Elfin Racing Car Development, 1964 through 1968, especially the Mono and type 300

[SJ Lambert]

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Elfin Racing Cars started promisingly enough in the late 50's, by the early sixties their formula junior open wheeler and Mallala Sports racers were showing some real promise.

Their replacements were pretty intriguing though, Garrie Cooper had a ANF1.5 monocoque up & running in 1964 (incidentally, Ron Tauranac didn't feel the need to go to a tub in F1 til 69/70 with the BT33 debuting in 1970) and to replace the Mallala, Garrie offered the wonderful looking little 300 that could handle up to 2 litres of Climax motor in 1967. For what it's worth, I think the 300 was "on the drawing board years earlier than that, but more of that later).

My Dad, Ron Lambert worked with Garrie and the rest of the crew at the Elfin Works Team in Conmurra Avenue from just after the first Mono til the completion of the first type 600 open wheeler - as a result I am lucky enough to be able to work on a Mono & a type 300, so as I get a chance, I'll have a look at how the Monos developed from the initial Mk 1 through to the Mk2 D variants, as well, I'll have a look at the story behind how the 300 came about. I may even quiz Ron on what effect, if any, the types 100 (Mono) & 300 had on the genesis of the spaceframe 600.

Photos and more ramblings to follow! (Better get the Mono restoration completed & get her on track too, so forgive me if contributions here are infrequent for the time being).

[Terry S]

Here for interest is an article on the first Elfin "works" 1500 and the role of Frank Matich.

I know its before your nominated years but it is fascinating background.

http://www.vhrr.com/newsletters/Elfin-625.pdf

[Ray Bell]

James, the changes in suspensions in Elfin during this period were significant...

From the Catalina, WR275 and Mallala (admittedly before the 1964 cutoff), Garrie then went to the inboard coil/damper arrangements on the Mono combined with the swept back top wishbone of the early models.

The 400 was more conventional, much like Brabham practice, which is possibly due to the Matich influence.

The Mono was a bit of a jet on fast circuits, the small frontal area helped it at circuits like Calder and Sandown. Undoubtedly Garrie knew what he was doing when he changed the rear end. I don't know if there were changes to the front.

As an aside, there are tapered tubular extensions to the shocks on these cars made very economically from tubing manufactured for use in kitchen table legs. And as a further aside, time marching on some twenty-plus years, some of this was also used in the Bulant entry for the Shell Mileage Marathon at Amaroo Park.

Brian Rawlings had been an Elfin employee at the time of the Mono and knew of the tubing's origins. The boffin-types looking over the cars in the pits asked him where he got the tapered chrome moly tubing.

Casually, Brian would reply to these people, all high grade engineers from all over the world, "That's not chrome moly, mate!"

"What is it then?"

"That's Namco!" he'd tell them all to send them off scratching their heads.

Getting back to the subject at hand... I recall when I did the story about the 300 I was told that the suspension was pure Elfin 600... well, maybe minor changes because of the chassis shape. And as the 300 predated the 600 it shows that Garrie probably had the 600 on the drawing boards and upgraded his thoughts on the 300 when he finally put it into production.

The loveliest little Sports Racing Car of the modern era if you ask me...

[Steve Holmes]

Fantastic! Thanks James, am looking forward to this.