Some more racing froggies

Westair

Westair

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Fellow Frogger
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Perth
Norm Scott raced a 203 in the early 60's at Caversham -couldn't beat the Simca but very compeitive.
He also raced a 203 at Claremont Speedway in "Stockies" and was very successful. He won a the first 30 lap for these cars at Claremont with big prize money. (1968-69 I think) I was leading to the last lap(Simca) and he gave me a big hit in Pits Bend and went on to win. Second prize was great $820!!!!!
Couldn't win this in a year roadracing. The smaller cars could out run the Holdens etc by staying down but got belted around a lot and we soon gave it away. Also CAMS threatened to take our Race Licences away.

Vic Watson also had a 203 at Caversham. This was running a 272ci Ford motor and he sat in the back of the car. It was a shocker-handled like a stuck pig and only Vic could have handled it. Vic also built tthe Goggo Special. THis was the little Goggomobile Coupe with a Lancia V6 in the back. He raced this at Wanneroo as well as Caversham. It was very very quick and Vic had some great wins against the bigger bodieb and engined Sports Sedan.

Vics 203 was very quick in straight line and could do something around the 14 sec bracket at Caversham which was slightly uphill.

Rod Slater -top rally driver also raced some odd versions of Renaults.
At one stage he had an R8 with an R4 motor out to about 1700cc with a special cam and the exhaust ports became inlets and the two inlets became exhaust. It had big overheating problems but did it go.
Rod still has his original 1952-3 203 Rally car as far as I know.

Jack Whynoff also raced an R8/10 which was out to about 1800cc. Jack was a Renault specialist and great engineer. This was very quick but handling was not up to performance. Rolled it very spectacularly at Bugatti corner at Caversham -63 Six Hour.

Another strange "frog" was a Simca Aronde with twin cam head. This was built by a guy in Midland Juction from memory. It was a 2.4 Jaguar head cut down to 4 cylinder and obviously a lot of mods done. I never saw it run or installed in the car and driven.

Simcas , Peugeot, Renaults were raced, rallied, gymkhana's , hillclimbed in good numbers in WA and many of the competitors wnt on to great success in various forms of competition.
Perhaps Ray or Wildebeest may have some memories of these as well. :)
 
I think Ray has some records of the time Keith "The Count" Blikarski of 'hot rod' (think early sprint car) fame noticed one year that there wasn't a real lot of good machinery running around in Queensland, so in conjunction with Tommy Moffat, the mechanic for the North Ipswich Bus Company, grabbed an old body from Barrie Watt's Q3 that had won a couple of State Speedway titles, picked up a cheap 203, ripped the mechanicals out and after a lot of chopping and welding, arrived at the Exhibition Speedway in his "brand new" midget speedcar.
It had been started that afternoon just before they left for the speedway by pushing with an old bus in Down Street, the main road through North Ippy in those days, driven into the shed, a coat of enamel blown over it and from memory the number painted on it with a 2" paint brush.
The paint was still tacky when the starters fllag went down and "The Count" patiently sat there through the usual myriad of bashes and crashes just keeping himself out of trouble and the old 203 engine just went blop,blop,blop,blop, around keeping a steady and reasonably fast pace around the quarter mile circuit. Cars blew up, crahed and spun all around him and old Keith was an old master at making a car "wide" when it came to getting past him.
When the chequered flag was waved, first to see it was same Blikka with his prominent proboscus poking from under the crash helmet.
I don't know if many/any pics exist of that as it almost turned the efforts of a lot of experienced and cashed up spedway outfits into a joke. The reason being that Pug 203s were looked upon as some kind of benign family car by most and amongst the cars beaten that night were Repco Holdens and Offenhausers. This was before they discovered how many horses they could extract from a VW but this car was stock standard as it came out of the road car complete with gearbox and diff.
Pug reliability was the winner over speed and performance; some things never change. :D :D


Alan S
 
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Forgot about Bob Holden - Norm Scott got a few ideas from him
 
More racing Froggies

G'day Westair,
I recall Norm Scott racing a Peugeot 404 sedan in that class at Claremont.
Wally Higgs was another with a 404. This must have been after CAMS relaxed the rules. As you said the money would have been such that you could pick up on a Friday night what it would take 2 years racing at "Cavvy".

There was an attempt to slot a Peugeot V6 into a midget speedcar but without success. The "complex" oddfire engine may have thrown them. It would have been injected but of the Hilborn type for methanol use. How they overcame the odd ignition setup would be interesting to know. The cost of a one off magneto for instance. :eek: It would have been a bulky lump to wedge into a midget,dry sumping may have helped.
I saw the V6 at Rod Slater's Eurocars clearout auction some years later.

