The picture below was taken by a friend of mine and it’s the only worthwhile photo I have to put on here from its NZ history.
This is my very very long term project. I’ve owned it now for about 6 years but the shell is still the same as when I bought it. In that time I’ve done loads of research and accumulated most parts I need apart from an engine but haven’t found out very much about its NZ racing history at all.
This when the panel work was started before I bought it.
The History from the beginning.
SPU 254K (its English registration number) was built as a group 2 race car at Fords Boreham facility in 1972 with a Gomm built shell alongside two other identically spec’d cars. It was originally raced by Danish driver Erik Hoyer between 1972 and 1974 in Denmark and Europe in various touring car events and championships and powered with two different capacity engines depending on the year or series. In 1972 it raced with an 1800 BDE and 1973 with a 1300 BDH both with Lucas fuel injection.
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1973
As well as competing in Denmark and other European events it ran in some English RAC championship races in 1973 as one of the unofficial RS1300 cars when the rules were changed for the year to allow manufacturers to run alternatively homologated heads. Of course with 190HP the 1300 Escorts decimated the opposition. Short lived though as the rules changed again for 74 and outlawed them.
The rear suspension is what sets this apart from most other Escorts of the day. It has Len Bailey designed torsion bar rear suspension using Morris Minor torsion bars and dummy plastic leaf springs for homologation purpose only. There were two or three other Escorts of the day apart from the two sister cars running torsion bars but all were different designs. Most notable of these being Frank Gardner’s XOO 349F. I've had a look at that car and it is quite different. The torsion bars are probably Morris Minor but that is where the similarity ends really.
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