1963 Scirocco

By the time you read this, a superb collection of famous, bizarre, futile and fantastic Grand Prix cars will be gathering for what promises to be a unique and stirring event at Donington Park in the UK. The weekend of May 18–20 is when GPLive brings together the good and great—and the not so great—of Grand Prix racing, from the 1,000 horsepower turbo cars to the little-known and oft-forgotten…like the beautiful Scirocco you see here. With a promise of drivers like Andretti to Zorzi, mechanics, team managers, designers, sponsors and hangers-on from yesterday and today, GPLive should stun both the current “Schuey” fan and the ancient anorak alike.

Scirocco—a car for its time

Modern GP fans, when you ask them to list “interesting” cars, will rattle off Ferrari, McLaren, Williams, etc., and when you say go back a few years, they will come up with some of the same plus Lola and Surtees and so forth. A bit further back, and there will be Maserati and Vanwall, and then the struggle begins. But every decade from the beginning of the F1 World Championship has produced many, many cars, far more than those easily recalled. They included the winners we remember, but there were also the great almosts, the cars which had potential but didn’t quite make it, as well as the bizarre and the futile. The 1950s gave us the Diedt, Ewing, Snowberger, AFM, Veritas and Emerson, among others. Then the 1960s saw the Epperly, Phillips, Shannon and Derrington-Francis. In the 1970s, we had the DeTomaso 308, Bellasi, Connew, Maki, Parnelli and Token. A decade later, in the 1980s, it was the Theodore, Spirit, RAM, Zakspeed, AGS, Coloni and Rial. Some of the best and the worst came in the 1990s: Larrousse, Fondmetal, Andrea Moda, Simtek, Forti and the Life. The Life, named after its Italian owner Mr. Vita—yes, Mr. Vita! did the whole 1990 season and never made it past pre-qualifying! Post-2000, there were fewer brave people going F1, but we did have the Prost, Jaguar and now Spyker. And at this moment, that very Life GP car, with its W-12 engine, is being put back together for GPLive. I hope it makes it.

The Scirocco will also be at Donington. In fact, for our test, we took it to Donington in preparation and ran it on the “old Melbourne loop,” part of the prewar Donington GP circuit, which has been recently resurfaced.

The 1961–1965 1,500-cc Formula One era had its own collection of fast, furious and futile machinery. You all know the Lotus, BRM, Ferrari, Brabham, Cooper, Porsche, Honda and Lola tales, but what about ATS, the South African Alfa Special, the Derrington-Francis, de Tomaso, Emeryson, the ENB, Ferguson, Gilby, JBW, another South African…the LDS, the Stebro and the Scirocco. There were 21 different chassis in Grand Prix races in that ’61–’65 period. Lotus, BRM and Ferrari won World Championships in that short space of time, so they must have been the most successful…or were they? Depends on how you look at it. Lotus earned the most championship points, with BRM 2nd and Ferrari 3rd. But who had the best start/finish ratio…it was the little ENB-Maserati…one race…one finish! Lotus finished less than half the races it started, BRM about two-thirds, Ferrari about the same, while the Alfa Special had a 50% record. Some of the lesser-known finishers never made it to the checkered flag, and the Scirocco was in that group, but that doesn’t really tell the story at all.

