I had forgotten about that thread Andy listed... my age!
Here is the summary of the Lola, but it is the story of the quest to find and have approved by Lola Heritage the chassis number HU62.
The story behind the installation and running of the car is another story indeed.
I have bought the Lola Chassis history story up to date, so, here it is, and this IS a brief summary. The details are far far deeper and too much to write down (assuming I could remember them accurately).
A potted history of an old Lola race car.
This is a fair old tale about my 1978 Lola T 492 Sports Racer, now a hill climb car, and is a summary of an epic journey through the internet, phone calls, pictures and a number of surprises in my quest to find and prove the chassis number of my car.
This article is a task I’ve been putting off for a long time, it needs to be documented, but I hope you will find it interesting.
After hill climbing my Porsche 911 from 1991 to about 2003 I hill climbed my Impreza for a few years, and the car passed to Martyn Silcox, Secretary of your favourite Car Club!
Wanting something far more demanding as my last car project my thoughts turned to a real race car for the hills, but it had to be something different, something ‘Sports Libre’ and more than 2000cc.
I first saw a Lola T492 at the Racing Car show at Stoneleigh on the sports 2000 stand and was immediately totally smitten, this was just the car I wanted. After a few long weeks it became apparent they were rare, and finding one was going to be hard. I joined the sports 2000 forum and almost instantly following a Wanted plea one turned up!
The car was fitted with a Cosworth turbo engine and an FT200 box, modified suspension, new roll cage and a new body. We went to Surry to see it, fell in love but only as a rolling chassis, engine and box were far too much. A week later it was in my back garden.
I had a plan for the car. It had to have a big engine and a Rover V8 seem right, sounded right and was cheap. However, the gearbox was a real pain, the cheapest one I could find was £5000 with Roy Lane.
On the day of a decision about it all a Porsche engine and box came to my attention through the Porsche Club, an engine I knew from a man I knew so suddenly the Lola would be Porsche powered, a Lola-Porsche, sounded good!
The chassis was brilliant, neat tidy with a lot of extra holes in funny places…but no chassis number. Bit of a worry, was this a ‘hot’ car?
So the long journeys began of building the car (another very long story) and finding the chassis number.
I joined the forum, Ten-Tenths, historic section and started a thread to see if anyone knew this car. I have to marvel at the Internet, it is brilliant and without it this car would be lost to history.
Here I will tell the story and that the chase for the number became a whole ‘Life with a Hill climb Lola’ that now has over 340,000 hits and 1900+ posts. Amazing.
The first suggestion was the car belonged to Mr Toleman (as in F2/F1 fame). This T 490 was one of 10 built in 1977 and registered as HU6 and was raced by Tiff Needell amongst others at the time. The car went to Alan Humberstone who bodied it with a Skoda shell in Thunder Saloons (Wendy Wools Championship) but had a huge accident first time out with a BDG engine/FT box fitted. The damaged tub was too far gone and that car still exists in Spain.
So to my Lola. The car that Alan bought was to replace the damaged HU6 I eventually found out, but first we need to go back to the 1978 Lola build sheets!
It is a late 1978 car and a T 492 which meant it had twin side mounted radiators, and my car had the larger rectangular tube rear chassis. The chassis design was changed due to stress cracks found in the first cars around HU 47 (Lola made 100 492’s) so I knew the car was after HU47 which tinned the field down a bit.
My 10/10th quest was suddenly popular and I had contributions coming to me from everywhere, the UK, USA and others, but 2 gents, Clive Brown and ‘Driftwood’ really came to help me. A lot of spurious suggestions led to dead-ends, but something was in Clive’s head, and one day filling up with petrol he bumped into another old motorsport friend and the car came up in conversation and opened the door…
This chat led to Alan Humberstone’s crashed car and a pair of lads who were given the job of ‘re-shelling’ the Humberstone’s broken HU6 ready to race again, Tony Harman (linked to Haggispeed) and John Schnieder in a small lock-up down Essex way (home area for Humberstones business of transporting Fords all over the UK).
