Some weeks ago I finalized the purchase of the Luigi Racing #001 BMW CSL.
I had the car shipped from Italy, via London, to Seattle where we picked it up at the Customs warehouse.
Here’s the story:
We like to hear which livery people like, Castrol black, or UFO Jeans candy stripes, so leave a comment.
Competing against some of the fastest cars of the day, Willis had a great day.
The race was won by Reg Parnell’s Cooper Bristol. Then followed 2 Connaught A-types, and a Ferrari 125/66. Willis finished a credible 5th, and in the process set a two litre lap record of 85.5 MPH.
As the 1952 season wound down Willis and Bulmer recognized that there were changes coming in the various Formulae. They also realized that they could no longer compete effectively with a car that was also being driven daily on the open roads. So they began to plan for the 1953 season. These plans developed into a special built and extremely light weight 1500 cc car with a steel space frame designed by Bulmer. Bulmer even designed a special short throw crankshaft that they planned to use in the new car.
Unfortunately reality caught up with the team as business set-backs caused Willis to have to sell his garage, and the partially finished race car they were building for 1953. 51203 also had to be sold and was offered in this ad in the Fall of 1952. This set-back also proved to be the end of Willis’ racing career.
The car was purchased by Berwyn Baxter who raced it throughout the 1953 season. The car appeared on entry lists as the “LMC Bristol,” so named for Willis’ now defunct garage, the Loughton Motor Company. 3rd place finishes at AMOC’s Silverstone race in August, and BARC’s Goodwood race in September comprised the highlights of that season.
Baxter bought a C-type Jaguar for the 1954 season so 51203 was idled, and finally it was offered for sale through the Scarth Hill Motor Co Ltd in Ormskirk. Cedric Brierly purchased the car in December 1954 for 365 Pounds. He intended to transplant the engine from the car into his own BS Special. Fortunately his plans changed and he sold the car to Peter Sims of Sheffield before it could be cannabalized.
The car ran two more races at Silverstone. The first was in July 1955, and finally in October 1956. It is thought to have then been converted back to street car, and it thus disappeared until 1967 when its newest owner, Paul Spencer, wrote to both Bulmer and Willis seeking additional information about the car in preparation for restoration. It was now in several hundred pieces, with its magnesium body long since rotted away and sold for scrap.
It then went through a series owners, John Baker (1968-1983), Fuad Mazjub (1984-1989), and Brian May (1989-2001), each of whom had the best intentions of putting the car back together.
But it was not until it came to Proby Cautly in 2001 that 51203 was finally and properly restored to its former glory. The car was completely refurbished by Neil Davies Historic Racing in Hertfordshire during 2002-2003. The car still retained its Frazer-Nash Type 40 chassis (#51203) and the 2 litre BMW engine (#361672) with the Bristol head. The biggest challenge was that a new body, faithful to the original had to be fabricated. However, due to safety concerns this one was made out of aluminum. The original cast magnesium wheels were also duplicated by Crosthwaite & Gardner using modern materials and techniques which resulted in much safer wheels.
Mr. Cautley ran the car in several vintage events until he sold it back to John Baker who wanted to satisfy his curiosity as to how the car actually performed.
From Baker it went to Paul Evans in 2008. Mr. Evans converted it back to street use, removing the roll bar and adding the gauges and lights necessary to obtain an MOT Certificate.
Some of you may be wondering why I am selling my CSL. Well, I have an answer, and it is this:
I have been able to purchase the #001 chassis Luigi BMW team car from the 1976-77 European Touring Car Championship series. A series Luigi and his CSLs won in 1976.
Here’s a link to the car’s race results during the 1976 and 1977 seasons of the European Touring Car Championships:
http://www.racingsportscars.com/chassis/archive/CSL-Luigi-001%23.html
You will see that it ran 20 races during those years and won 9 times, had 2 second place finishes, a third, and a fourth place finish. A pretty good record.
Needless to say, I am very excited about securing this car. It is currently painted white with the tricolor Motorsports stripes, and has the wider Group 5 body work.
My plan is to repaint it in the black Castrol livery and replace the wide fenders with the proper Group 2 fenders.