The Powell-Scirocco story

The Scirocco story has its origins in the work done by Paul Emery, a talented engineer who had been building cars for a variety of formulae during the ’40s and ’50s. After the war, Paul Emery had taken over Emerson Ltd. from his father, who had been building racing specials back in the ’30s. He produced the Emerson F1 car for the new 1961 formula, and while he ran Climax-engined cars, his customer, Ecurie National Belge, chose a 1.5-liter Maserati engine. The Emerson company was in trouble by the end of the year, and a young—very young—American by the name of Hugh Powell, a teenager with very rich parents, stepped in and bought part of the company. He had been encouraged by West Coast sports car driver Tony Settember who had F1 ambitions. When this pair arrived at Emerson at the end of 1961, the staff left and Emery stayed on as designer. The 1962 season was unsuccessful though Settember did make it to the flag at least once in the Emerson. Emery left before the end of 1962, and in Belgium, ENB were rebuilding their old Emerson into the…ENB… for its one GP. Paul Emery was typical of many industrious and talented engineers in Britain who could set their hands to many tasks. A whole network of similar racing people lived and worked in and around London in this period. After the F1 period, Emery made his name preparing racing Hillman Imps, had several notable races himself at the Nürburgring and even tried to enter Imps at Le Mans.

Powell and Settember decided to create their own new team and car for the 1963 season. While virtually all the F1 manufacturers, or at least the British ones, had resisted the 1.5-liter formula initially as being too slow and uninspiring, it had turned out to be much more competitive than expected. Less power forced creative thinking in other areas, especially in weight saving, and the records set by the previous 2.5-liter engines were quickly being broken. It was never going to be a formula that drivers loved, but it bred a very special group of drivers. Jim Clark, Graham Hill and Jackie Stewart were in the forefront of this new breed, with many others breathing down their necks.

For 1963, the team was renamed Scirocco-Powell Racing and the operation was moved from the Emerson base in Send, Surrey, to a rather small and unimposing lock-up garage in the Goldhawk Road in London. It was located directly behind the Seven Stars pub and hence the original Scirocco badge had seven stars on it! The intention was to win races with what Powell and Settember saw as an American team and have perfectly presented cars. They managed to achieve the second ambition, but the first was a little more difficult. Hugh Aiden-Jones was the team’s consultant engineer and team manager. He set out the design for the new car, a multitubular space frame, though it largely resembled the second version of the Emerson, though the engine bay had been modified to accept a BRM V-8 engine and Colotti 6-speed gearbox. Changes included using the rollover bar to reinforce the center-section. This had a sheet steel fuel tank welded to it, and with the steel driver’s seat also welded into this section, it was indeed a proper semimonocoque. There were also additional strengthening tubes running from the roll hoop to the cockpit bulkhead and, in the rear, these attached to the top chassis tubes. The suspension was pretty conventional early ’60s, with double wishbones and outboard coil spring/damper units in the front with a single upper link, and a reversed lower wishbone with twin parallel radius arms in the rear. There were also 11.5” disk brakes and rack and pinion steering. The outcome was a narrower chassis and much narrower body panels. The finish was indeed very impressive, with Scirocco having produced the smallest F1 car of its period…I discovered this, firsthand, when I tried to get in and, especially, out! The BRM engine was a 1962 unit without the single plane crankshaft but with Lucas fuel injection. The output from the tidy BRM engine was around 190 bhp at 10,000 rpm.

John Tojiero had done the suspension and the car was built up by Roy Thomas. Thomas, known as “The Weld,” wasn’t happy with the layout, considering it too heavy with the chassis tubes running through the fuel tank. He made the best of a complicated job with the first car, chassis SP-1-63. The team was going to run two cars, and the second, chassis SP-2-63, the car you see here, was much tidier, lighter and even narrower than the first.

Scirocco goes racing

The year 1963 was going to be a busy one for the Scirocco-Powell endeavor, and the original plan was for a full season of championship Grand Prix and nonchampionship races. It didn’t quite work out that way. The team failed to show up at any of the seven nonchampionship events that started the 1963 season, and then missed the first Grand Prix at Monaco. Graham Hill had won at Monaco and was on pole at Spa, sharing the front row with Dan Gurney in the Brabham BT-7 and the amazing Willy Mairesse in the Ferrari 156 alongside. One car, chassis SP-1-63, appeared at Spa for the Belgian Grand Prix for Tony Settember on June 9. To capture the atmosphere, remember that Jim Clark had just finished 2nd at the Indy 500 where Gurney had been his teammate. At Spa, not only did the Scirocco, well presented in its American blue-and-white color scheme, make its debut, but the ATS and BRP cars also appeared for the first time. The ATS was a mess, and the BRP looked promising when Innes Ireland put it on row three. Phil Hill got one ATS on the second to last row, 12 seconds slower than Graham Hill, while Settember was a further 19 seconds adrift but still 8 seconds quicker than Baghetti’s ATS.