Clive found Tony and John’s phone numbers. Yes, indeed they had built the new car, Tony had a lot of pictures of the build and would I like a copy of them? Oh yes!. John couldn’t remember much (at all) but remembered removing the chassis plate. He might still have it somewhere…that came to zero!
Tony’s pictures are amazing, every detail is there and still on my car inc all the holes for various panels and things used to adapt the car for an RS200 turbo/500bhp rally engine and box and a sleek fibreglass/Kevlar body based on a Karman Ghia coupe taken off the moulds of the Dr Enderby Imp silhouette car. This body was painted a lurid Pink. Alan raced the car once! The chassis had AP racing brakes and the engine installed by a Mr Lee, a friend of Alans. I was sent on 10/10th a picture of it racing at Brands, and it looked fantastic.
The car was damaged, but not badly. Alan went to Spain to live. I was getting now where fast until Alan called me up. He told me I had the history all wrong ‘pre Alan Humberstone’ but his memory was a bit sketchy. His daughters had found my thread on google!
Alan remembered buying the car from two gents who had bought it from a farmer who had bought it damaged from someone else who raced it in the Caribbean Airlines race in the early 80’s at Brands. This was magic for Clive and Driftwood, some facts to work on as both were very involved in silhouette racing back then.
I (we) managed to get some early names from the early 80’s, Bernie Garwood drove it for the owner, name unknown but the trial again dried-up. I kept searching almost obsessively on the ‘net for info, found pictures of the HU6 Skoda car and lots more, but then Clive suggested a break-through idea.
I needed to find the dealer who was based in Essex, and why not try a small article in the local paper to see if that might jog some memories. The names I had were Dennis Humphries and Len Merchant.
The editor thought this a good local interest article so with a picture it went to press. Silence.
After 2 weeks I had a phone call from Spain. “Hello, I understand you are looking for me?”
That sounded a bit ominous, but it was Dennis! Len had seen the article (Len sell garage equipment now) and had found long lost friend Dennis’ phone number. Dennis was really pleased, mainly because a load of his old friends were coming out to see him in Spain, and indeed he remembered the car.
He and Len had bought two cars from a Farmer, both restored. One was a red Lola T492 which he has bought slightly damaged from a forgotten named driver. Two days after getting them (the Lola had a Pinto engine on twin webbers etc) he sold the Lola to a Mr Harry Humberstone, Alan’s father to rebuild a race car….
With things falling now into place it so happens that Clive Brown built that twin webber’d engine!!
We found the phone number for the Farmer with the amazing memory of Driftwood who still drives past the farm to his race car warehouse business. He thought this was the farmer. He always seemed to remember a farmer in his area with a Lola T492 who never raced it. So, I eagerly called the farmer, Paul Wilkins.
Yes, he did have an old Lola once, bought after a Carribean Airlines race from someone. Would I like the 2 photo’s he had….Paul had restored the car with a new body as the original (red) body was too far gone.
He sold the pair of cars to 2 blokes, Dennis and Len. Bingo!
“Oh, and I still have the original front section of the car in the barn, would I like that too?”
I nearly wetted myself. I agreed to come to Essex to the farm and take the front away for 2 bottles of Wine.
Along-side all this excitement (3 years have now passed) my search for the car reached to Hass racing in the USA, Chicago Sports 2000 racers and red herrings galore, but the old body was the clincher. Lola have a Heritage Site with masses of info and a register of known T492 cars, about ½ of the 100 are known. I wanted to secure the right chassis number on that register! To do this I needed a lot of proof before they would agree the car and number matched.
The front clam was covered in farm barn dirt, a dull red, #26 on the front and a Caribbean airways sticker on the side. It was quite shattered and the red paint peeling off. Under that red paint was a lurid green gell coat of the original body moulding.
Back to the sales ledger for the T492 from the Lola factory and there were just 2 Kelly Girl Green cars made!
