American race car designer Peter Brock has rare talent, and he had the good fortune to live and work in Southern California during the golden age of American road racing. His luck was not so good, however, when it came to persuading car manufacturers to put his creations into volume production. The most famous product of his imagination, the Cobra Daytona coupe, is so well-regarded today that replicas far outnumber the meager six cars that were hammed out of alloy sheeting over a wooden buck in the mid-sixties. But even though none of Brock's car designs broke out of single digits in terms of production, they had an influence far beyond their numbers. In his regard for formal purity and his intuitive sense of aerodynamic fitness, Peter Brock is America's answer to England's Malcolm Sayer, who created the iconic C, D, and E-Type Jaguars. Here are some favorites among the stable of Brock-designed competition cars...
In the photo above, the aluminum body of a Daytona Coupe* is fitted to the AC Cobra chassis during the early days at Shelby American. Brock conceived the Kamm-tailed coupe body to reduce air resistance compared to the 289 Shelby AC roadster; it added 20 mph to the top speed and was timed at 191 mph. Below we see all six of the original Cobra Daytona coupes reunited at the 2015 Revival Weekend of racing at the hallowed Goodwood track in England, over fifty years after their first appearance.
In his next assignment for Shelby, Brock was tasked with designing a body for a mid-engined racer to compete in the SCCA program that became the Canadian-American (Can-Am) Series in 1966. The 1965 P70 used the De Tomaso backbone chassis that later formed the basis of the Mangusta. While De Tomaso fell behind schedule developing special heads for a bored and stroked version of the Ford 289, Shelby sent Brock to Italy to work with Carrozzeria Fantuzzi on forming the alloy bodies (and not incidentally, to keep an eye on De Tomaso). This time, Brock's design incorporated the adjustable rear air foil which he had originally suggested for the Daytona coupe. The spare, fluid forms were startling on first exposure, but once studied they seemed almost inevitable, like much good design and a whole lot of good music. This characteristic carried over into Brock's independent work.
Shelby cancelled the project when it fell too far behind to be ready for the 1965 race season, and De Tomaso kept the two cars of five planned, outfitting the second version with a windshield and doors complying with European racing regulations. After taking over Ghia, De Tomaso credited that firm with the P70 and the revised Sport 5000 shown below, but the design was all Brock's.
The designer formed Brock Racing Enterprises after leaving Shelby American, and eventually had great success racing Nissan products. But his first team success involving Japanese imports was with the Hino 1300 Contessa, a MIchelotti-styled rear-engined coupe loosely based upon a mechanical format established by Renault. Encouraged by BRE's competition success, Hino authorized Brock's design of a more focused sports racer built around the Hino engine. The resulting car garnered plenty of attention, both from industry insiders and the press, and appeared on the cover of Road & Track in 1967.
The Samurai project allowed Brock to explore a more advanced expression of his philosophy, in that except for the engine, it was a completely new car. The mid-engined chassis allowed a lower profile, and like the P70, the form prioritized smooth air flow above concerns with mere styling. The alloy body panels were tailored to the tubular chassis by Troutman and Barnes, experienced race car builders who had turned out the bodies for Lance Reventlow's Scarabs*.
Like the Shelby-DeTomaso P70, the Samurai featured an adjustable air foil at the rear.
The publicity surrounding the Samurai caught the attention of Triumph racer Kas Kastner, who then managed the firm's US racing department. He approached Pete Brock about designing a Triumph prototype for racing and possible production. This car, released during the 1968 race season, duplicated the Samurai's success in attracting admiring attention, and it appeared on the cover of Car and Driver.
The prototype, christened the TR-250K and based on the just-introduced TR-250 (a TR4 with a six cylinder engine transplant) went from first sketches to final design within two months, but owing to delays in gaining approval from Triumph's home office, construction of the car in time for the 1968 Sebring 12 hour race was compressed into three months. Still, the final product exhibited tight contours and deft control of proportions, achieved partly by moving the engine back for better weight distribution and a lower hood. In the photo below, the photographer has cleverly accented the curves by using tire tracks on the pavement as a compositional tool...
Those compound curves were accented by horizontal creases breaking along the car's centerline, and the compound curved glazing and steeply sloped parabolic windshield recall the work that Franco Scaglione had done for Bertone. In the photo below, the adjustable spoiler, by now a familiar theme on Brock's designs, is visible.
The TR-250K's 1968 Sebring run was cut short by the failure of improvised hub adaptors for wheels obtained from the Chaparral team. The overall design showed great promise, and was promoted by Kastner and automotive journalists as the shape of the future for Triumph. But that company's management, distracted as it was by the 1968 merger with BMC, decided against financing series production...
Late the next year, Nissan Motors, which was providing cars for BRE to race in the USA, introduced the Datsun 240Z, a curvy coupe with a wedge profile. The car quickly took over the American market for popular-priced sports cars, a market which had once been dominated by British manufacturers. Triumph would build its last car, based by then on a Honda platform and mechanicals, in 1984.
*Footnote: The Cobra in the 2nd photo, CSX2287, is the prototype Daytona coupe being fabricated at Shelby American's Venice shop, which had previously been home of Reventlow Automobiles. It was the only Daytona to be built there; alloy bodies for the 5 cars which followed were built at Carrozzeria Gransport in Italy. Lance Reventlow's Scarab sports racers are reviewed in the posting called "Timing is Everything: Reventlow Scarab Saga" in the archives for June 2, 2017.
Photo credits:
Top: the author
2nd: carbuildindex.com
3rd: youtube.com
4th: carbuildindex.com
5th: hemmings.com
6th: thegentlemanracer.com
7th: Hino Motors on pinterest.com
8th: mycarquest.com
9th: Road & Track Magazine
10th: theroaringseason.com
11th: Car & Driver reprinted on pinterest.com
12th: centralcoastbritishcarclub.com
13th: farm5 on flicker.com
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