Birrana

[Chris Townsend]

Can people add more about the Birrana cars that ran in Australian F2 in the 1970s and then in the Atlantic series?

Two of these cars appeared in Britain in 1975 Atlantic, entered by Bob and Marj Brown for Bobby Muir and Dean Hosking. Then an F2 car raced in Europe in 76 before the Browns bought a Chevron B35 for Muir to use.

Were the Browns entrants who happened to bring over a couple of chassis for Australian drivers, or was this a works operation running in Britain?
We seem to have chassis numbers for most of the Birranas that are appearing in the Tasman and Gold Star. Can anyone throw any light on the identity of the two British cars? At the moment they are [1] and [2] in my records - which is almost certainly wrong. Most race reports don't even give a model number, but I have an entry list from Snetterton in June 75 which describes them as Birrana 273s.

Chris

[Bryan Miller]

Chris.
Bob and Marj Brown ran Enno Buesselmann in Australian Van Heusen in 1974 , in the first two rounds , after that he was replaced by Bob Muir, the car was 273-009 , but had been updated with 274 nose and rear wing.
I will try and confirm from Malcolm Ramsay the actual ch.no.s of all production cars .

At this stage I would be reasonably confident of appling
273-009 to Muir in U.K.
273-006 to Dean Hosking in U.K. only ran once or twice.
I believe the 273-009 became the Minos , this car was written off [fully] at Wanneroo Park a few years later by Bill Downey.
I will also ask Malcolm re. works assistance in U.K. but I would think this was a private effort.
Bryan.

[Milan Fistonic]

Two Birrana 274s ran in the 1977 Peter Stuyvesant series in New Zealand.

274-012 was driven by Wolfgang Prejawa and was fitted with an Paul England T/C Ford.

274-016 was driven by Graham Baker. It had been raced in Australia by Chas Talbot and was fitted with an England BDA in New Zealand.

[Bryan Miller]

Milan Fistonic and Chris .
Agree those two CH.NO. as they are 2 that we have always had for those 2 cars.
Graham Vercoe also confirms -010 for Crawford and -012 for Prejawa.
What Vercoe advises re. the previous history in Aust. for -016 is totally incorrect , the car was new to Chas Talbot.
Bryan.

[allenbrown]

Funny this should come up as I was just entering 1974 Australian Gold Star races into my database and found Bruce Allison's Birrana 274.

Here is the 1 Sep 1974 Surfers Paradise race (please note this is very much a draft as I only have the Autosport report so far). Does anyone know what car Allison was driving. The report says it was a BDA - would this have been a 1600cc for Aussie F2 rules?

Do Birrana build records exist anywhere?

Thanks

Allen

[Milan Fistonic]

In the August 1974 edition of Racing Car News there is a piece about Birrana stopping production of cars for general sale to customers and instead building and running cars as a works team.

The report states that "a total of 17 cars have now been produced by the firm, including eight of the new shape, and all are doing very well in the hands of such drivers as Leo Geoghegan, Bob Muir, Dean Hoskinng, Paul King, Andrew Miedecke and Neill Rear."

[Bryan Miller]

Allen, see my message a few notes up page re. Malcolm Ramsay, who was/is Birrana Engineering.
I haven't figured out how to do quotes yet.
I have virtually all Birrana sorted and will as I said try to get records from Malcolm.

Hobby and Toyland , ent. drv. Bruce Allison.
Car Birrana 274-017 , Eng Hart 416B fuel inj. Ford Twin cam.
Report would be incorrect as cars in Aust.F2 all ran 8 valve engines for a few years yet.
I will look and see if the Barry Lock Kaditcha had a ch. no. and advise.
Birrana's last ch. no. was -020 , however this no. was used twice .
An F3 car built in 1976 ch.no. 376-020 and Malcolm's own personal last car a F.Atl. ch.no. A78-020.
Bryan.

[Bryan Miller]

Allen, Checked Barry Lock's car , no ch. no's seem to have ever been applied to his early cars at least , later he built some big 5 litre sports-racing cars , also one absolutely stunning 2.0 litre Chevron B26 style car with a Cosworth-Vega.
Bryan.