One was a T490 converted to 492 spec belonging to Bob in Canada who had been following the thread from the start. His car HU4 is the earliest known car of the series, and the other Green car was T 492 HU 62, a late ‘large tube’ chassis car.
This car of mine must be that car! Lola Heritage agreed 100% and allocated HU62. Never before had they seen such research into a car’s past (esp as it is not worth much!)
The tub now has the HU 62 chassis plate. What a marathon and in all that there was a nice twist at the end…
I had an email via 10/10th from a lady who had found some pictures of her father and his Lola T492, red, prepared for the Caribbean Airlines race. The family had lots of great memories racing the car. He father had recently died and she had found the pictures, did a search on the internet and found my thread and the story of this car. She was so happy that the car was alive and well and bought back fond memories of her father Perter Newman, the name nobody could remember.
The original owner from the build sheet was Peter Sadler who made ornamental tea pots!
So, after Alan had it and crashed it with the Ghia body on, the car disappeared into Essex, passing though the hands of several people, Brian at Autoquip added the big Brembo brakes and the Cosworth engine but it languished until Mike Ingles bought it in 2006.
Mike wanted to build a car to run at the Brighton Speed Trials, and alongside the GT40 and the real RS Escort.
When Mike got it the Ghia body had been smashed beyond repair, so he bought the new red Lola Sports 2000 body and had installed a new roll cage to the original Lola pattern, but the car needed a lot more doing to it to run as a race car. Looking to retire to France, Mike saw my ad in the Sports 2000 web site and the car came to me.
It now has another T 492 body, 20Kg lighter than the red one.
What an adventure this was and continues today as the thread has become a ‘blog’ of the car, the engineering and the hill climbing seasons, all the technical ups-n-downs, all the blood sweat and tears since it has been in my life.
UPDATE: Jan 2020
This footnote will briefly span the last 3 years as I wait for the 2020 season to open.
With the car working quite well and with me feeling more relaxed driving it the 2016 season opened out to be a corker. The car ran well and the pilot errors seem to be reducing and despite some strong competition in the small class I managed to win the Class in the Midland hillclimb Championship, my name engraved next to some mega drivers who had driven in the Libre Class, over 2 litres.
This was a real achievement for me as the nuts n bolts have been my first love with this car. The narrowing of the wheels (!) has worked out well, it is so much easier to drive and the grip is all still there except off the start line where wheel spin is a real issue, but that is me just being too rough maybe.
The 2017 season was just as ‘unspectacular’ with the car driving better, and on fresh slicks things were nice and stable. The chassis set-up done by McClurg Motorsport was unchanged, and leaving the car ‘as-is’ really helped me win the Class again!
With the class seriously depleted I found myself merged with the boys in the Under 2 litres, all motorbike engine cars bar David’s fab Crossle, so rarely won on the day, but accrued enough points to win the Class a third time. Talk about a good ego boost, my name on the same trophy 3 times in a row.
2019 was quite different. In fact, 2019 was a very turbulent year with the car and the family.
The class was suddenly full of some very fast car/driver combinations and I was seriously slower and with no hope of catching up. At Prescott, the car rolled away down the steep paddock with me ½ in it. I missed so many people somehow and was pulled to a halt by 3 other competitors, a really scary situation and very upsetting.
Conversely, we entered the new ‘Invited’ class of the Porsche hillclimb day at Prescott and ran away with the 1st position. We are going back in 2020!
The result though of the season was 2nd in class in the Championship, so my run of good luck rapidly stopped. Rather think 2020 will be the same, maybe worse…
I am toying with the idea to put a bike engine into the car to save about 110Kg, have a very high revving engine and a slick sequential box, but the old 3.2 Porsche just looks so right in there, it would be a wrench to do this.
However, if I’m careful I could make the swop reversible.
Wife is not too keen, infact, rather anti the idea, and feels I should resign to simply enjoying the sport I’ve done for 30 years and forget about beating people!
We shall see.
Graham.