Of the new cars, the Scirocco had the “best” result, though it was by no means glorious. Baghetti, Ireland and Phil Hill were all out by lap 13 and Tony Settember managed a plucky 26 of the 32-lap race distance. The Spa rain arrived and the conditions were appalling. At about the time Settember spun and had a minor accident, Colin Chapman was trying to get the race stopped as lap times had increased by two minutes. Jim Clark finished 5 minutes ahead of Bruce McLaren, and had the race been stopped when Chapman was trying, the Scirocco would have finished in the points and in fact was eventually classified 8th. Disappointment, but the team didn’t feel too bad.

The Dutch Grand Prix was given a miss to repair SP-1-63 and continue work on the second car. Settember appeared at Reims with his repairs done for the French GP on June 30. Clark had won at Zandvoort and was now putting together his string of four straight victories. Any hopes that the Scirocco team might make, among the front-runners, was not helped at Reims, when Settember, alone again, was at the back of the grid. He was in some salubrious company with fellow Americans, Jim Hall and Masten Gregory alongside and Bandini’s Centro-Sud BRM behind. But he only managed five laps before a wheel bearing gave way and he was out.

Three weeks later, the British Grand Prix took place at Silverstone and that break had given the little Scirocco team time to complete the second car, chassis SP-2-63, our test car, which was tidier, smaller and incorporated some further modifications. This was to be Brit Ian Burgess’s last season in F1 and he was eager to turn in some good performances. Tony Settember qualified on the 5th row of the grid, a shade slower than F1 debutant Mike Hailwood in a Reg Parnell Racing Lotus 24, while Ian Burgess was 2 seconds further back between Carel de Beaufort’s Porsche 718 and Ian Raby’s Gilby-BRM. The Gilby was another of those little-known cars of the time. Settember’s car went out after 20 laps with ignition failure, followed 16 laps later by Burgess with the same malady. Burgess had driven a good race while it lasted.

A week later Burgess was the lone Scirocco entry at the non-championship Solitude race, qualifying a pretty lowly 27th and retiring again with ignition problems. For ignition difficulties, please read “the car just wouldn’t run.” This perhaps had something to do with a cash-flow problem, which now seemed to be plaguing the team. A week later, both cars were at the Nürburgring for the German Grand Prix. This was a circuit where some good driving could make up for faults in the car, which Bandini proved by putting his year-old BRM 3rd on the grid ahead of the works teams. However, the Sciroccos were still at the back, with Burgess ahead of Cabral and Collomb but Settember in last, 10 seconds slower than his teammate. John Surtees scored his first Grand Prix win, beating Clark, and Bandini made a mess of his chance by taking himself and Ireland off on the first lap. Both Sciroccos went off the road on lap 5, Burgess having suffered a broken steering arm.

The only bit of glory for the Scirocco-Powell team came at the nonchampionship Austrian Grand Prix at Zeltweg on September 1. A small but quality field showed up at the featureless circuit, where Ian Burgess was trying hard and qualified 13th in SP-2-63, but a con-rod broke during the race. There was a battle between Jack Brabham, Jim Clark and Innes Ireland for much of the race, until Clark and Ireland both had engine failures. Tony Settember ran consistently and ended up 2nd, though five laps behind Brabham. The Italian Grand Prix took place a week later, and Burgess was withdrawn because he had no spare engine. This race was intended to be run on the combined banking and road circuit, but there was so much damage and complaint that it was switched to the road circuit exclusively, for the race. Settember was then bumped from the grid to allow Baghetti in the Italian ATS into the race. Surtees was on pole and Bandini had made it back into the Ferrari team, but it was Clark’s win and championship.