[allenbrown]

Bryan

Another Birrana appears in the 1979 Rothmans series driven by Bob Creasy. This is said to be '8', "a new monocoque tub built for Peter Brock in '73 on to which he put the mechanicals from his earlier 272, the 273 then went to WA's Zampatti then to Creasy (Zampatti now has the 272, built up again with new parts)". All this from Chequered Flag May 1979.

Also in 1979, Bill Downey races the "Minos-Ford" at the Australian GP but the 50 Years book says he entered a Birrana 273 "but raced the Minos instead". Were they effectively one and the same car? Is this the same Minos that Muir raced in F2 in Europe in 1976?

Allen

[allenbrown]

So, to summarise so far:

272-??? - Ramsey and guests in 1972
272-??? - Brock 1972 - Zampatti ...
273-006 - ... Dean Hosking (UK) 1975
273-008 - Brock 73 - Zampatti - Creasy
273-009 - ... Buesselmann & Muir 74; UK 1975; became Minos
274-010 - ... Crawford
274-012 - ... Prejawa 1974
274-016 - Talbot 74 ... Baker
274-017 - Allison
376-020 - F3 1976
A78-020 - Ramsey 1978

That's a pretty good start. Bryan - how does the Barry Lock Kaditcha fit into this? I didn't quite understand your reference to it. Were Birranas and Kaditchas related somehow?

Allen

[Bryan Miller]

Allen, Birrana and Kaditcha are not related , the only reason I mentioned the latter is that the car is also on the grid in that race meeting and I decided sooner or later you would ask for ch.no. so got in first.

Some other numbers , although you may not need them.

374-011 , F3 to John Blanden for Dean Hosking in Aust.
374-013 , F3 based , BUT with 1600cc ford pushrod.
274-018 , Neil Rear ,1600cc twin cam.

The MUIR car and 1 or 2 of the early cars are still confused , and I need time to get sorted .
Birrana also built a few F.Fords and the ch. no.s are slightly confusing .
First car was a F.Ford ch.no. AA71/1
Need to talk to Bobby Muir , who I should be able to contact via Bob Brittan of Rennmax .
Suggest you don't go any further till I come back to you , especially re. Hoskings car in U.K. in 1975.
Also I need to get full story on Minos .
Bryan.

[allenbrown]

Bryan

Don't forget to ask Bob for his production records!!

(as if!)

Allen

[Bryan Miller]

Allen.
We have stolen Chris's thread.
Bob Brittan. Bob never put numbers on cars, via carefull notes from conversations with Bob over many years I have a fairly accurate record of what was built, listed below , but definately not THE END.

1st. car was a Lotus 18 style car using components from Noel Halls Cooper . Car called Rennmax Climax.

Then appears to be a total of 7 Lotus 20 style cars, most Formula jnr. but 2 as 1500cc with superchargers.

Then the one and only Brabham BT14 style car . This was Max Stewarts 2nd. Rennmax.

Then there appears to be about 7 cars plus a few spare frames of the BT23 series , eg Max Stewarts Mildren Waggot , which is the tubeframe car as opposed to K.B.'s Mildren Waggot submarine car.
This series is the ones that you bump into in late 60's and 70's in Tasman races in the main.

Apart from these cars ,there are also the MK1 Formula Vees, 7 off from memory , the Mildren Maser. sports car , then the fabulous 2nd. series sports cars 3 off , plus the couple of Lotus 23b frames and customer completed cars such as Lionel Ayers M.R.C.23b.
All not forgetting he probably at one time or another repaired most if not all Brabham and Lotus cars in the country.

I know he still has his records , and I may be able to go through them with him sometime , but he is still more interested in the next car, not as he keeps telling me all those old bloody piles of junk.

Minos./ Birrana . I have left a message on Malcolm Ramsay's phone , so he will call sooner or later.
Minos , I spent some time on the phone to Bobby Muir.
Both Birrana's in U.K. were for Bob , and Dean Hosking was only there as mechanic , and to get a drive if poss.
however Bob said he thought Dean only got 1 race.
One of the 2 cars was stripped and the tub modified and used as the Minos , but all other parts were newly made , a gearbox was purchased from Hesketh etc.
All the parts came back in boxes and on return Malcolm Ramsay slid a new?? tub underneath and it all became one again.
So at this point I need Mal Ramsay to sort it out for me and then I can figure out what chassis became/was what.
Basically 2 cars went out , sort of 2.5 came back , 1x Birrana , 1x Minos and 1x Birrana in boxes.

