lot of reconfiguringof the chassis that had to go on

(01:20:07):
to fit Porsche engine into it.
It was brought over in August of 1963to the US just in time for the Road
America 500, which at that stage wasone of the major endurance races in the
us and it was now waged against big Bocars, cobras, Ferraris, and the like.

(01:20:27):
Were running in this race.
Bill Woff, great American driverfrom the Midwest started the race.
Frank Nichols was there, one of his many,but still sporadic visits to the us.
Immediately.
This was a success from the start of therace, actually from qualifying on on.
It was fast, and more importantly,it was very, very fuel efficient.

(01:20:48):
There was a problem with a co-driver.
They didn't have a co-driver nominee.
Carl Haas at one point was goingto drive, but he and Westoff are
so different in physical size thatCarl didn't quite fit in the car.
They ended up at the end of the daydeciding on Augie PS as a co-driver.
Augie had never driven the car before.
He stepped out of Roger Penske'sFerrari and when Bill Westoff came

(01:21:10):
in halfway through the race in thelead, handed the car over to Augie.
Augie had never driven the car before,spun off at the first lap, slowly gained
confidence and ended up winning the race.
It was one of the great moments ofElva first, big two liter win for a car
in a major endurance race like that.
And it was a win for Elva immediatelyled to a large order of Elva, Porsches.

(01:21:32):
And it's actually in interestingbecause in terms of Porsche history.
It's maybe the only non Porsche builtchassis that is accepted as a Porsche.
Lessons that Porsche learned fromthat were put to use later on when
they built the other space frame.
Porsches, the 9 0 8, the nineseventeens, and the like.

(01:21:53):
Kinda last of the true elves as it were,was the GT one 60, and this is a very
special, not one off, but three offbuilt on a marked seven s chassis, but
with a coop body, a very nicely styledcoop body, designed by a guy, call
him two names out there, Trevor Frost.
Trevor Fiori.

(01:22:13):
He just thought that Trevor Fioridi Torino sounds better than
Trevor Frost of latent buzzard.
And so he just went with this kindof Italianate name that he created
and designed this car called the GTone 60, which only three were built.
And again, in sort of typicalfashion for small constructors of
this type, they misjudged some ofthe calculations on the weights and

(01:22:36):
misjudged some the calculations on cost.
And as a result, the carnever went into production.
All three of those cars do survive.
One of them went on and raced atLamar the following year, not with
a whole lot of success, but itwas always a very attractive car.
Elvis story doesn't quite end therebecause it really ends with McLaren.
Bruce McLaren when he first was thinkingabout starting his own race team and was

(01:23:00):
actually thinking of constructing sportsracers, thought I can construct the basic
idea, but I can't make customer cars.
So he came to the group now led byPeter Ag, which was the uh, CEO of
Trojan, and asked them and worked outan arrangement with them to build the
original McLaren, which became known asthe McLaren Elvis's, the M1 a. At a time.

(01:23:22):
This is now 65, 66 when Groupseven racing big boar sports
racing is becoming popular, notjust in the US but also in Europe.
Build a series of 25 customer cars fromme, Bruce McLaren saying, and this became
sort of the last, this real story of Elvakind of ends there with the McLaren Elva.
There were a series of other McLarenelves built that usually never

(01:23:45):
were called McLaren Elves usuallyonly went by the name of McLaren.
They were the kind of the lastchapter of the Elva story.
Elva does live on in anumber of different ways.
Frank Nichols himself went on, became partof a partnership with Len Terry and Carl
Haas called Transatlantic Consultants.
They helped develop some of theBMS of the late 1960s of King

(01:24:07):
Crowborough in the late 1960s.
So he kept his hand in with otherautomotive concerns, although later
he really moved into boat building,built boats that were used for various
rescue and fishing services in Britain.
Nichols became very active in sortof the next phase of Elva, which
was its afterlife, if you will.
Elva became and remains todayone of the most popular cars