By this time, team owner Hugh Powell had tired of racing and was much more focused on a new girlfriend. Meanwhile, the team had been hiding the team transporter in various locations around London, trying to avoid the bailiffs and debt collectors. Settember and Burgess, who had been working as the team manager since July, organized a loan so Burgess could race at the Oulton Park Gold Cup. The pair begged Hugh Powell to rush back to the USA and bring back some more money. He agreed, but then they discovered that he had booked himself and his girlfriend into a stateroom for a slow cruise to New York on the Queen Elizabeth! They confronted him at Southampton docks where he handed over some cash, but he never returned. When they contacted his father, the senior Powell informed them that Hugh was a teenager, not 22 years old as he had claimed, and had no right to promise the money and that he was not legally liable. Sadly, Burgess managed an 8th-place finish at Oulton Park but that was the end of the road for the team.

1964 and SP-2-63 turns yellow

The cars were subsequently sold to pay off the team’s debts. Barrie Carter bought the cars and he had Tim Parnell run “our car,” SP-2-63 for Andre Pilette, in the yellow racing colors of Belgium. The team was called the Equipe Scirocco Belge. A total of nine races were entered and six run for Pilette. In March 1964, he qualified 15th and finished 7th in the Daily Mirror Trophy at Snetterton, and again qualified 15th for the News of the World Trophy at Goodwood where he finished a reasonable 6th. However, the car had changed more than its color by then, as the Parnell mechanics had removed the temperamental BRM engine and replaced it with a 1.5-liter Coventry Climax FWMV unit. In April, Pilette qualified 7th at Syracuse but retired with a broken gear linkage, and a week later managed 11th at the Aintree 200. He failed to qualify for the Monaco Grand Prix but managed to just get into his home Belgian Grand Prix at Spa. In an amazing race that should have been won by Dan Gurney, Pilette had the engine stop after 11 laps. He then didn’t qualify at the German GP, finished 8th at Pergusa at the Mediterranean Grand Prix, and finally couldn’t qualify at the Italian GP.

Both cars more or less disappeared after this. SP-2-63 was bought by a Bill Jones and, at one time, had a supercharged Triumph Stag engine installed! In 1991, it was found by Spencer Elton who found many of the original parts, while more recently it found its way to James Hanson and Speedmaster. As for SP-1-63 it eventually ended up with Dean Butler, and now both cars have been carefully restored by Hall and Hall.

Driving the Scirocco

It had often been said that had the Scirocco found itself with a talented young driver and some development time, it could have been a competitive car. When I saw the finely prepared little car at Donington, reunited with a proper BRM engine, it was easy to see how this would have been possible. The Scirocco was a carefully turned-out car and deserved much better than it got from Powell and Co. The BRM, in the car postrestoration, was a 2-liter unit, and that was subsequently returned to proper 1.5-liter capacity using the block from the engine in the car, with substantial other modifications to return it to the way it was meant to be.

It was something of a squeeze to get into this very narrow F1 car, tighter than other cars of the period that I have heaved my bulk into. You are immediately confronted with an odd triangular device on the steering wheel and that was the early attempt at having the wheel be removable. The gearshift for the Colotti Type 34 box sits close at hand to the left, an easy straight-forward six-speed which was very simple to use, and it got some use as the BRM engine likes to be revved. The rev counter is slightly raised on the instrument panel and reads to 10,000 rpm…though we didn’t go near that!