I've been trying to contact the Wilyman, he would be a mine of info on the above. Oh, hang on, he doesn't get out of bed until the crack of noon! :wink2:
 
Good memory Wildebeest. We alll went back after a while. I organised the Titan Super Dog (Phase 111 HO) and a few other cars.
Speedway paid basic prep costs for roadracing.
 
Another Peugeot 203 that raced at Claremont was driven by Will Newby.
He went on to race his Titan Ford sponsored Falcon XY at Wanneroo.
He was involved with Vic Watson and others at Caversham as pit crew .
 
i know of a bloke that used to drag a blown 203 at castlereagh (i think) in sydney and used to do very well in it

the car eventually twisted out of shape
 
Ray Bell said:
Don't forget the Wally Higgs and Bob Biltoft Peugeot engined Specials.
Click to expand...
Already posted with photos of the Holden engined 203 and the beautiful sports car. :wink2:
 
This the same phot I posted before. 203 has Holden motor and by this time the Sports car is running a 221ci Falcon. Fortunately the current owner has restored it to orginal configuration.
 

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More racing Froggies.

Ray,
What is called an "evocative" photo. Early to mid '60's? Nobody posing.
The Pug 203 running in the GT class. I wonder what it had in it? Simca door, oui.
The single seater in the foreground. V twin Vincent or 500 Manx Norton engine. I would jump in here and say it's a formula 3 Cooper but the body seems too "fat" more like a later 4 cyl f 2 Cooper?
The 403 in the background looks nervous. Even so I bet it had a trouble free race day. :)
 
I looked at the whole photo... the openwheeler is a 500cc car, probably a Ralt, but maybe a Lynx... anyway it's Australian made. Maybe even a Special. It has Morris 8/40 rear axle sections for the rear outer quarter shafts.

The Simca is also a 'K' car... but those days it was easy to be out of J and into K... not only engines, but things like the brakes etc. Appendix J was a toning down of the touring car category after they got out of hand up until 1960... in 1961 cars that still had stuff not allowed in App J ran in the GT class... Appendix K. For instance, a Holden with an MG gearbox would be in K.

But for the life of me I can't think what would have put a Simca into K... unless it had a streamlined front on the car or something.
 
You could really have fun with the rules in those days.
I was racing a Cortina 1500 in 66/7 and although it had twin 40s, A3 cam and all the goodies it was pushing to beat a couple of really quick GTs so I removed the "chrome" moulding between practice and race day and was "forced" to run as Closed Sports Car and got 2nd in under 1500cc State Champs.

Harry Firth of course was the master at this. I ended up with a Firth XU-1 crankshaft in my EH Sports sedan. It was definitely Holden but was so smooth it could have been made in Europe.
 
Yes, of course, that was the next time they changed the rules...

When 'Improved Production' replaced Appendix J in 1965, lots of cars could no longer run without changes, and lots of them were changed beyond what was practical to change back. Not to mention the people who didn't want to change, or wanted to go even further with modifications.

So was born 'Sports Racing (closed) by invitation'... a sports car class covered everything that had mudguards and lights, so just put the restrictions on the supplementary regulations that the cars had to have a roof, and that only invited cars could run, and you had a new class that fitted the cars in.

Of course, often they ran with sports cars of other types, but there was usually enough to run on their own. The popularity of sticking a Holden engine into a Morris Minor (as it grew to happen...) meant that they became so numerous and so specialised that they needed a class of their own. So was born 'Sports Sedans'... but then the rules started to impinge again... same make of engine... location of engine... it just goes on.

Now it's some GT class or something not worth bothering about.
 
Racing Froggies

In the early '60's Touring Car racing became dominated by the Mini Cooper and to a lesser extent the Cortinas in appendix J.
Prior to this our friend would have been reasonably competitive in his Simca in the under 1300cc App. J class.
Along with others in order to enjoy their racing the alternative was to carry out mods not previously permitted. From simply removing seats , interior trim and replacing door glass etc with Perspex to the extreme engine swaps.
This would put them into the GT class. Think of Peter Brock's Holden powered Austin A 30.
When the initial spectacle of seeing Mini Coopers en masse faded away this, to me, was the end of amateur racing.
The WA public were kept entertained by the too rare visits of Beechey, Manton and McKeown. Lex Davison's monstrous Ford "Glaxy" was a sight to see and hear. :tongue:
Once again I digress. :cheers: More pictures Ray & Westy?
 
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