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Yes I thought my little trick would be spotted , need a pic of the other side of the car!

That's looking really good, looking forward to seeing it one day (probably in May next year )

Looking good Pete

Some more info from a chap who originally saw the car in Jan's workshop in May '67 :

"In 1966/67, spured by Clive Trickey of C&CC, I visited Jan Odor a couple of times about building a Mini 7 engine. In the center of his workshop was a Unipower and beside it an SCA grafted onto a mini drive train which so overhung the front of the gearbox that I think he had a problem with it interfearing with the suspension. I had always assumed that he had managed to shoehorn it and that that was the combination that Mabbs drove.

I bought my Unipower in the early 70's and by chance was twice flagged down by Piers Forester on his bike in the Brompton Road, who told me that mine was the last of the series one cars. Incidentally, he offered to buy it, but I think he made the same offer to any owner he came across. I once had a girlfriend who had something to do with driving the Targa car in Italy, and Len Brammer somehow acquired the Le Mans engine.

Despite all new suspension bushes, mine always 'bump-steared' and eventually it caught me out once too often!
The Janspeed car was white. I can't tell you the date, but it was probably late April, but could have been May (1967).The radiator was out and two radiators were lying on the fuel tank. On the roof were sketches and dimensions of a roll cage, but they could have been for any car. The nearside rear suspension was dangling, the car being held up with a crudely hacked piece of pallet, wedged between the stearing arm and the spaceframe. The SCA Mini engine had no flywheel and the drop gears were visable and as I think about it, there was a modified clutch housing nearby, which held a starter.
The car must have been raced, or at least practiced, as the chat started about the driver being 'all arms and legs' because of the car's performance being too good for the 'dodgy' handling, which led to " what's to be done to cope with the narrow SCA powerband and gear ratios?"
My suggestion that welding the hubs to make a De Dion axle might make the handling more predictable, led to pondering the possibility of making an adjustable De Dion, but the chat ended frostily when I mentioned an Imp engine!
I didn't realise it at the time and only put 2 & 2 together many years later after chatting on the phone to Gerry Hulford, that the Janspeed car was the one that was advertised just after Easter in Autosport that I thought I had agreed a cheeky offer of £750 cash; but to tell how that came about would make a novel out of a paragraph."


Current state of affairs.....

You're still managing to dig new info up Pete, what a great thread on a great car!

What a small world it is when you use the interweb (which I know some luddites still think is all crap even in 2014) but the sole reason I started this thread was to see if I could find little nuggets of info like this: The same guy (Thomas) came back to me with a great story of how he almost bought my car from that advert placed by the factory in the back of Autosport in the Spring of 1967, but the deal just went.... put the kettle on..here's the story :


"I first met Piers Forester in Acton, when his bike went one way and he another, sliding into my Mini pickup. We picked his bike up, heaved it in the pick up and I took it them to an alcoholic friend of his (in Greenford), whose nerve had apparently been shattered, testing to destruction the 'added lightness' in Colin Chapman's cars.

I first met Alan McKechnie before he had polio, but became friends through Barrie Williams when I worked for Whizzo's father.

There were lots of impoverished club racers, pre advertising, in the 60's, and one was a fly chap called AJ Pearce who crept up the racing ladder by begging stuffed cars and straightening them, but as they usually came without an engine, he struggled; that was, until he discovered that an ugly lump of metal could be 'turned' into a beautiful alloy wheel on a lathe.

With a bit of regular cash, he somehow got a complete car off Charlie Lucas that Piers Courage had bent, and set his eyes on F1, but 'turning' out wheels wasn't THAT profitable, and he approached Alan McKechnie.

Rich and wealthy people are rich and wealthy because they look after their money, and Alan wanted to know a bit more about AJ Pearce, behind the ad in motoring news, but how and who to find out.

At the time, AJ had been running an advert for an engineer / fitter to turn out more wheels, and as I could work a 'mangle', we hatched a plan that I'd go for the job and find out all I could for Alan.

I had acquired an 1100 block and just built myself a 731 cammed towing engine to replace my over bored 997, 544 cammed engine, and in due course I set off (to run it in) along the A40 for the interview on Maundy Thursday. Ascending Stokenchurch it developed a knock, which got so bad that I had to abandon the car at HA Saunders in High Wycombe and call off the interview and hitch home.

Next to our Mini 7 at the Castle Combe Easter meeting was a beautiful G4, and the following week in Autosport was an advert for a G4 rolling shell for an affordable £300. Alan McKechnie had a handy 25 foot trailer which I asked if I might borrow to collect my car and maybe, after inspection, collect the G4.

When I showed Alan the advert, his comment was "I thought you always wanted a Unipower" and sure enough, on the same page was a Unipower rolling shell that I had overlooked, probably because it was priced at over £1000-00, and when I pointed out this little obstacle, dear Alan said " I expect I could help a bit. I'll get Fred to ring". Fred was his engineer, who could haggle the crown off the Queen.

