Thanks to all those comments and photos of the car in the Roycroft thread.
As a bit of background the car was originally built in 1950 by Hec Green and his partner Jack Brewer who together ran an engineering business in Christchurch. They had both been aircraft mechanics during the war and had a keen interest in motor racing with Hec having raced very successfully his Wolseley special and Jack having a background on two wheels.
At the culmination of the War, as part of war reparations, specialists in their fields were sent into the various industries of the axis powers to learn their industrial secrets. One such expert was a young British engineer named Cameron Earl who was sent by British Intelligence into occupied Germany to investigate the development of the all conquering (prewar) Auto Union and Mercedes racing cars. His findings were published in 1948 by the HMSO (His Majesty's Stationery Office) Hec purchased for 30 shillings, a copy of this publication and this greatly influenced his design of the RA Vanguard. Hence its resemblance to a miniature Auto Union is not altogether accidental.
The car was built at a time when they were trying to run a business and had little in the way of resources or finance to develop a racing car. They frequented the War Surplus asset sales and bought up anything that they could recycle into their business or car development. As Jack Brewer told me one of their favorite purchases were old aluminium propellers from which they had a source of high quality material for fabrication of components.
The RA Vanguard first saw the light of day at the 1950 (or 51?) Wigram meeting where it was displayed unfinished with a wet paint sign beside it. It was originally painted in a bright orange colour which Jack Brewer recalled was paint given to theM by George Begg (Who apparently had a supply for painting tractors)
The design was considered to by quite revolutionary with a rear (Mid) engine configuration, which at that time was only seen in the little air cooled formula three cars, The front suspension was a parallel trailing link arrangement as used by Auto Union, but the springing medium chosen was rubber shock cords (Bungee) a medium that the two builders were familiar with, as at the time, it was extensively used in aircraft landing gear. The rear suspension was an unusual low pivot swing axle arrangement where the swing arm inner anchors were directly below the centre of the rear axle. Springing medium was Air over Hydraulic oleo struts from the tail wheels of a couple of P40 Kittyhawks.
The engine was a standard vanguard wet linered engine with a few minor modifications, larger head studs, cross drilled crankshaft, and a Hec Green designed and ground cam shaft. Fed by a pair of SU carburetors through an aircraft cabin blower chain driven from the front of the crankshaft to provide 14 pounds of boost. Fuel was an methanol blend. Transmission was originally Citroen, but this caused repeated problems with the horsepower and torque of the blown engine and was eventually replaced by a 3 speed transaxle of their own design and manufacture. This proved well up to the task and is still in the car today.
The car was raced in the South Island and performed well (despite lack of development) it had numerous problems with both the original transmission and the wheels that were originally fitted. These consisted of brake drums and rims with steel spokes attached between the two, Initially only six spokes per wheel, then increased to 12 spokes, but they continued to be a problem until eventually replaced (in about 1957) by wire 16" spoked wheels.
Hec won the 1953 South Island beach racing championship in it, held the NZ class D km speed record at 188.89 kph and was reportedly timed over the standing quarter mile at 13.8 seconds.
Hecs interest moved on to the build and development of his next project the "Vanguard Special" for which he built a complete DOHC engine. Jack Brewer raced the car followed by Geoff Mardon and then Les Moore who tragically crashed at Timaru in 1961.
The car then lay outside for many years behind a factory in Christchurch, the remains eventually being purchased by Grant Cowie and offered for sale. They then moved to Auckland where a recreation was undertaken which while not accurately recreating the car at least served to keep all of the remaining components together. It appeared at the Hamilton street races where it ended up on the footpath with broken rear suspension (either as a result or as the cause of its excursion) The rear end was repaired and the car again offered for sale, by the then owner Mike Courteney.
I purchased the car in November 1995 and ran it for a few years in HRSCC events, hillclimbs and circuit till stripping it down for a total rebuild.............
But that's another story to follow
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Originally Posted by Nodiff
