Gordon Keeble (no longer on BBC2 at 11pm tonight!)

[Graham]

Sounds interesting, no?

[Peter Mallett]

Well.

I don't recall ever reading about Gordon Keeble racing.

[Graham]

With the absence of a "Historic Car" forum, I guessed this 'ere olde-worlde padded cell would suffice...

[Peter Mallett]

OK Then.

What was the basis of the Gordon Keeble? Anything competition(ish)in its mechanics?

BTW. I'm racing tomorrow so I won't be sitting up to watch.

[Graham]

Haven't a clue about the Keeble. I remember Tim mentioning it in a post. And he seems to know cool cars.

Good luck tomorrow. I'm probably off to Combe.

[Peter Mallett]

Well. What was it like?

Did you notice anything about the engine? Did it sound familiar?

Just asking you know.

[TimD]

I have checked and doublechecked my records, and the only reference I've got for a Gordon Keeble race pedigree is a car that entered a late sixties Brighton Speed Trial. My archive does not record who the driver/entrant was.

Mainly because I simply cannot get sufficiently excited about timetrials/hillclimbs/drag racing to file the results. Sorry!

The only other connection with the sport is the motor. It's a 5.3 litre Chevy engine, and this is the basis of many a speedy track car, from Corvettes to Lola GT cars.

Nicely breathed on, should do a Panoz "Goes like lightning, sounds like thunder!"

[krt917]

Wow, this must be the oldest quote I've ever used from ten-tenths:

Originally Posted by TimD

Nicely breathed on, should do a Panoz "Goes like lightning, sounds like thunder!"

The one main difference between the Panoz and the Gordon-Keeble, of course, is that the G-K is actually a rather nice looking car....

I don't really know why, but I've wanted one ever since seeing the odd example at historic race meetings as a kid.

I think that their survival rate is quite high (over 60 remain I believe), possibly because they were 'over-engineered', which added to their financial failure. I rather like the idea of rolling up at race meetings in one!

[Graham]

I didn't watch it. I totally forgot

So you'll have to tell me...?

[John Turner]

Nothing like digging up a really old thread - I've changed the thread title so as not to mislead! Not sure they ever raced, but a rare and great road car; about 99 built, I believe. Here is one which seems to have a couple of unusual features; headlamp stoneguards and later alloy wheels:-

[HiRich]

Curious thing abut the Gordon Keeble. Over Christmas I was scouring a batch of old MotorSport magazines for research. I couldn't help but notice that almost every month from the late sixties to mid seventies, at least one GK was up for sale. Given how few were made, that struck me as odd. Were they less appealing in the flesh than expected? Were they murdered by fuel costs? Was it just the same couple of chassis going round and round with silly price tags?

Can anyone shed any light?

[Truckosaurus]

What sort of size were GKs? I'd always assumed (from photographs) that they were big old barges, but the picture above makes it look not much larger than the Scirocco parked behind it.

[johnh875]

I think they were a reasonably large car, perhaps a bit shorter than an Iso Grifo - again only an impression but all large GT cars I've seen from the 60s (eg Maserati Ghibli, Facel Vega, Iso Rivolta & Grifo) have been the same basic size.

The cars had a steel multitube chassis with fibreglass body, and were styled by Giugiaro (as a 21yo trainee at Bertone) - there are definite similarities to the later Alfa coupes. As mentioned they had the Corvette 327 V8 with a de dion rear axle and 4 wheel disc brakes. The car was shown at the 1960 Geneva motor show but did not go into production until 1964. Apparently the car was priced too low and they went broke (twice) and made only 100 or so vehicles.

ps no danger of me attempting to tune into BBC2 tonight!

[dwrestorations]

Hello all,

we're lucky enough (or unlucky enough depending on your viewpoint!) to have a GK sat in our workshop at the moment.

Sizewise, about comparable with one of the last bugeyed Granada Scorpios. If anyone would like accurate dimensions, I could get out the tape measure.

These cars were an enigma to me too, until starting on this car. They actually have quite an impressive 'spaceframe' chassis of sorts. With the large engine, reasonably tune-able suspension, and so on I think it probably could have been competition worthy in its day.

[John Turner]

Four Gordon Keebles at Rougham, August 20, 2006. They represent 4% of total production!:-

[Leigh Trevail]

In the 50's Jim Keeble re-bodied the Frazer-Nash that Ken Wharton took to 4th place in the 1952 Swiss GP. He turned it into a two seater sports for Ben Wyatt of Diss, Norfolk.

[johnh875]

John that is the first decent rear view of a G-K I can remember seeing. They don’t look so much like an Alfa Romeo 105 GTV from that end, vaguely like an older Alfa but then you could say that about most late 50s cars with little fins on the back.

[John Turner]

I have a better shot of the rear view, here:-