The 1.5-liter formula may have been viewed as being “under-powered” but when the BRM V-8 burst into life, it was clear that there was something magical about the shriek of those relatively small motors. In fact, all BRM engines rated highly on the good sound scale, I think, even the maligned H-16. After some warming up, the Scirocco was surprisingly docile, as it trundled around posing for the camera, and as the oil temperature went up and the tires got functioning, it was soon possible to start pushing it around the interesting little circuit that is part of old Donington. Prewar photos show a number of places on the track where the immense Auto Unions and Mercedes would crest a rise and leap into the air. One of these places is the uphill return from the tight little hairpin at the “Loop.” The BRM picked up quickly in first gear, the revs rushing up to 7,000 in first, second and third, when the crest was reached. The narrow tires, Dunlop Racing 5.00-15 on the front and 6.00-15 at the rear, just left the ground for a fraction over the blind brow, and the car flicked left through the Armco-lined wooded section, into fourth, then hard on the brakes and down to third, and second for a looping right and a short dash back to the wide-open runway. Another flick right and SP-2-63 was poised at the top of the hill ready to plunge down to the Loop again, just touching fifth and sixth…really just to see that they were there, and then down the box with the musical BRM singing behind my head.

James Hanson, who has now raced the car a few times, really likes it: “I find it very…impressive. It’s only one and a half liters but the power delivery is impressive. The only thing is that you have to keep the engine revving all the time. It revs to 10,000 and anything much below 7,000 doesn’t do a great deal, which is why it has a 6-speed gearbox on it. Having said that, at Goodwood, we didn’t need sixth, and I was running up to the limiter near 10,000 in fifth. It does everything you want it to, and doesn’t do anything untoward. It stops well. The Colotti boxes had their idiosyncrasies, but this is easy to use, as you will find. You just have to take your time with it. We are going to do a small modification to the lever which tends to float at the moment.”

That didn’t turn out to be a problem…I just had to feel where each change was and make sure the lever moved correctly to the next slot without expecting it to spring into the next gear. In fact, for a narrow gate, it was very user-friendly. Second to third gears took some getting used to, and it went second to fifth at least once…or twice. Even the cockpit seemed pretty comfortable after I relaxed into it. The pedals are close together but manageable. The cockpit is extremely tidy and well laid out, matching the overall good looks of the car. In spite of Roy Thomas’s early reservations, SP-2-63 was well put together, making its rather lackluster career all the more sad as this is clearly a “good F1 car.” At Goodwood, it started midfield and finished 4th, and had a good dice with Richard Attwood. The handling was, and is, neutral. There is lots of feel to it, even coming into a corner under harder braking. It doesn’t “load up” and, provided you keep the power on, it pulls very smoothly out of slow corners.

After a number of laps, I noticed our intrepid photographers had dropped their lenses and were just watching…and smiling. It is that kind of machine…just very nice. It has some nice touches too, like the forward-pointed front roll bar, located the “wrong way around” to fit with the location of the steering rack necessitated by the slim lines of the Scirocco. If only Hugh Powell had come back with the money…..!

This car is up for sale at about $350,000, but James and Speedmaster are in no hurry to part with it. It seems to have grown on them too.

Specifications
Chassis: Semimonocoque with tubular space frame, reinforced and welded center section and fully braced rollover bar
Suspension: Front-conventional double wishbones and outboard coil spring damper units; rear-single upper link with reversed lower wishbone with twin parallel radius arms
Gearbox: Type 34 6-speed Colotti gearbox
Tires: Dunlop Racing-Front-5.00L-15; Rear-6.00L-15
Engine: BRM Type P56 1.5-liter
Cylinders: 90-degree V-8
Stroke/bore ratio: 0.74:1
Carburetion: Lucas fuel injection
Valves: 2 per cylinder
Piston area: 294.9 cm2
Maximum power: 190 bhp @ 10,000 rpm

Resources
Many thanks to James Hanson and Speedmaster (www.speedmastercars.com) and to Hall and Hall’s Andy for a great day at Donington.
Whitelock, M. 1 1/2-Litre Grand Prix Racing 1961-65: Low Power, High Tech Veloce Press, UK 2006