And so a deal was done, that if I took a set of wheels and £750-00 cash, it was mine! A few days later I set off once again for the interview, collected my car, wended my way through Southall, and after a quick test of my turning, was proudly shown the potential F1 and over a jar in the pub, was conveniently told what the new backer was expected to provide.

Having seen and heard enough for Alan, I promised that as soon as I had found digs I'd knock on his door. Alan had a couple of meeting with AJ, but declined to invest, and always maintained the fire that destroyed AJ's F1 team was suspiciously well away from prying eyes.

It was late Friday afternoon when I got to Perivale (Unipower factory) to be met with "We have been trying to phone you" (McKechnie and crew had gone off to an F3 meeting) It transpired that the person who had done the deal wasn't really authorised to do it, and they'd had a better offer!

As I was disconsolately trying to turn the 25 foot trailer in a 25 foot space, someone came out to help and as I was at last pointing at the gate he came to the window and offered his appologies.
I think he must have felt even worse when I recognised him and reminded him of picking up his bike in my pick up! "



So Forester was certainly around at Perivale in early '67 , I wonder what his association was before he ended up taking over manufacture of the cars himself, other than being a customer?

This is the yellow/green car similar to mine that Forester raced in 1968 :



..which I think is the Em Newman/Gordon Allen car that John Miles is racing here a year earlier..



Here's the For Sale ad of the above car from the back of Autosport, Jan '68 :

Looking good Pete, you need to source some jap rims though, it's not doing it justice on those revs.. Well I think so

In principle I agree Chris, but wheels are going to be a tough decision and worth taking some time over. I could go back to 10" and have the rears looking pretty lost in that wide bodywork, 12" JAPs are nigh on impossible to find (and neither are they making them) and 13" JAPs are a good bet but the rears are also a problem in terms of width. I don't want to commit to tyres yet either and find they're scrap if/when I change the wheels. I could just get a new set of wheels made up at serious cost (£2K) but for the moment I'm just looking at what turns up in what sizes and what offsets, there's been some cheap sets of 13" JAPs gone on Ebay recently that I've missed. bearing in mind front and rears are so different. I'm going to look alot more closely at this when the car's back from paint, which will be next week now. I don't mind the Revos for now, they're comp ones and have been with the car for most of it's life.

Mabbs must have been so underpowered in this race on July 2nd '67, some pretty serious runners here :





Despite the fact the car was still white on July 23rd at Jarama the plan was obviously to paint it Janspeed colours from the off as it's listed as red here three weeks earlier. Though the entry form will have been filled in as red/black prior to the race I presume they just didn't get around to painting it until August, once the wheel arches had been widened and aero tweeks had been completed. John Miles (driving his usual Lotus 47 in this race) drove the Newman/Allen Unipower GT in another race in this programme, I know Miles said that he raced against my car on a couple of occasions but not at this event evidently?

I know this has turned into a general topic about Unipower GTs to a degree but I thought some material worth posting as there's precious little on the internet about these cars, let alone in books. So here's a couple of documents I found on Ebay (in Germany and far too expensive for me to think about buying), they're a price list of components for the apparent attempt to sell cars in kit form at the very end of production in late 1969. Whether they sold any is another matter and according to Ernie Unger in a recent interview all Forester cared about was racing these cars (despite Ernie's opinion that they were designed purely as a road car) and there were forty cars still on order when the doors finally closed for good.





The car's come back from the paint shop with door roundels now in the right place, next is a trip to Blyton to see what it does! Also bought some JAP wheels, more on those soon.

Thats great news Pete!

I look forward to seeing the pics of it finally out & about!

pete


I bet you wish your exhaust only had cost £16!

£16? Barely buys the clamps! Tony Laws did do a lovely job. I suppose I could have taken it to Janspeed who made all the Unipower GT exhausts but it's hardly the same company anyway so I saved myself all the effort. I'll do some piccy's of it when I can.

Pete when are you going to Blyton to test out the Unipower, I would like to come along and see it in the real, or is it top secret
Regards
Goff

goff wrote:Pete when are you going to Blyton to test out the Unipower

That's a very good question. I'll post it up when I do, could be this weekend, could be the end of November.

I was happy to pick these up from Ebay, a flyer of the '67 RCS with some bumf on the back and a screen sticker (above).

I hope its not this weekend as i would miss it as i am at Stockport Saturday night for a 50th birthday and stopping over night.

Good buy Pete, I was watching that one too, good job I didn't bid against you.
I'm looking for '68 screen stickers for my GTM if you spot any.

I'll have a look Andy. I have a full set of brochures & most posters, also some screen stickers. 68 was the funny year when it was called "Autospeed 68" which makes it more difficult to find stuff.

Thanks Mark, I've got a catalogue from '67 and '68, would be nice to have some period stickers for the back window.

Pete I've got a box full of paddock passes from the 60s and 70s, I'll dig them out and take some snaps.

As a matter of interest, all the racing car show programmes are reproduced on the main MK1 site here;

http://mk1-performance-conversions.co.u ... vents.html

This is the full brochure for 1967

http://mk1-performance-conversions.co.uk/67-guide.pdf