Works car found

[LMM76C]

As something of an aside, that's a Ford works service car Zodiac Estate on the train behind 309. Two works Zodiac service cars are in the other photo and the Cortina is NVW240C, Soderstrom's Tulip car, although it's not him in it. NVW240C was also his Gp1 Monte car, converted to Gp2 here and gaining a yellow stripe down the middle (or yellow and blue Swedish national colours?). That car went to Mike Butler in Kent later in the year and was used on UK events. Similar to the "who you know" background to getting your hands on an ex-works BMC car then, it's safe to assume Butler used the influence of Vic Elford (whom he had co-driven in DKW and Triumph days) to get hold of it.

[Pete]

It was not normal - unprecedented even - to convert a Gp2 car to Gp1 - but was done the other way round.

I suspected as much, it was a long shot. It looks like the Flowers GRX 5D is also the Tulip GRX 5D then. I'm sure I can see double washer jets though in the above picture, so presume 5D had them for the Flowers also. So maybe the Flowers was the only event for Paul's car, significant enough to be well covered in the press at the time though. I'll look for some contemporary dash pictures Dave, not that I know feck all about works rally cars to be fair!

[spoon.450]

I'd say, after looking at more photos that the original GRX 5D did the Monte, Flowers and Tulip. Also, in comparison to 309D the headlamp protector mounting studs are vertical, whereas on 309 they are at an angle.

[Pete]

Talking of the differences between Gp1 and Gp2, this is the underside of Aaltonen's brand new Gp1 '66 Monte car during prep at Abingdon showing the external hydro :

[Pete]

I know this is unrelated to GRX 309D, so apologies in advance but having dug this out of the old MCR Forum from early 2010 I just thought it made interesting reading. I did contact the writer but lost touch some time ago.

"Joined a couple of weeks ago after coming across articles on the web about 8 EMO and CRX 90 B both cars of which I was once personally involved!

Saw 8 EMO for the first time in Tilotston’s in Burnley in 1968 with my friend Alan Rowlands who went on to buy it from them via a company in Burnley that were then called Rallyspeed if my memory serves me correctly. Can remember being taken for a ride in up onto the moors at the back of Tilotson’s showroom and how impressive the thing was. Unfortunately Alan’s wealth couldn’t stretch to the full package and the Single 45 Weber carbed 1293 engine and SC Gearbox had to go, removed by Rallyspeed and replaced by a 998 Cooper engine together with a normal ‘S’ gearbox. The cost by the way if I remember correctly, with the Cooper engine, was about £700 and Rallyspeed wanted about £950 for it with the works ‘S’ engine and box.! On getting it home to Chester, where we lived it was parked on the pavement outside my house for a couple of months whilst I removed the Cooper engine and rebuilt it using a flowed head, 731 cam and 1 1/2” SU’s . It had no auxiliary lights when purchased from Tilotson’s although all the relays, switches etc were there, no sumpguard and despite what some people think definitely no rooflight. Everything else was there though and undamaged and the one memorable thing was the smell, a glorious unforgettable odour of oil and petrol that stayed with the car throughout my memory of it.
Unusually and I’ve never seen mention of this before the car was hydrolastic BUT the units weren’t interconnected. Each unit was pressurized independently and Alan always mainted that this made the road holding very unpredictable. We completed fitting it out exactly as a works rally car with a proper Lucas light setup replacing the small reversing light for a 5 3/4” back mounted foglight and fitting map reading lamp etc etc. Alan campaigned it on quite a few occasions and I remember we got a first in class when we did the Bristowe Rally A little under a year later it went straight on at a 90 right into a dry stone wall near Kirby Lonsdale and was off the road for a while whilst I replaced the rack, n/s front wing and a few other things.
Alan later sold it on to a school-friend and bought a Lotus Cortina to replace it but I remember seeing it a couple of times subsequently. Once at a half way halt; I believe it was the first time it was rallied by it’s new owner, he’d completely rolled it, it looked very sad and then, it might have been a year later I came across it by chance near Mold. I can only describe it looking as if the ‘repair’ following the roll had been done by a butcher, They’d cut through all the pillars and just welded another roof and pillar of another mini onto it not even bothering to grind the welds down! The red/white was gone and it was painted a yucky green colour, the hyrolastic suspension had been removed and replaced by rubber cones and if it hadn’t been for the registration I would never have known it was the same car, a terrible end to such a great car, it quite broke my heart. I’m just amazed at how 8 EMO appears now, as good as when I first saw it at Tilotson’s all those years ago. We always used to refer to it as E-Mo by the way!
By 1971 I was married and living in Bedford when I saw an advertisement in Motoring News for a Works Mini for Sale. The phone number was not far away at Bletchley and I was soon off to take my first look at CRX90 B. Yes it looked like a works Mini and yet somehow it lacked the ‘Wow ‘factor that I’d felt when I first set eyes on E-Mo. The car was Red/White 1293 ‘S’ single 45 Webber with SC C/R box interconnected hyrolastic, all the works interior trim but no sump guard, no lights and no sign of recent competition. Log book said ‘rebuilt’ in red and told of a garage in Bletchley owned by Paul Easter and the tale was that he had bought it from the factory. If I remember I paid about £575 for it and ran it as my road car without any problems until the transfer gear started to howl which meant a trip up to my brother in Nottingham where we removed the engine and replaced the housing and idler gear. I didn’t keep it long after selling it in 1973 I think. Sold it quite easily through Motoring News, people were almost queuing up for it with it eventually going to Derby Road Garage for about £650. I’ve no idea what happened to it immediately after that. 40 years on and my memory is getting is getting a little dulled now but the more I think about those days the more I remember. I am lucky that for a brief while both cars became for an important part of my life and that I could appreciate the workmanship that went into them."

