Pictures of the week

This week i have a couple of interesting pictures for you to enjoy, the first of these was taken in Genova, Italy in the early 60`s. There was a Fairthorpe dealer appointed in the area and he had a new tail designed for his cars, one of which is shown in this picture. I am not aware of how many cars were built with these and have no knowledge of any of them surviving. If anyone in Italy reading this fancies a bit of detective work here is your opportunity, i think there are at least 2 Fairthorpes there with the conventional rear bodywork. Below is a scan of the front of the agents brochure.

The second picture was taken in February 1986 at the CCH Sprint at Brands Hatch, my Father Frank (pictured with the car) and i had rebuilt this EM1 with a Ford Escort axle with a limited slip diff, a 160bhp Race tuned Lotus Twin Cam and 5 speed gearbox and as you can imagine it was VERY impressive to drive. Unfortunately we arrived too late to practice due to the snow and a steep slope out of our workshop! So we were therefore a non starter, no harm in unloading it from the trailer and giving it a run round the paddock! A couple of months later we took it to Silverstone for the 8 Clubs race meeting again arriving late for practice (i see a pattern here!) but due to a friend being clerk of the course i did a couple of practice laps behind the pace car (thanks Ken ;¬)

I had a great dice during the race with someone in a hot 2.8i Capri, i`d out brake him and pull away through the corners and under acceleration but he would be on my tail again at the end of the straights. Alas it was over all too soon, after 3 laps the large oil warning light flicked on and a glance at the pressure gauge showed the needle rapidly descending towards zero so i switched the engine off and coasted to a halt on the grass on the exit of Copse corner. The cause was diagnosed as a broken cam bucket and with metal all round the inside of the engine an expensive rebuild was on the cards.............money we unfortunately didn`t have at the time, a familiar story for many would be racers. We had someone who was interested in the car so we resprayed it to their choice of colour which was British Racing Green and fitted it with a tuned 1600 Ford x-flow engine with twin 40 Weber carbs, still a potent machine but a bit more reliable for the road.