The car arrives in Seattle on January 28th. I will post pictures and a story then. I will also do a story on its history at some future date as well.
At this point the car was putting out somewhere near 60 bhp, so the next step was obvious. During the winter of 1949 a 2 liter motor was fitted. Willis used the vertical valve, M319/4 Type 55 with triple horizontal Solex carburetors. Though not as effective as the hemi-headed 328 power plant, Willis and Bulmer modified it for more power along the lines they had used with the smaller engine. The car was also fitted with an ENV 75 pre-selector transmission from a Riley via a custom magnesium bellhousing.
To mark this new phase in its life the car was also re-registered as PVW 893.
The 1950 season showed that the car was now quite quick, and was, in fact, a match for the factory Frazer-Nashs and HMWs. But as Willis was now participating in more circuit races, it also showed itself to be unreliable. But given the team’s limited resources, this should hardly seem surprising.
That summer the team ventured to the Continent and raced in the Formula 2 events at both Luxemburg and Chimay, Belgium in May, and the 4e Coupe des Petites Cylindrees at Rheims in July. All these runs ended with DNF’s. These disappointments discouraged further forays to Europe, and resulted in the team focusing on races close to home.
By mid-summer the car was running more reliably. A second place finish to Gil Tyrer’s ex-Mille Miglia 328 streamliner at Silverstone in July, and a victory over Oscar Moore’s OBM at the SUNBAC Silverstone race in August were very promising. In September Willis returned to Prescott and climbed the hill in 50.48 seconds to win the 1500-3000 cc class. This time set a new record for the class, and was even good enough to beat Sydney Allard’s new Cadillac-Allard for the best time of the meet for sports cars.
1951 was pretty much like 1950, fast but fragile. 3rd behind an XK 120 Jaguar and a Frazer-Nash Le Mans Replica in June at Silverstone. Another 3rd behind two Frazer-Nash Bristols at Boreham in August, and a well deserved 2nd behind a Frazer-Nash High Speed at Gamston Airfield in July. The year ended with a disappointing DNF at the International Wakefield Trophy Race at Curragh in September.
For 1952 the team realized that they would need more power if they were to remain at all competitive in the 2 litre classes. So Willis set about modifying the Type 55 engine to accept a 328/Bristol type alloy cylinder head fitted with 3 down-draft SU carburetors. This change was immediate and dramatic.
Bulmer drove the car in the first event of the season, the Gosport ¼ Mile Sprint where his best time of the day was 14.97 seconds, sufficient to beat 2 Frazer-Nash Le Mans Replicas and garner the 5th fastest time of the day.
Sharing the car for the May AMOC Race at Snetterton, Willis easily took his heat race ahead of a Frazer-Nash Mille Miglia and a potent MG-Cooper, but had to retire from the final. Bulmer was leading the Formula 2 race until he blew a head gasket in the late stages of the race. Still he was able to set the fastest lap of the day at 77.92 MPH.
Two weeks later Willis posted a record time of 48.84 seconds at the Prescott Hillclimb. This was down from his initial time of over 62 seconds from just a few years earlier. Bulmer won the up to 2,500 cc sports car class and finished 2nd in the Formula 2 race at Silverstone at the end of May, followed by a 2nd in the Formula 2 race at Snetterton.
Three weeks later Willis faced a tough field of Formula 2s at the West Essex Car Club’s Boreham race. Led by Reg Parnell’s Cooper Bristol, 2 Connaught A-types, and a Ferrari 125/66, Willis finished a credible 5th, and in the process set a two litre lap record of 85.5 MPH.
It was about this time that Willis engaged the help of his son-in-law, Charles Bulmer to help with his next series of modifications. Bulmer was working in scientific research at Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE), in Farnborough. He had met, and become engaged to Heather Logsdon, who was the daughter of Hazel Willis. While Willis provided the practical and creative spark, Bulmer provided the formal engineering and research support necessary to develop the car.
We can measure the effects these improvements were having on the performance of the car by comparing Willis’ times at the BOC Prescott Hillclimb over these years. In his first try in June of 1946, with the car completely stock, his time was 62.5 seconds. By the June event in 1947, with the new fenders, windscreen, and the headlights tucked into the radiator, he improved his time to 54.36 seconds.
