That name gets about - it still adorns the radiator grilles of Turkish trucks, and when people refer to Minis, many often still use the BMC moniker to describe them...
Here's one you probably haven't heard of - and there's more than a tenuous link with subsequent BMC>MG history. A racer with form....
Words: Clive Goldthorp Pictures: Phil Weng
There's more to BMC...
ROnline’s older readers will
probably associate the name of Kjell Qvale (pronounced Shell Kuh-vah-lee) with
his ownership of Jensen Motors Limited and, in particular, with the creation
of the Jensen-Healey sportscar which was launched at the Geneva Motor Show in
March, 1972 and was, at least in part, sadly responsible for the demise of the
original company in May, 1976.
However, Qvale, a Norwegian whose family had settled in Seattle when he was an infant, had made his fortune as one of the first imported car dealers in America. Qvale’s company, British Motor Car Distributors Limited, was (and is still) located on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco and, in the early 1960s, held franchises for what Tony Hogg, writing in Road & Track, February, 1964, described as “the full BMC line as well as Jaguar, Rolls Royce and Aston Martin.”
Qvale entered a Lister-Jaguar in local Californian events and had the car prepared by a self-taught Engineer, Joe Huffaker. Qvale’s association with Huffaker grew to the point at which he appointed him to run British Motor Car Distributors Limited’s Competition Department in late 1959 and that, in turn, led to the birth of what Tony Hogg reckoned was, at the time, “America’s most prolific builder of road racing cars”: BMC.
Joe Huffaker’s first car for British Motor Car Distributors Limited was the BMC Mk I Formula Junior single-seater which was introduced in 1960. The car was front engined and, as the company was a BMC distributor, used a BMC A Series engine with a Weber 40DCOE carburettor coupled to a BMC transmission incorporating Sprite close ratio gears. Road & Track reported that “the result was a fast, good-looking and comparatively simple car that started winning races almost from the first appearance of the prototype.” The Competition Department at British Motor Car Distributors Limited built a total of 23 BMC Mk Is which sold for $3,995 each and established BMC as a race car constructor.
However, thanks to the switch from front to rear engined cars inspired by the likes of Colin Chapman (with the Lotus 18) and John Cooper, Formula Junior racing underwent a radical change and so, for 1961, Huffaker developed the rear engined BMC Mk II which was fitted with a BMC A Series power unit using a Weber 45DCOE carburettor and had, of necessity, a transmission which used a Volkswagen case with Hewland gears. A total of 14 BMC Mk IIs were sold, ready to race, at $3995 each and a modified version, with a longer wheelbase, the BMC Mk III, was introduced for 1962.
Tony Hogg’s article in Road & Track suggests that six BMC Mk IIIs were sold but two of that six may, in fact, have been the two BMC Mk VIs referred to in an article by Pete Biro in Sports Car Graphic, June, 1963 and which featured a five speed transmission and four wheel disc brakes. One of the two BMC Mk VIs built in 1963 was fitted with a 98bhp Cosworth-Ford engine in an all-out effort to do battle with Colin Chapman’s latest Lotus.
Three BMC Mk IIs have now found their way to the UK and the car shown in the accompanying photographs on the grid for the Chichester Cup Formula Junior race at last year’s Goodwood Revival Meeting belongs to Merseyside-based John Sinclair who has supplied AROnline with much of the information used in this article. John purchased his car in 1979 and believes that the car had originally been raced by a driver called Mike Valerio who, for reasons which are unclear, entered the car as a Cooper T56 BMC in 1963 and 1964. Valerio entered the car on eight occasions and the car did not apparently hit the track again until the then owner, Tom Dootson, entered the car in three races during 1975.
John Sinclair says that the restoration process was both expensive and lengthy. The main reason for the duration was the extensive amount of research which he and Peter Denty of Peter Denty Racing, who undertook the restoration work, had to complete in order to identify and then return the car to the original specification for the purpose of obtaining an MSA Historic Technical Passport. John’s BMC Mk II was finally completed in 2006 and has since been raced twice by Peter Denty’s son, James, at Silverstone that year and then, as mentioned above, at last year’s Goodwood Revival Meeting when James finished seventh and the car was the highest placed BMC A Series engined car in the Chichester Cup Formula Junior race.
Joe Huffaker’s second design for BMC was a rear engined sports racing car, the BMC Genie Mk VII, which was intended for engines of up to two litres. Tony Hogg reported that eight had been sold as at February, 1964. BMC then developed a larger version, the BMC Genie Mk X, for “such power units as the Chevy, Ford or aluminium Buick.” Hogg added that the Genie Mk X had “met with such instant success that it has caused a production problem in the already overloaded Competition Department. Eight have already been sold, including one to Briggs Cunningham, and a further six are on order.” BMC Genie Mk Xs were raced by the likes of Dan Gurney and Pedro Rodriguez in 1963 – Hogg’s Road & Track article includes a photograph of Gurney chasing Rodriguez during the Times Grand Prix at Riverside that year.
Kjell Qvale was, throughout that time, keen to enter the Indianapolis 500 and had bought the Cooper chassis driven to ninth place in the 1961 event by Jack Brabham. The chassis was converted to take an Aston Martin engine and entered for the Indianapolis 500 in 1963. However, although the car handled well, the engine lacked power and, with a fastest qualifying lap of 146.8mph, Pedro Rodriguez failed to make the cut for the race.
British Motor Car Distributors Limited’s Competition Department then built three all-new, Joe Huffaker-designed, BMC Mk IX chassis for the Indianapolis 500 in 1964. The cars were entered as MG Liquid Suspension Specials and used the same hydrolastic suspension system as the MG 1100 – this was the first time that a stock production suspension system had been used on an Indy car. One of the original three cars, believed to be the No. 53 car driven by Walt Hansgen in 1964, was later acquired and fully restored by a Canadian MG enthusiast, Ralph Zbarsky, from Vancouver in British Columbia.
Zbarsky recounted the story of the BMC cars’ participation in the Indianapolis 500 from 1964 to 1969 in an article for the National Indy 500 Collector Club’s “The Short Chute” newsletter which can be found in the Winter 2004 edition at www.ni500cc.com. Two of the original MG Liquid Suspension Specials were entered in the Indianapolis 500 by Vatis Enterprises under the Valvoline banner from 1967 to 1969 and were powered by 168 cu in. Offenhauser engines fitted with Air Research turbochargers which reportedly produced 1000bhp with unrestricted boost!
Ralph Zbarsky’s car has subsequently been offered for sale by Michael Zbarsky on www.mgcars.org.uk but AROnline has not, as yet, been able to ascertain what then became of the car which was described in the advertisement as “the ultimate MG vintage race car.”
AROnline wonders whether the new Chinese owners of the MG marque, SAIC Motor Corporation Limited, are aware of the chapter in the famous brand’s history initiated by Kjell Qvale, Joe Huffaker and the American BMC...
Editor’s Notes:
1) AROnline wishes to thank John Sinclair for his patient assistance in the preparation of this article. AROnline readers with information about any of the racing cars constructed by BMC are asked to contact John by email at john.sinclair@merseymail.com.
2) AROnline readers wishing to learn more about Kjell Qvale can
obtain his new autobiography titled 'I Never Look Back' by visiting,
www.bmcd.com/qvalebook.cfm
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