Friday 25 November 2016

Heerey from the horse's mouth

None other than Howard Heerey himself recently shared some pictures from the days of old. He wrote: "Works GTM built for the '68 season to compete in the up to 1150cc class, seen here at Ingliston. Loved the paint job, Jaguar indigo metallic fading to aluminium metallic at the bottom of the panels with the big yellow race stripe, which I unfortunately spoilt by putting it through Esso sign at Oulton later in the season. I don't have any photos of the mechanicals, but the radiator was mounted in its normal place on the front of the subframe and then a duct was made out of alloy which directed the air up and back through the hole in the bonnet. The fuel tank was mounted just ahead of the windscreen." Great photographs, thank you very much for sharing them, Howard!

GTM works racer, which was campaigned by Howards Heerey who took over the project from Cox
Picture courtesy Howards Heerey

Oops. Car was damaged at Oulton Park later in 1968 after a 'T-bone' crash
Picture courtesy Howards Heerey

That's not fibreglass! This was after all the prototype, on display in London in 1967
More about it here. But where is it now?
Picture courtesy Howards Heerey

5 comments:

  1. Ha Ha...

    I've been trying to get hold of you about this on the Mk1 site since October. I spoke to Nick Beaumont about it, pointing out that if you look at the door and the roofline you can see that it is Bent, and that if it had been made of fiberglass it would have been smashed. Deducing it must have been the aluminium car.

    This raises the question if this was a "lightweight" bodied racer, as has been reported in Gtm literature, was it just referring to the front end being a fiberglass item?

    The other question is..... if the yellow aluminium 1967 show car,(no.1), became more of a Race/Promotional vehicle for the brand, what does this mean for the chap who reported to you that he owned a Cox with the registration JDB 260E?
    Did the race car loose its registration to a customers car?

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  2. How come my post above shows as Anonymous?
    Turbocox

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  3. JDB260E was raced in 67 so we can assume it was the same car painted blue in 68. That would account for the alloy doors etc. Was it then repaired after the Oulton Park crash and sold on as a road car? Would seem to make sense. Very happy to see these photos from HH now I know what the scheme looks like when it is time to paint my Heerey GTM!

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  4. I think my Unipower raced against this car in '67,maybe also in '68, I'll find the programmes.Howard has confirmed it was the aluminium prototype. Pete

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  5. I asked Howard Heerey on Facebook if they build a new car for 68 and he said they did, but they may have used the alloy doors. He has also posted some colour shots on FB of the 67 racer

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