Later that summer Willis and Bulmer took the car to its first circuit race, the Ulster Trophy Handicap race in Dunrod, Ireland. The car only lasted 2 laps succumbing to a failed bearing in the engine. This necessitated an engine rebuild, and Willis took advantage of the opportunity to extensively modifying the stock engine. The compression ratio was raised to more that 9:1, and the inlet breathing was improved by replacing the long head bolts that went through the middle of the inlet ports with Allen screws that were relieved flush with the bottom of the intake ports.
With Bulmer’s help Willis also developed a cast magnesium wheels for the car that saved about 12-15 lbs. of unsprung weight at each corner. These wheels became so successful that he was able to sell sets to many of his competitors running 328s and other BMW based specials during that era, including Oscar Moore’s OBM Special.
1948 was not a good year for motorsports in England. The meager gas ration alowed in 1947 was ended completely. This made competing difficult. The one highlight for that year was Bulmer’s first opportunity to drive the car. He wrote of that experience some 57 years later, “I drove the BMW for the first time, and I was captivated by it. The car had unfamiliar, to me, features, like a stiff chassis, springs which moved, and a smooth, high revving, rubber mounted six-cylinder engine. I began to think that my Meadows Nash might have to be replaced by a Type 55 BMW, which it was the following year.”
Willis took the lull in competition to rework the car completely, and when it reappeared in 1949, it looked entirely different. The engine and chassis remained unchanged but the steel BMW body had been replaced with a lightweight body of magnesium tubing and magnesium sheet. The cycle wings and headlights were made to be quickly removable so the car could run in both sports car and formula classes at the same race weekend.
The car now weighed just over 1100 lbs, and Willis found it necessary to remove every other leaf spring in the rear suspension to improve handling. The brakes were also given attention. They were converted to hydraulic operation, and fitted with finned light alloy drums. The lighter weight, coupled with better handling made the brakes very effective for that day.
These changes were a major effort and expense for Willis, but once the car was sorted the gains that he made were noticeable. At the Prescott Hillclimb in June of that year Willis finished second in class to a full race HRG with his time now down to 52.12 seconds, fully 10 seconds quicker than his first effort. At the Gosport Sprint event in October Willis turned a time of 17.95 seconds in the quarter mile.
Names such as Jim Hall, Max Balchowsky, Colin Chapman, and Bruce McLaren bring to mind men who made their reputations beating the “Big Boys” at the racing game with only their wits, determination, and fabrication skills. I would suggest that we consider adding the name of Ron C. Willis to that list.
In the spring of 1934 BMW introduced their new roadster, the 315/1. The car, designed by Peter Szymanowski, was a sleek 2 seater with a long hood housing a 1,490 cc straight 6 putting out 40 bhp, mated to a 4 speed transmission. The car was light and nimble, with a stiff tubular chassis, rack and pinion steering, hydraulic shocks, and large drum brakes, and was capable of a top speed of 120 kph (75 mph). BMW realized they had a serious contender in the 1’500 cc classes of competition, and so the car was immediately entered into several international competitions.
The Alpine Trial was one of the most arduous and difficult competitions of the year. It covered 1900 miles through five countries over some of the most challenging mountain roads in Europe. To finish at all was a victory, and to finish without any penalty points was almost unheard of.
For the 1934 edition of this event BMW entered a team of three of their newly designed 315/1 roadsters to compete in the under 1,500 cc class against the perennial winners from Frazer-Nash. By the end of the event the BMW team won the Alpine Cup having scored no penalty points.
Denis Jenkinson, in his book From Chain Drive to Turbocharger wrote of their performance, “The BMWs were not only faster up the mountains, but were faster down the other side as well.” The performance of these cars in the Alpine Trial so impressed J.H. Aldington of Frazer-Nash that he decided to seek a contract with BMW to begin importing the cars into Britain, offering them and later BMW models in slightly Anglicized form under the name Frazer-Nash BMW.
A 315/1 with chassis number 51203 was in the last group of 14 cars imported to Britain before the war in 1936. Registered as ANP 904, it was sold originally to Mr. B. L. Bonner of Reigate. It languished until after the war, when it was purchased in 1946 by a garage owner and budding race car builder named Ron C. Willis.
