Where are they now?

[Gerard]

Browsing through some statistics books I realized there have been a lot of constructors that have entered formula one, stayed there for a bit of time, and then disappeared into nothing.
I'm thinking of the names of Bellasi, Maki, Token, Iso-Rivolta, Ferguson, Stebro, JBW, ATS, Connew, Shannon, LDS, Lyncar, Rial, LEC etc.
I probably can think of a lot more, but does anyone know what happened to these makes.
Are they completely vanished of the face of the earth, are there still some cars in some museum, is there still evidence these cars once existed other than a photograph?

[TimD]

The Lec was a project commissioned and built within the Lec Refridgerator company, for David Purley. I can't remember off hand whether he was the director of the company, or the heir to the family that ran it.

Anyway, the Lec CRP1 very nearly killed him in a qualifying session for the British GP. A small washer fell into the throttle linkage, jamming it wide open, and David went straight on into a retaining wall head-on. He always maintained afterwards that he had survived the most severe deceleration ever measured on a human being.

The car was no more than shards of scrap aluminium after that.

David Purley made an almost complete recovery from his injuries, but a brief dalliance with the Aurora AFX British F1 series told him that his competitive racing days were over.

He took up aerobatic stunt flying, and was practicing in his Pitts Special biplane off Beachy Head when it plunged into the sea in the summer of 1985.

The Connew PC1, last I heard of it, was resting in component form in the back garden of its creator. This was perhaps the last "dream" F1 entry. A young engineer, Peter (I think) Connew, decided to build a Formula 1 car himself, and did so, even getting it to the grid in the 1972 Austrian GP with Francois Migault.

From that high point, the amateur status of the team began to tell. With no sponsorship of any kind, they knew they had to call a halt the day the entire team put together did not have enough money to pay to get their car transporter through the toll in the Dartford Tunnel.

They were forced to write a cheque for 25 pence.

[TimD]

Oh, and the LDS has raced at the last two Goodwood Revival meetings.

Spindly little thing it is, even when parked next to a Lotus 25.

[fatbloke]

Thank you Tim, that has cheered my day! With todays big-budget corporate entertainment-fest, the story you tell of the Connew effort shows what the sport is really all about. Any more stories like that to tell ?

[Gerard]

Yeah Tim, thanks for that story.
Although I'm following formula one for a long time now, it is only since a couple of months I'm interested in racing history.
Not just who won when and where, but stories like these are what I'm looking for.
By the way, it were the trivia's of Graham and Austria that made me aware of the fact there's much more to discover than who came in first.

And David Purley, that brings back memories.
That hero of a man.
I remember 1973, Dutch GP at Zandvoort.
I remember Roger Williamson, poor fellow.
While everybody else was watching, doing nothing, David Purley tried to turn the burning car of Williamson upside down single handed.
What I remember most of all is the expression of complete despair when David realized he could do nothing to prevent disaster.
This is not a nice memory, but it made me realize what a wonderful person David Purley must have been.

Oh, and if you have more, keep these stories coming.

[Craig]

There was a guy who hung around this forum way back when we opened it who went by the name of Corktree. If you can find what happened to him, he had hundreds of these stories to tell.

[Hans.ca]

Stebro, I'm going by memory but I know that he was located in Montreal. They made custom high efficiency exhaust sustems for import cars. I do not know what they are doing now.

[Peter Mallett]

Hmmm,

Gerard, I congratulate you on raising these names from the past, some of which I’ve never heard of.

I know Tim has provided some answers but to pick up on one of his points, David Purley was (I believe) listed in the Guinness book of Records as the person who had survived the fastest deceleration in the world.

The Ferguson was an attempt to produce a four-wheel drive formula one car using the Ferguson Formula transmission that was later used in cars such as the Jensen Interceptor. It failed because the FISA reduced the engine size to 1500cc in 1961 (?), the design was front engined when all the latest cars were mid engined and (I believe) the FISA banned all wheel drive in 1962.

The car was built as a vehicle for Stirling Moss to gain some much-deserved success.

Two abiding memories of these items.

In 1975 I attended the Thruxton Easter Monday meeting where the main event was a formula 5000 race. David Purley ran has car with a 3.4 litre Ford GAA V6 (See Group 2 Capri) against the 5-litre opposition. I remember him being impressed by an air race which the organisers put on for the spectators. This I think led him to stunt flying later in life. Anyway David finished in the top three (Don’t recall his exact position) which, all things considered, was pretty good. Particularly when (as I recall) he was racing with his broken left leg in plaster!

When I was but a small boy in the company of my mother and father, I was dragged to a shop, much against my will. Having calmed down from a severe rage (there was a beach to play on and a football to kick and didn’t my parents know that?), my father bought me a plastic car with one of those (inertia) engines. It was a Ferguson formula F1 car. Wonder if it’s still lurking in my mother’s loft?

[Leo]

Craig: Corktree = Don Capps, and you can find him on the Atlas Nostalgia Forum.

As a funny coindicidence, David Purley did not only drive the cars mentioned before, but also the Connew! I believe it was the Race of Champions, but it certainly was at Brands Hatch. There is a story to it also, since it was a very bad weekend for Purley. First he found a screwdriver lying around in the cockpit during qualifying, and on a practise run he ripped off his visor and the gear lever by mistake on one run. Purley had experienced a stuck throttle on his March once, and demanded a engine-kill-switch on the Connew (since there wasn'r any). The team made one, and put it on the steering wheel. On the warm-up lap for the race, in a tight corner, one of the wires loosened and the switch worked quite adequately. The engine stopped, and a DNS for David.

ATS (the German one) and Rial are both alloy wheel brands, owned by Gunther Schmid. He fielded Formula 1 under both names, with some very beautiful cars designed by Gustav Brunner.

There is an interesting story about Ferguson in the Thoroughbred and Classis Car from last month. It deals mainly with the 4wd concept cars and the politics played by Harry(?) Ferguson, but there is also some attention for the Formula 1 project. The Ferguson P99 is of course made famous by Stirling Moss, when he won the Oulton Park Gold Cup with it.

[aiwa]

[QUOTE]
Anyway, the Lec CRP1 very nearly killed him in a qualifying session for the British GP. A small washer fell into the throttle linkage, jamming it wide open,
The story I heard was that on the day before there had been a small engine/carburettor fire in the pits and following the extinguishant was not cleaned off properly. This reacted in some way with the metals of the throttle slide causing the throttle to stick open.