Motor Racing pics - my early years, 1964-71 ; Pukekohe Racetrack ;by - Roger Dowdingl

[khyndart in CA]

The Phillips Mini had some good pedigree.

"In 1969 Irishman Alec Poole driving a privately prepared Mini Cooper S won the British Touring Car Championship.

The "Equipe Arden" car was originally a genuine Austin Cooper 970S and was made into a racer by Jim Whitehouse of Arden Engineering whose business was in Tamworth-in-Arden, about 10 miles south of Birmingham.

At the end of the British season in November 1969, the car was immediately bought by NZ-based American Jim Carney for his wife Mary Donald Carney to drive in the New Zealand Championship. At the time, Mary Donald Carney was NZ’s top woman driver racing a Mini Cooper. Jim and Mary Carney took delivery of the car at Silverstone circuit where some small changes were made, i.e. twin-circuit braking for NZ regs, and a changed seating position for Mary.

. Jim Carney formed a Racing team of his wife Mary and Jim Richards (Twin-cam Lotus Escort).
Basically the car was a 1967 body shell with up-rated hydrolastic suspension. Dunlop 3.75/800 x 12 tyres were used on 12 x 6 inch Minilite wheels. The 970cc engine was overbored to 999cc to keep under the 1000cc class restriction. At 8,000rpm the engine developed 105bhp and extrapolating to peak at around 9,500rpm on about 115bhp. The car was a handful with the very peaky ultra short stroke engine (special short stroke Gordon Allen crankshaft with way oversize magnesium pistons in offset bores) and the diabolically difficult to handle Jack Knight 5 speed gearbox. Mary Carney won a national championship race but the engine was unreliable, mainly due to over-revving caused by the vagaries of the gear change. It was very easy to go from 4th to 1st instead of 3rd with the inevitable result to valves and pistons! The aluminium 8 port crossflow head was Whitehouse's creation hence the source of the name -: Arden head. Mark 1 Tecalamit-Jackson (TJ) fuel injection was fitted and this was very temperamental compared to the mark 2 version fitted to other Minis such as Rex Hart's 1275 Cooper. NZ’er Peter Levet rebuilt the engine and gearbox one last time for Jim Carney and tested it at Pukekohe. He lapped right on the lap record with puddles still on the circuit prompting Carney to offer him the car for the rest of the season and after Carney left, Levet went out on a dry circuit only to hook the previously mentioned 1st gear instead of 3rd going into Castrol with the tragic result of a piston getting spat out of one of the intake trumpets. That was once too many for Carney and he promptly sold the car as-is to another NZ driver Barry Phillips.

Barry had good success in the car but now with conventional-stroke engine and various lockouts on the gear change but never completely curing the erratic change. The other gear change problem was being able to go from 1st to 4th which explains why the car would get off the line but apparently bog down on the first up change. Barry raced the car in the Team Rothmans livery (See photo of car ) post # 187.

The Drinkrow brothers of Beachlands, NZ, acquired the car and that is where it is today. Lynn Rodgers has built a 999cc engine and Peter Levet has built a 4 speed box. Alan Drinkrow has 2 of the 5 speed boxes and has rebuilt them but Levet talked him out of using them (at least in the early stages). Levet went to Arden Engineering to search for parts for the restoration and spoke to Jim Whitehouse on the day 21/3/1981 when Mike Hailwood was so tragically killed just a few miles from Jim's workshop, in fact passing the site of the accident less than an hour before it happened. Levet recovered a lot of TJ injection gear in England and Alan has probably got that together by now. Levet hasn’t seen the car for sometime, but it is probably back in the 1969 colour by now. Levet also recovered 4 of the original Cooper 12" magnesium wheels (as opposed to the Minilites) to go with the re-drilled set that Alan recovered from Jim Maud. When Levet was speaking to John Cooper, he thought that they only cast 7 sets of them so 8 of the original 28 exist in Beachlands! "


Story researched and prepared by Greg Wenzlick 2007.
Contributions from Peter Levet 2007 and Michael Bowler of Motor Week magazine 1969.
Photos; Maurice Rowe, Motor Week magazine, Peter Levet.


(Ken Hyndman )