Willis recognized the superior performance capabilities of the car and began to race it in trials, sprints and hill climbs in its stock form. However, he was not satisfied with the car’s stock performance and so he began a program of modifying the car to make it more competative. Thus began the evolution of 51203 into one of the quickest post-war Formula Twos in England.
The initial set of modifications were aimed at lightening the car and improving its aerodynamics. He began by moving the headlights from the wings to an inset position in the bottom of the radiator. This was followed by replacing the stock steel fenders with alloy cycle fenders. Another change he made was to replace the full width windscreen with a more aerodynamic double screen.
My father had always been involved in the local SCCA club, participating in and supporting their various activities. In fact, the first meeting of the Land-O-Lakes Region of the SCCA was held in our family living room.
In the early 60’s he began campaigning a Formula Vee out of his VW dealership. The car was driven by a young, up and coming local driver named Jerry Hansen. Jerry went on to have considerable success, holding the record for the most SCCA national championships ever won.
I got to go along to the races, and was soon completely a-gog with racing. All I could think about doing when I got older was being a race car driver.
One of my favorite events we went to every year was the June Sprints at Road America. We typically went back for the 500 Mile race in the fall as well. This venue quickly became my favorite track to watch races at.
After getting my drivers license I began to compete in some local auto crosses. Occasionally I was given permission to use one of the used cars from my Father’s lot.
At one event I was able to use a boxy BMW 4 door sedan that went like heck. It was a TiSA he had taken on trade. More on this car in another post.
Another ‘fringe’ benefit was that I got to drive some of my Father’s cars. Occasionally some pretty interesting cars landed in our garage, including a pair of Porsche Spyders. The first was a 1955 550 RS. The other was a 1960 RS-60. I’ll be doing a post on my experiences with these cars later.
When I turned 18 I bought an NSU 1200TTS that I auto crossed for a few years. The car was quite quick, and often vied for FTD at these events.
I also used this car to begin my formal racing career, which started on ice.
I am fortunate enough to own and race several vintage BMW’s. These include- a 1935 BMW 315/1 Special known as the “Willis Wonder,” a 1961 BMW 700S, a 1965 BMW 1800Ti, a 1972 BMW 2002, and a 1973 BMW CSL from the championship Luigi BMW team from 1976-77.
Let me tell you a little about myself and how I got to this point in my automotive obsession.
I was born in Minnesota, longer ago than I will admit to. All the while I was growing up my father owned car dealerships of one sort or another.
His first dealership sold British motor cars- MG’s, Allards, Morris Minors, and Jaguars. I still have vivid memories of riding in the back of Morris Clubman wagons with all that beautiful wood and shiny chrome.
In the mid-50’s he took on VW,. It was just at the time that they were becoming popular. He had a great deal of success with them, and soon dropped the British cars, all except Land Rover, which still sold well in Minnesota. He also added Porsche to his line-up. He sold this dealership in the mid-60’s, and at the time it was the largest servicing VW dealership in the country.
After selling the VW dealership he became the midwest distributor for BMW. His territory included MN, ND, SD, IA, WI, and IL. He spent his time traveling throughout the mid-west signing up dealers for this ‘new’ German marque.
The importer, Max Hoffman, had a reputation for cutting out his distributors once they had a dealership network up and running. His reputation was well earned, and soon my father was left with just his dealership outside of Minneapolis.
At this dealership he handled BMW’s, Mercedes, and Land Rovers. Other lines came and went, including Renault, Peugeot, Jensen, and NSU. He ran this dealership until the mid-70’s when he retired and moved to a ranch in Idaho.
During these years I was always around his dealerships working as a lot boy, working in the parts department, or wherever else I could. I became a pro at cleaning off cosmoline from the new cars and doing PDI’s.
Hanging around my Father’s dealerships also gave me a chance to drive some pretty fun and exotic cars- Cobras, Vettes, Sunbeam Tigers, Porsches, MBs, all the BMWs, Jensens, and even Wankle powered NSU Spyders. It was a great time to be a young man growing up around cars!
More to come in my next post.