(01:24:30):
in vintage and historic racing.
One of the nice things about most ofthe elvas that you've seen in this,
and almost all of these still exist.
Very few were destroyed, almostall still exist, and almost all
can be found in vintage racing.
One kind or another, one of thefirst people who really stoked
this flame was Sterling Moss.
Sterling Moss's first vintage racingcar when he got back in the sport

(01:24:51):
in the 1980s was indeed an Elva Markseven s. And he to this day, remains
a real champion of Elva in the historyof Elva, which is one of the reasons
he wrote the forward to the book.
Another key player in this kind oflate stage of Elva, and he's mentioned
at the beginning was Roger Dunbar.
Roger Dunbar owns the Elvaname, supplies the spares.
As many of you deal with, Elvasknow he's actually involved in the

(01:25:14):
project in bringing Elva back again.
The recreation of Elva and brandnew Elva courier remains to be
seen if that's gonna be done, ifthe investment is there for it.
Roger is also involved in restoring,he restored a a mark two recently that
now resides in the museum at Beckville.
But if you were to go over to thatMcLaren sitting over in the lobby,

(01:25:34):
in the, in the research center, ifyou look at the cellular level, there
might be a little bit of the DNA ofa little shop that began behind a
hotel, began a fish and chip shop.
There were the chalk lines onthe floor that McLaren in there.
Its Origins due date backto the shop in Beil on Sea.
So with that, thank you very much.

(01:26:01):
Stay up here.
What a wonderful presentation ledby Yosh and augmented by Birdie.
What a treat for all of us.
Yos is such a pro.
He brought it in right on time.
We are gonna do some q and a. We'regonna bring Birdie up for that as well.
We're gonna take a fewquestions and answers.

(01:26:22):
And by the way, that wonderfulphoto of Birdie up on Two wheels is
by Ron Nelson, who has been a bigsupporter here of the research center.
So I wanted to get his name inthere, but Birdie, I'll start it out.
How did you, uh, manage to get alongwith, simultaneously with Bernie
Eckles Stone, Jean Beer, blessed MaxMosley, Colin Chapman, and all the
other, uh, Remicades of Motorsport?

(01:26:44):
That's a good question.
I'm not sure how I did it myself, butI. I like people and, and that's one
of the reasons I like Elva, becauseElva had the nicest people to work
with and it was always fun to havea guy call and that was what problem
somebody wanted to Pistons or something.
We'd spend more time talking aboutdifferent things and what was
going on and that, no, I, I reallymeant to bring that into this.

(01:27:07):
The Elva people were just turned outto be great people to work with and
it's continued to those of who havebought 'em in recent years and that
it's the same kind of group of people.
It's really fun to be withand talk about the cars.
So any questions from the floor?
Rumor,
original Elva that Mark had as a tour?

(01:27:29):
Is that a bathroom?
That it's what the, well,he owned it as a tour.
He just liked it as personal and he hadan he on his, well, I'm aware of the Elva.
You mean the courier that he.
Raced or a different courier.
I know one that he drove onthe road as his biographer.

(01:27:50):
That may be true, but Imissed it if it's so sorry.
Don't know of his race car, whichI saw some photographs earlier.
Somebody had of one that was paintedup as Mark's original car, but I don't
believe that is actually the chassisthat he had because my understanding is
his race courier, and I'm not sure aboutnothing, about a road courier, but his

(01:28:11):
race courier sort of disappeared intothe overall fabric of American racing
as, as years went on before peoplerealized that it was marked on his car.
I know.
Passed on to a fellow'ssurname is Gaunt, G-A-N-U-T.
I think Robert Gaunt, who raced it for awhile, but then it disappeared after that.
That would be, uh, he'sfrom Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Yeah, Harry Gaunt.