That is as far as I can get at this point.
You will have to wait for the next exciting installment.

Bryan.

[Bryan Miller]

Allen.
I totally left out all the MK2 Formula Vees and the beaut BN.6/7 F2 cars , 5 off .
Don't forget things like the Rorstan Porsche in which Bryan Faloon was killed in N.Z. this was a Britto car.

[David McKinney]

273-007 - ‘works’ entry for Geoghegan in Singapore 1973, then Tony Stewart ANF2, Don Ubergang 73/74

273-010 - Malcolm Ramsay’s ‘works’ car 1973 (and Geoghegan Macau), then Crawford. Chas Talbot 1981

274-015 - Geoghegan’s 1974 works car > Geoff Brabham 1975

274-016 - believed destroyed in Baker’s 1977 Wigram crash

[allenbrown]

David

Thanks for filling those gaps. Birranas are turning out to me one of the best documented and most well-understood of all the ANF2/Atlantic/Pacific cars.

While you're in town, could you help me understand the difference between ANF2 and the later Pacific formula. ANF2 seems to have been for 1600cc cars but Allan Grice seems to have run the ex-Stewart Mildren-Waggot in AF2 in 1972 and I thought that was a 1900cc or 2-litre car. In one report it's described as a Mildren-England, which confused me further! During that 1972-1977 period, how similar were the two formulae?

Allen

[David McKinney]

I should really leave this to someone who knows what they're talking about....
IIRC, ANF2 started as a 1500 formula in the 1960s, as a step up from FJ. Somewhere along the line it changed from 1500 to 1600 (and FJ became ANF3)
The class received a big boost in 1973 (?) with a new big-money series, when top drivers from other formulae were persuaded to take part
When they returned to their F5000s and touring cars, ANF2 became little more than a club formulae - still 1600, but restricted - again, IIRC - to twincams
At the time of the collapse of the Tasman Series, there was a big argument about whether the contributing countries should retain F5000, or switch to F/Atlantic (Pacific). As is now history (as they say), Australia stuck with 5000 after 1976, NZ went to Pacific
There remained a strong Australian lobby in favour of FP, headed by Bob Jane, who staged races at Calder and Adelaide - and ultimately ran the AGP to the same regs. FP allowed four-valve BDD engines, ANF2, while it continued, was limited to twincams.
Cutting to the chase, there was no FP in Australia in 1977 (or before). And I can't explain your Grice dilemma, unless it was a misprint

[Morris 1100]

ANF2 was run for single cam 1600cc from the late 70s and is the way it is now.
The main difference between a Pacific and a Two was tyre width and the single cam engine. (the ANF2 had narrower tyres)
CAMS has been trying to kill off F2 ever since Formula Holden started and has not yet succeded!

[Bryan Miller]

Allen.
To any outsider it was very confusing , pretty simple if you were inside so to speak.
It all became formal in 1964 for the start of the Formal Tasman Championship as opposed to the Intercontinental series previously.
So in 1964 we had ,
A.N.F. 1 , 2.5 litres
A.N.F. 1 1/2 , 1.5 litres
A.N.F. 2 1100cc.
1.5 Litres was either 1500cc pushrod ford or twincam ford dominated but not exclusively.
1100cc was simply F.JR. cars and rules , as we had started later than everybody else with F.J. and the cars and eng. size fitted in , I don't think the F.J. rules were absolute , but it was very close.
All stayed this way , Cosworth even built special engines for the twin cam ford competitors , which was the eng. to have , this eng. was designated Mk XV1.
In 1968 the A.N.F. 1 1/2 was altered to A.N.F. 2 which was then increased to 1600cc.
A.N.F. 1 stayed the same for 2.5 .
A.N.F. 2 stayed the same capacity at 1100cc but was renamed A.N.F. 3. The 1100cc class stayed the same untill , I think 1972 , I have just been looking up programmes and it is dificult to discern . However by 1973 A.N.F. 3 had been increased to 1300cc.
Obviously by then A.N.F. 1 had allowed in 2.0 and 5.0 litres as well as 2.5 still being allowed.
A.N.F. 2 continued on untill 1-1-1978 when a totally new single cam F2 was introduced , eliminating all the twin cam ford based engines and ultimately the eng. to have was a Judd Golf .
If you need clarification please ask.
After the 5000's finally died we had 1600cc BDAs as David has said.