[Brynmor]

Pete, you may remember dads article on 8 EMO, and also that Alan mentioned above was our neighbour for many years...I even went to school with his daughter....small world isn't it

[Pete]

Pete, you may remember dads article on 8 EMO

Yes I do, it ended up in a far worse state than GRX didn't it. In fact when you look at what happened to some of these cars GRX looks to be one of the most complete!

Here's the For Sale ad I reckon from Sept issue of Cars and Car Conversions :



Thanks to John for sending that!

[spoon.450]

Fantastic !

[Pete]

Apparently it appeared for sale in the Oct issue aswell, and apparently for sale again in a 1975 edition did somebody say? I'll have a look when I get up in the loft.

If Paul wants hard copies of all this stuff just let me know, he's welcome to the Autosport copies etc.

I'll look through my stuff and see what contemporary dash shots I can find.

[spoon.450]

That's right Pete, Alan Bell bought the car from this ad. and sold it " sometime " in 75, again through a CCC ad. Dash shots would be good as we have no images at all of the original works dash that was fitted to Pauls car. Anything appreciated.
Many thanks
Dave

[Thee Adder]

Great story Dave, and well done to you and Martin for unearthing such a fascinating tale, it was a shame I didn't manage to fly back from Sydney a week earlier to see the car back ion May. I have recommended the forum and the story to my Mini pals here in Sydney Australia.

Mac

[Thee Adder]

I have just opened the crate with my books in from England and read in The Works Minis about GRX309D in the Flowers rally being pushed by the VP Princess R for the last mile or so.

[Pete]

I have just opened the crate with my books in from England and read in The Works Minis about GRX309D in the Flowers rally being pushed by the VP Princess R for the last mile or so.