(01:28:31):
Harry.
Harry Gaunt.
He's the fact, he was my wife's jeweler.
Oh, okay.
By the way, just one administrativenote I was gonna mention.
There were some films here wedidn't have a chance to show them.
Primarily show Susie Dietrich.
They're from the Susie Dietrich Archive.
And there's one actually that showsthe British Racing Show of 1960.
Kinda a nice period piece.
And I wanna put in a plug, another book toget is Michael's book, because you want,

(01:28:53):
again, this idea of people and racing,the Formula one at Watkins Glen, 19 61,
81 is a real treasure in that regards.
So thank you.
I don't see any questionscoming from the audience.
I will say this about that courier.
Let me just finish this point, Tim,and I want to get your question.
That may be true that it went intothe miss that courier, but there are

(01:29:13):
people who believe that car did exist.
And when we had the Mark Donahue reunionhere three years ago, that car was there.
His son Michael drove it.
That car then was sold to uh, Johannes,Willem Park who took it to Austria.
And Johannes has an interesting hobby.
In addition to a lot of great classicrace cars, he also collects the first
race cars of famous race car drivers.

(01:29:35):
If you can imagine that.
Tim, the records were lost in a fire.
Probably finding out about some ofthis, just the estimates, like what
the total number of sports racers,carriers, and junior early, right.
I think the records lost in thefire might be somewhat there.
It seems like that happens a lot.

(01:29:56):
The records are lost in fires, youknow, and you're looking for, so I
got, yeah, I can probably write achapter about records lost in fires.
I think it was more records lostbecause we don't want, Hm, revenue
to find out what really went on.
That was probably morewhat really happened.
But the records are really confusingwith Elva production and the really,

(01:30:16):
the number one reason for that is notbecause of any skullduggery, but because
of unfinished kits coming out the door.
You have finished cars coming outthe door, you have some that were
supposed to go out, kits came back inthe door and were finished sent out.
So because of the nature of thiskind of hodgepodge, industry,
records weren't kept that closely.

(01:30:37):
And then add to that, theseissues with the Dixon Saga,
the Dixon problem recovery.
After that Trojan coming into play,you have all kinds of opportunities for
things to go awry and record keeping.
That had a lot to do.
But to answer your question about numbers.
As best we can tell, there were aboutseven, 800 couriers built of all stripes,

(01:30:59):
and this includes actually a, a handfulthat were built way after the Trojan era
because Trojan then handed it off to afellow named Ken Shepherd, then handed
off to fellow named Tony S, and theybuilt the few cars after just a handful.
But the number 800 fits juniors, that'sactually the, I don't know the number
into my head, but the juniors happen to bethe one that we're pretty well documented

(01:31:21):
on, and it's right around 100 in totalof the three different kinds of juniors,
actually four, if it includes Scorpion.
I don't have that in my head, but Iknow that number is pretty concrete.
The sports racers in the neighborhoodof three to 400, some of those
with the later ones, 6, 7, 8,we know the numbers exactly.

(01:31:42):
Earlier ones.
No, that's where we get into this kit.
Car problems.
You raise a a point there andI'm gonna ask both of you.
Are you aware that there is acontroversy that maybe there is someone
in England or somewhere else who ismanufacturing historic race cars and
passing them off as Sterling Moss's car?
And is anyone doing this with Elva?
Is any clever mechanic who had builtElvis at one time, are they manufacturing

(01:32:06):
new ones that they're passing off?
No, because Elvis's aren't that valuable.
After all, we, you know, we havethis, this wonderful cult following
of Elvis, but they're not Ferraris.
That problem exists with Ferrari.
Cobras, Ford, gts.
Coopers.
Coopers, yeah.
Yeah.
Coopers, some Lolas, it happenswith a number of, some of
'em actually are licensed.
Some in some cases, like Lola forexample, now is licensed, what

(01:32:28):
they call continuation license.
Somebody to build it.
So those are legit.
But then you get in this problem of,okay, they're built just like the old
cars, are they the same as the old cars?
They're built with modern techniquesand all gets into all these issues.
There's a couple differentproblems with that.
One is there is the fraud aspectwhere people try to pass off a car

(01:32:49):
as having this and this provenanceand it really doesn't, and that
happens over and over again.
I've been involved in someof those cases, in fact.
And then there is the other kindof aspect, which is, well, we want
to build this continuation, but nowwhere are you gonna race these things?
Because the different vintage andhistoric sanctioning bodies, they

(01:33:09):
have a wide variety of rules.
Some are very, very strict.
This particular car you raced, thecar itself must have documented
history of having done X, Y, and Z.
Other sanctioning bodies are much looser.
They'll say, we'll accept cars that havebeen modified, modernized in some way.
We'll also accept cars that havebeen built as a continuation.

