Front Engine, single seat race cars.

[105angria]

fords not a single seater but nice

[beowulf]

Aston Martin built a single seater that was as unsuccessful as the Scarab. Unfortunately the rear engine revolution was happening at the time and they were the last of the dinosaurs. As such they were never fully developed and never achieved much in the way of results.
Racing now in Historics, using , dare I mention it, modern knowledge they have shown that they would have been competitive.
Lex Davison, hated the rear engined cars even though he drove one very succesfully calling them "mechanical mice". Lex also owned an Aston Martin single seater that ended up in NZ, raced by Lional Bulcraig (spelling)from Northland.Lovely cars that are only know being appreciated. All proper racing cars have the engine up front driving the back wheels, and no roof.

[pallmall]

Both Lex Davison and Bib Stillwell had ex F1 Aston Martins fitted with 3 litre engines. I don't recall Davison racing his in NZ, but Stillwell did at a couple of NZ GPs. I thought the Bulcraig car was ex Stillwell, that car is/was in the Donington Museum.
Will do some homework to check and post some photos later.

[pallmall]

Aston Martin DBR4 and DBR5 F1, 1959 and 1960. Another front engined design that was at least two years too late appearing to be competitive. Six cars built by the factory, 4 DBR4 and 2 DBR5. According to what DSJ published the two DBR5s were scrapped by the factory, DBR4/1 was reconstructed and raced in historics, DBR4/2 broken up, DBR4/3 is the Stillwell/Bulcraig/Brewer/Donington car, DBR4/4 was the Davison car later returned to the UK and historic raced by Corner and de Cadenet, and another facsimilie car was built for historic racing.
This is DBR4/3 at Donington restored to F1 specs and body style and is the car we saw racing in NZ with Stillwell and Bulcraig.

[105angria]

assd pics

[pallmall]

I guess I have a soft spot for some of the beautiful, but unsuccessful racing cars from the fifties and sixties.
While a championship car in its normal form, this one off version has always intrigued me.
Vanwall VW6 Streamliner, designed by Frank Costin and built by Abbey Panels, built for the French Grand Prix at Reims 1957, practised, but did not race. Restored back to streamliner by the Wheatcroft Collection. (Apologies for the poor photos)

[pallmall]

A couple of photos from the web of the car since it has been made a runner once again.

[kiwi285]

As a youngster I alway had a soft spot for the Vanwall F1 cars. All my school books had side views of this car drawn on them. I think I still have one of these exercise books now. Have never seen one in the flesh though.

'Pallmall' I see in the background of the streamliner cars I can see the early McLaren F1 cars. Do you have any specific photos of the M7 etc that are/were in the collection.

[pallmall]

Not many of the M7s from that trip, but I will have a few from other events. I will sort them out and maybe do a sixties and seventies F1 cars thread because I have a fairly large selection from that era. One of the issues with the collection displays at times was the cars tended to get jammed in close together, and the lighting was horrid, making photography difficult.

[John Medley]

The Lola pictured at Longford is the FJunior imported by David McKay and sold to Tom Corcoran

Great photos, folks!

[105angria]

sitting on the side of the road over 200 starts 2 dnfs