That was actually the 1967 Flowers, not the 1966 event that GRX 309D competed on, even Paddy got that mixed up at Bingley earlier this year. In 1967 Paddy's gearbox went on 'LBL 590E' miles from the finish of the rally but luckily he was able to coast downhill all the way to the end. He got a shove from the service barge in a tunnel close to the finish and popped out the other end like a cork from a bottle. He free wheeled to the finish line shortly after with the engine running and feigned sudden gearbox failure when he tried to drive off, finishing 2nd overall! I've got some great colour shots of this event from Mike Wood ,who was on the event in GRX 195D and told me the story. He's offered us a slideshow of them all at Blyton.

[Pete]

This is one of Mike's slides from the '67 Flowers that's found it's way onto the internet (amongst lots of others!) so there's little harm in posting this now, it shows Fall towing Hopkirk's stranded car away at the finish.



The cars look to be in a similar state to the cars at the end of the '66 event, pretty rough.

[hanlminiman]

Looking at the photo I noticed that the cream dust colour scheme is different on each car and then saw that the splash guards have a different design. Also do the cars only have front wheel arch extensions? Umm! Sad, I've been reading posts too long but do enjoy them.
Cliff

[LMM76C]

Rear arches are there, just covered in dirt. They were fairly narrow anyway. Someone has sat on or brushed against Hopkirk's OSF wing so it looks a bit different. Front flaps are same but the OS one on Fall's car has drooped, making the angles look different. The fittings of front flaps never seemed to be standardised. Sometimes there was hidden support to keep them from drooping (and thus stop them causing front brakes to disappear...). You see period photos of some private cars with front flaps almost hanging vertically - not good for brake cooling.
Anyone know who was behind the use of front flaps? It has all the marks of another Makinen fad that seemed a good idea at the time and everyone else humoured it. I played around with them on my Cooper but I found them unconvincing for the purpose and never fitted them to my S.

[Pete]

The Motoring News write up I picked up at Pooks for the '66 Flowers is way more descriptive than for Autosport, understandably (they did cover rallies in more detail) and it uses the pics you got from LAT. However that poor over exposed action shot has much better contrast in print (despite the poor print quality),, oddly?? The story covers very poor conditions of snow, rain, then mud and the combination of both on loose surfaces making the event a real car breaker.The write up covers the Minis in detail and remarks on how the new swing out lamp bar (pictured previously) allows easy access through the front, was this the first time these were used? Also explains how Tony Fall totally stuffed his recce car ,Paddy got his stranded in a snow bank and how Turner accidentally fell into a 6ft deep gully. Sounded like great fun! The story is titled "We Wuz Robbed Again", referring to Elford's disqualification after being declared winner in his Cortina, so close after the infamous Monte disqualifications.

Can't get it on the scanner Dave but can send it to you along with the Autosport copies.

[LMM76C]

Mention of the pivoting lamp bar (first use, as someone confirmed earlier) raises the question of how the grille was fixed to provide for quick removal once the lamp bar was out of the way. There was limited value in a pivoting lamp bar if it then needed about 16 self tapping screws to be removed to get the grille off.
At club level of course we all used the famous twin "grille buttons" but these were specifically banned in Appendix J for Internationals then (and some still think the post 1.1.66. Appendix J wasn't written with obstructing Minis in mind...).
Private entrants mainly used a smaller number of bigger screws but did the works too ?

[Pete]

Private entrants mainly used a smaller number of bigger screws but did the works too ?

Good point, the L/H side as pictured would have been difficult to access with a driver as the bar's in the way anyway, wonder how the grille was held on then?

[Pete]

By the way Dave, Hopkirk was really motoring on the special stages once the radiator,oil seperator and puncture problems were fixed and beaten only by the Porsche 911 of Klass on the last half dozen. The car certainly had rally winning pace then. The jack also collapsed and the car fell on to Mike Legg (or was it Mike's leg?? ) of the service crew who escaped with bruises. Certainly an incident packed event and significant in many ways, not least for the fact it was Hopkirk's first with new partner Crellin.

Seeing as it wasn't used again (as far as we know) I wonder if it went off testing in Wales?