(01:33:31):
So those, those, there's the issue too ofwhat you can do with these cars besides
this, what their particular provenance.
I got involved in a lot of thisjust recently because after I
retired, my wife had done most ofthe, uh, papers for historic cars
for the FIA in the United States.
She wanted to continue doingthat 'cause she enjoyed talking

(01:33:53):
with the people and so forth.
And so when we retired, mysuccessor Nick Crawl asked if
we wouldn't continue doing that.
And I said yes, but I didn'twant to do inspections because
I didn't want to travel.
And we used Jeremy Hall who was the,uh, FIA inspector that inspected
all the cars for us, and we gotinvolved in a number of those.

(01:34:13):
We didn't have any problems thatI can recall on any elvas at all.
But we did have a lot of them on othercars and the FIA had a procedure,
they started out doing it for a, uh,historic papers called Heritage Program.
And it was fairly expensive because itrequired the car to be, regardless of
where the car was located, you had to havean inspector go out to it, had it go back.

(01:34:37):
And generally it took a couple timesto do it and if there was any other car
or any other person that claimed theProvidence car that you had, they would
not accept either one of them until itwas resolved and it got kind of difficult.
I actually have a Cooper stillthat I'm the only owner of the car.
I bought it from Reg Parnell and hewas the original buyer of the car.

(01:35:00):
It was a race team and I bought itfrom him and it's been in my garage
almost completely since that time.
Yet we know of one in England thathas claiming the same numbers on it.
You know the sad part, when these werefirst built, we didn't look into the
things that you all look into now.
We knew the cars because we knew it.
It was a red Elva so and so owned it,and if he put a blue stripe on it, it

(01:35:24):
was the red Elva with a blue stripe.
Nobody ever asked about aserial number or anything.
It's really a shamethat we didn't do more.
But I think on the first Elvis, we get,I remember the only thing I saw that
had a number on it, and I'm not sureit looked like a little tin strip that
you'd get at a arcade for a quarterwhere you could print your name on
a piece of metal or something, and Ithink Frank would go down to the arcade

(01:35:48):
and get 'em made when he needed them.
And it was really kind of funny.
It's sad, but it makes it interesting too.
If it was all cut and dried and weknew where everyone was and everything
that had done, it'd be different.
But it's fun.
You know, there are people that collectcars just to do that sort of thing.
They don't care aboutracing them or anything.

(01:36:09):
They like to look at 'em and they loveenjoying the, uh, history of them.
And it's kind of fun when youfind out your car had some
kind of providence do it.
Comment on that.
It's interesting about how, yeah,this thing about chassis numbers and
so forth is, is of issue now becauseof the cars that become valuable.
And then we, when you do dig throughthe history, there are all these
problems come about for a variety ofreasons that, that Birdie had mentioned.

(01:36:33):
And many of 'em had to do withlegal issues back in the day.
Because particularly before the onset ofthe European Union crossing every border
in Europe, you had to show that the carhas, yeah, left and entered the country.
And so the documentation hadto match the chassis number.
But if you crashed a car, that meansyou still had to export that car.
So you take the plate offand put it onto another car.

(01:36:55):
That kind of switchingwent on all the time.
And it goes on today, like probablycurrent racing quite a bit.
'cause I. The writing that I do, andI was, there was a particular car in
the A LMS race that was crashed atLime Rock, and a week later, the next
race of mid Ohio, I was there and theteam had this brand new car, and I went
up to him, I said, oh, I want to getthe chassis number of your new car.