Engines , even more confusing to outsiders, best summarised by saying you could have a Waggott 1.6 , 1.85 , or 2.0 eng. or you could have a Ford Twincam built or rebuilt or maintained by Waggott.
I don't know if Merv. Waggott put his cam covers on the Ford eng. , but I think Paul England did, and the engines were then , the same as U.K. called say a R.E.S. or Cosworth or Hart or whatever ford .
E.G. England Ford , all it meant was it was aFord twin cam played with by whoever.
The only way to tell from this distance is to ask me , then I can see what individual races were and advise what eng. it would have been.
The worst period would be around 1970/1/2/3 I would think. Waggott only built ,we think 13 of his T.C.4.V engines , 1 x 1600cc , 1x interim 1850cc , both these iron ford block based , the other 11 alloy 2.0 litres .

Hope this assists. Bryan.

[allenbrown]

Bryan

Wow - thanks. This stuff is harder than F5000!

The reason for the question is that I've just been adding in the 1972 Aussie Gold Star races (taken from the RCN Yearbook - you can see the rather pitiful collection so far here. John Harvey's BT36-Waggott at Sandown appears to have been a 2-litre and therefore competing in 'F1'. But Allan Grice's Mildren-Waggott at Oran Park, Surfers and Warwick Farm appears to have got points in 'F2'. At least once, a report referred to it as a Mildren-England.

On a related subject (but taking us even further away from Birranas) I have never figured out when that interim 1850cc engine was used. Probably just a few races but the reports I have are unclear.

Many thanks

Allen

[Bryan Miller]

Allen , how do I reply,
A hell of a lot for which you are searching is within a few foot of me as I type,a lot if not all , or nearly all in the following , Racing Car News , Aust. Competion Yearbooks, Aust. Motor Racing Annual which went till 1976 so covers most , I don't have Chequered Flag esp. when Barry Lake [who I see you talk to elsewhere ] was very good in Barry's time, also I have the draft Tasman books that I was working on for the F1R.
Perfectly happy to assist , but so I don't have magazine's etc. all over the place , maybe in chrnological order, you advise starting date.

To answer Brabham BT36- Waggott , whenever John Harvey drove it , it was 2.0 T.C.4.V.
In 1972 , Grice could well have had the 1600cc T.C.4.V. to go against any F.V.A. cars running, esp. as it is the Mildren and not a Rennmax, although the Mildren was actually a Rennmax.

Bob Brittan has up to now not been willing , in a very friendly way , to sort out his cars , I can't even get a definition of a BN2 as opposed to a BN3 .
I went to Graham Howards this morning and we did a swap, I ended up with about a 100 1969/70/71/72/73 Autosports to fill gaps and he got my ALbert Park 1953 Autographed by Stan Jones programme and other prog. I don't reference.
Some of your questions are very hard to answer unless I go back and read at least the whole years magazines , so I can discern what was happening at the time , so that the pieces all 'jell'.

Apart from anything else I have just recieved my B.R.M. book , hell is this a serious bit of work.
You know Doug Nye , suggest to him his next book should be on Jo Marquart , then we can really clear some mysteriesre. GRD , Modus , Huron , Argo AND jO'S continual involement with Jorg Obermoser and the fabulous Toj's.
5% commision for suggestion will be greatly rec'd.

What year do you wish to start on , and I could slowly accumulate info, and then post in one year at a time, but it would take a while as I am desperately trying to finish the BT35 to go race at Willowbank historics at the end of July. This will be the first time when we start the BDE in the next few days when the car fires up that is has had an eng. in it since 1977.That is a quarter of a century.

