British Stock-Car Racing in the 1950s-1970s
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in the Sixties
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Replicas and "Restos"

* Look for UPDATE labels: new additions.

I will not be adding much to this page except if car builders send me a photo; the Heritage car movement in the UK started after I left England, so in a way I'm out of it. Thanks to movers-and-shakers like Keith Barber and the heritage websites, you can find more via my LINKS page.


UPDATE January 2013:                                                                                                       My thanks to Roy Clarke for photos of the superb "re-creation" jobs he has done to bring back his own and Pat Willis's cars from the fifties and sixties:
Now for a treat, below.  Real "iron" in action, in the form of Roy Clarke's replica of the famous Pat Willis Packard, and he is not pussyfooting with this car!

roy replica

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UPDATE  August 2009 update: Thanks to Mark Crisp for these shots of Heritage cars at Brafield in 2007.  
Steve Bateman 676   [World Champ 1966, and raced just about everyting on wheels] leads on the straight.  
A gaggle of twelve F2's wrestle through Turn One, with Pete Fenton #7 heading out of the frame, #20 Dan Jeffrey, Alconbury's #709 Kelly Cooper,  #716 Roy Clarke [
racing since 1960], three not identified,  #144 Tony Clarke, and #869.


Big guns, as the Mike Close 199 and the John Stirk six-wheeler 65 replicas roar through.  The Close car is 100% original.  The brand new six-wheeled monster replica was built by John Stirk and raced by him at the youthful age of 68. [Update info from Barrie S.]

The 59 Barrie Shepherd  car leads the Stirk car, and what I think is John Plant's Jag-motored Fiat. Corrections and current owners' names invited by e-mail, please!

Early Ford-V-8-and-Pilot expert Mick Gamble has passed on this great photo of  Duncan Bell's "Heritage"  recreation of a flathead Ford V-8 stock car.

Chick Woodroffe's car re-born 45 years on.  The late great Chick Woodroffe (racer in both formulae, builder, promoter, BriSCA volunteer) must be smiling as he looks down on Paul Ferguson's car.  Paul races in Heritage series, and has perfectly recreated the #409 car, with the same 1172cc Ford side-valve motor (only 'same period' tuning parts allowed).  Here is Paul's car resting.  Here he mixes it up with the best, during the Bristol F2 World Final meeting in 2008.

 UPDATE October 2009:  Barrie Shepherd, who raced in the 1970's, has exactly re-created his 1978 car and is racing again.  Barrie has updated the info below about the John Plant car: it went to Gary Tressler who jammed in a 406 cu.in. small-block, then it was taken over by Southport's Ron Harney #75, an old Wilf Blundell buddy.  

From SHORT CIRCUIT MAGAZINE,--- a terrific publication ---, the creation of replicas continues with John Plant's beauty.  Old hands will look at this and say "Hey, isn't that's Chick Woodroffe's old Junior car from the mid-sixties?"   Yeah, the colour, the Topolino body, and even the Tip-Top sponsorship, but this has a big Jaguar 6 motor and state of the art roll caging Photographs by camera wiz and Short Circuit mag contributor Dave "Smiffyman" Smith. John Plant raced in the 1960's, and revived those days by building this spotless replica Senior/F1.   One,    Two,   Three,  and Four.

A look at John's car from forty+ years ago reminds us that (a) the cars were NOT spotless, and (b) they really did take some serious stick:  John's Harringay crash.

  • Some cars running at the short 320-yard Belle Vue speedway track at Kirkmanshulme Lane in 2004 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of stock-car racing in Britain: [Thanks to Paul Boucher who passed these on to me.]  # 144, another144,

    # 146, 

    # 161, 

John Goody's (?) Picture Post 28, (Goody created  this to recall his Heat 3 win at New Cross's first-ever stock-car meet!) 

Keith Barber's own 686 Junior Keith Barber, in addition to rebuilding other famous cars (Bozzy's, Aubrey's, Tiger's, etc) found time to recreate his own little Morris, once # 422 and here under #686.

Three shots of the meticulous Keith Barber replication of #42, (photos by Mike Greenwood) from when Keith displayed the car at the 2002 World Final at Coventry.  What a beautiful car, and a very fitting memorial to the great Aubrey Leighton as a driver and a builder: Restoration 1;   Restoration 2;   Restoration 3

And here's what I am sure is the ACTUAL original Leighton #42 that became  Harrison's #2, a photo taken at Sheffield and thanks to John Rigg for passing it on.

Another world championship car, that of 1964 winner TREVOR FROST #68, which appeared at the Ipswich track's 50th-anniversary meet.  This car was brought back to 1964 form — even those dents look authentic ---  by Trevor's son.  Thanks to Alan Humprey for the pic.  If you click on the photo in the "Back-to-the-sixties-for-a-goodbye" section, you can see Frost lining up at the back of a rolling lap at Brafield over 40 years ago —.

Indoor shot of Keith Barber's garage, with the Leighton-recreation special body-off.  [Carol Cockings photo]

Marty Page #333, [this photo also appears in the 1950's section] but this photo was printed in an Ipswich newspaper in 2004, to celebrate stock-car racing's 50th anniversary. 

 

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Juniors / F2s

Seniors / F1s
in the Sixties

More Seniors / F1s
in the Sixties

The Seventies

The Early Days
Some Replicas and Restos Automotive Oddments Some Hot Rods Early British Drag Racing

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