(01:37:17):
And the guy tells me the chassisnumber and I said, no, no, that's
the one you crashed last week.
He goes, no, no, that's this one.
And I said, no, that can't be.
You've got a new car here.
He goes, no, we repaired it.
And I said, wait a minute, couldn't I?
It was there at Limerock.
It was badly damaged.
It was destroyed.
You didn't repair that car.
It said, no, we repaired it.
And I said, no, this.

(01:37:38):
And I looked and sure enough hadthe same chassis number I saw a
week earlier, and I said, well, howcan I have the same chassis number?
He says, well, we sent it back to Germany.
They repaired it, they sent it back to us.
It's a repaired car.
No customs duties paid.
I got that Juergen Barth.
Let me just tell you.
Tell you, Juergen Barthtold me that Porsche.
Even did the same thing.

(01:37:59):
They built a lot of race cars, team cars,and none of them have plates of their own.
They just would move them from whateverthey were taking them with, and
that's the company as big as Porsche.
We have a question back here.
Yes.
Did you really know anything about Gas?
Yes.
The name, name shows upTrust was 5,000 Drive.

(01:38:21):
Well, he drove, I know he drovevery successfully in the Continental
series at one time and that I don'tever remember him in a courier and,
well, there were quite a few of themdown in Atlanta and it may be some

(01:38:44):
place he worked or somebody he knewor something, but it's possible.
The name very much rings a bell and Ibelieve he's in my database that comes.
With the books, we canprobably take one here.
Just Dave, introduce yourself.
I'm Dave Wild.
We have an Elva courier thatI started racing after racing
at MGTD for quite a few years.
The courier, we were racing, uh,early sixties into mid sixties.

(01:39:08):
Anyway.
This is a story that I never sharedwith my wife until many years later.
It had been raining for oh, threedays down here at Watkins Glen.
That time we're stilldoing standing starts.
False grid was mud at that time.
Curious mix of Watkins Glen, clay, and.

(01:39:29):
The oil leaks of a thousandBritish cars that had gone before.
It was kind of a sticky mess at that time.
They slowly put us out on the grid andwhen the flag fell, I pulled a good
starting position in the second row,staggered just behind a Porsche 3 56.
As the flag fell, the 3 56 spun itstires unloaded its load of mud directly

(01:39:55):
in my face because we're sittingkind of exposed in an Elva courier.
Initially, I let off on thegas almost immediately, then
instantaneously, easily got back on it.
Because I realized there were a hundredcars behind me at a hundred miles an hour.
We had to get moving, soI put my foot back down.

(01:40:15):
I could not see a thing trying toget enough water off the cow of the
car to clear the mud off my visor,and was unsuccessful for a while.
But just on instinct alone and experiencerunning the course there, I managed to.
Come up from the old start, finish lineup the hill through the S and out onto

(01:40:38):
the strait before I could see again.
Great story, great story.
It was hairy one other time.
I was up on the back straight and somehowor another it collided with a bird.
It must have been a crow 'causeall I could see was black feathers.
It spun the helmet sidewaysto cover one eye, and it felt

(01:41:00):
like a pterodactyl, not a crow.
But thank you.
Well, with that, I'm gonna say veryspecial thanks to Burette Martin to Y win,
and to all of you for being here today.
Thank you today for a great.

(01:41:28):
This episode is brought to youin part by the International
Motor Racing Research Center.
Its charter is to collect,share, and preserve the history
of motor sports spanningcontinents, eras, and race series.
The Center's collection embodiesthe speed, drama and camaraderie
of amateur and professional motorracing throughout the world.

(01:41:53):
The center welcomes seriousresearchers and casual fans alike.
To share stories of race drivers raceseries, and race cars captured on
their shelves and walls, and broughtto life through a regular calendar of
public lectures and special events.
To learn more about the center,visit www.racing archives.org.

(01:42:16):
This episode is also brought to you bythe Society of Automotive Historians.
They encourage research into anyaspect of automotive history.
The SAH actively supports the compilationand preservation of papers, organizational
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(01:42:38):
deepen the understanding of motorizedwheeled land transportation through
the modern age and into the future.
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