Re. the BT36 of Harvey , I had been waiting for the inevitable question , probably from Chris of why it is a BT36 but is chassis no BT30-27 , I left it hanging out there but no response.
The car was ordered by Bob Jane Corp. as they were also going to do their own Jane eng. however this fell by the wayside after a considerable lenghth of time and they decided to use a Waggott , but Ron T. must hae laid it down and allocated a ch.no. and also ordered in an FT200 , but it looks like the del. date kept on being deffered untill it finally left the works on 23-3-71 well into BT36 production and it was very definately a BT36 , strangly it left the factory the day before my BT35-8 went to Ed. Reeves.
I have in front of me on Motor Racing Developments letterhead a letter signed by George Thornton confirming del. date , my guess is that Ron T. had the 30 frame etc. and as every thing was drawn out , needed the 30 for a rebuild or to replace a customers wreck and sold it and then when Bob Jane Corp told them to send they gave them a 36 , but had already allocated the 30-27 number.
The gearbox no. is way out of sinc. with say mine which is 599 and still in car today.
For Chris's records BT36-6 went to A.C/A [ Reuteman] with FVA.0182 and gearbox FT200-678 on 8/7/71.
Regards Bryan.
Advise where you wish to start.

[allenbrown]

Bryan

I am very grateful for your generous offer and fully intend to accept it but I would add one thing: I am really not in any hurry at all. I started my F5000 research in 1999 and have several years to go before I even have all the F5000 results in place, let alone car-by-car histories. Also, it has been taking far too much of my time recently (my 5-year-old would testify to this right now if she was able to type - she's trying to interest me in her Peter Rabbit drawing at the moment) so a slower rate of progress would be desirable. I think Chris's Atlantic research has the momentum at present and I'm very happy with that.

That said, the place I'd like to start is with the 1971 Australian Gold Star - the first domestic Aussie F5000. As you'll have seen from my link above, I don't even have race dates for the 1971 Gold Star races yet and my knowledge of the cars that raced is slim. Do you have a easy accessed source of race reports that you could copy for me? Then I'll come back when I've digested those and queue up some questions about the cars.

That way, we don't have to get into the Lola T330/2s for a good while yet .

Shall I start a new 'Australian Gold Star 1971' thread?

Best regards

Allen

[Amonfan]

Can someone tell me, which car Jack Klaver had, he raced in AF2 between 1981 and 1985 in a Birrana, was apparently the ex Lew Wade car, which would be the Paul King F3 car???? Anyway the reason i mention it is because i remember seeing it at Calder in 1985 at the Formula 2 round, by then it had full side pods and a Cheetah mk8 type nose and was Golf powered, also wondered about the car Mike Quinn drove in 81, this car had full sidepods and i think maybe even ground effects. Not sure on model numbers of either car.

Curt

[Bryan Miller]

Amonfan , The Lew Wade car was new to them, and was /is ch.no. 374-014, first appearing for the Van Heusen series in 1974 as a F3 with a 1300cc Brian Sampson Toyota Corolla.
I can't tell yet whose car Mike Quinn ran.
A lot of the Birrana's were altered to comply with the new F2 and staggered on for a considerable length of time,untill finally being pensioned off.

Bryan.

[allenbrown]

'Bout time for another summary of where we've got to:

272-??? - Ramsey and guests in 1972
272-??? - Brock 1972 - Zampatti ...
273-006 - ... Dean Hosking (UK) 1975
273-007 - ‘works’ entry for Geoghegan in Singapore 1973, then Tony Stewart ANF2, Don Ubergang 73/74
273-008 - Brock 73 - Zampatti - Creasy
273-009 - ... Buesselmann & Muir 74; UK 1975; tub may have been used for Minos F2
273-010 - Malcolm Ramsay’s ‘works’ car 1973 (and Geoghegan Macau), then Crawford. Chas Talbot 1981
374-011 - F3 to John Blanden for Dean Hosking in Aust.
274-012 - ... Prejawa 1974
374-013 - F3 based , BUT with 1600cc ford pushrod.
374-014 - Lew Wade car first appearing for the Van Heusen series in 1974 as a F3 with a 1300cc Brian Sampson Toyota Corolla.
274-015 - Geoghegan’s 1974 works car > Geoff Brabham 1975
274-016 - Talbot 74 ... Baker; believed destroyed in Baker’s 1977 Wigram crash
274-017 - Allison
274-018 - Neil Rear ,1600cc twin cam.
376-020 - F3 1976
A78-020 - Ramsey 1978
AA71/1 - First FF

Pretty impressive given we haven't even got the production records yet. Have I got this right? Anything else we can add to this picture?

Allen