Forgotten Classic: Elva GT160----She Goes with BMW Power

Wandering through the pits at the Monterey Historic Races at Laguna Seca, we came across this intriguing sports racer from the Sixties, one of the mid-engined successors to the series of lightweight club racers built by Elva Cars, the firm that Englishman Frank Nichols had started in 1955.  Nichols derived the name Elva from the French "elle va", which means "she goes"...

It turned out to be a Mk. 7S from 1964, powered by a mid-mounted dry-sump version of the single overhead cam BMW inline 4 in 2 liter form, making around 185 hp. The design features a tightly contoured fiberglass body over a tubular space frame chassis with an aluminum floor pan. Unlike the drum-braked Mark 6, the first low-profile mid-engined Elva, the Mark 7 featured disc brakes behind its 13 inch cast magnesium wheels, which allowed a lower profile than the 15 inch wheels on the Mark 6.  When I first saw the car I assumed it had radiators mounted at the sides behind the cockpit, like the later Elva GT160, but I was wrong.  The twin radiators hide behind the tiny front air intakes...

Elva's Mark 7 and 7S were among the most successful of Elva's road racers, competing against the Lotus 23, and sometimes powered by the 1.6 liter Lotus Ford twin-cam fours and also by the 1.7 liter air-cooled Porsche* 4-cam; Porsche agreed to supply engines for Elva's US road racing effort as they readied their own 904 series for racing.

The Mk. 7, 7S & 8 were powered more famously*, though, by the BMW four than by Porsche. That combination seemed to hit the sweet spot for Frank Nichols and Chicago distributor Carl Haas, and it was offered again on the Mark 8, with a slightly longer wheelbase and more user-friendly weight distribution. Just under six dozen examples of the Mark 7 & 7S were completed in 1963 to '65. The combination of that chassis with the BMW engine prompted Frank Nichols and his team to plan a dual-purpose GT car based on the race car chassis, one that would offer weekend racers a car that could be used for touring as well.  In order to arrive at an eye-catching concept for the car shows, they turned to British body designer Trevor Fiore*, who worked in Italy with the small coachbuilding house Fissore...

Fiore had changed his name from Frost because he thought an Italian-sounding name might prompt one of the country's carrozzeria to take a chance on hiring him; this worked. Fiore accentuated the low-slung chassis by sketching a fastback coupe with glassy greenhouse and low window sills accented by a horizontal crease starting at the chiseled snout that bumped up over the front and rear wheels before wrapping around the rear deck. Fiore and chassis designer Keith Marsden kept the Mark 7's twin radiators, but mounted them ahead of the rear wheels, and added the refinement of allowing them to pivot outward for maximum cooling. Wheelbase was increased by 3" over the Mark 7, to 93".  Weight was under 1,300 lb.

The nose shows how Fiore retained the twin air intakes which were a trademark of mid-engined Elvas, but substituted retractable headlights for the plastic bubbles of the open racers; the shot below shows the headlights in the open position.  Overall, the GT160, as it was called, seemed a clever way to translate the radical new proportions of mid-engined racers to the form of road-going GT cars eligible for weekend club racing as well as long-distance endurance racing.  It was also a possible answer to the question of Next Car for Swinging Sixties Londoners bored with their Lotus Elans and E-Type Jags...

The plan at Elva Cars was to qualify the GT160 as a production car, and that meant making a bunch.  Starting in 1964, three prototypes were built at Fissore's workshops near Turin.  The car stunned onlookers at that year's Turin show, and customers began to queue up...

But the cost of the completed cars with Italian bodywork was around twice what Elva had planned for their market launch. Then Trojan Limited, a truck manufacturer, acquired Elva Cars, and Frank Nichols drifted away. Two cars were completed with their Nerus BMW dry-sump engines, and later a third car was finished with a Buick aluminum V8.  But by the end of 1964 Trojan Ltd. / Elva Cars announced that the GT160 program was cancelled, citing new racing regulations relating to ground clearance requirements that would require expensive redesign. Two of the cars went racing anyway, while Elva's new owners moved away from the idea of a production GT, staying with racing car design for a new client named Bruce McLaren. This eventually led to a a move away from the Elva name, and to the creation of a series of fierce, focused V8-powered McLartens for the Can Am Series in North America.  But that's a story for another day.

*Errata + Misc. Notes:  The first version of this post indicated there were more BMW-powered Elvas than Porsche-powered ones; that's only true if you count BMW-powered Mark 8 cars.  The Porsche program ended before the Mark 8, and there were 19 Porsche-engined Mark 7s, 15 BMW-powered Mark 7S cars, with 29 units of Mark 7 built, and 42 of the improved 7S.  Other engines tried in the Mark 7 & 7S included the 1.6 liter twin cam Lotus Ford, 1.3 and 1.5 liter Alfa Romeo, and at least one OSCA. Also we mentioned alloy bodywork; that only happened on the GT160; the Mark 7, 7S and 8 featured fiberglass shells and aluminum floor pans.

*Footnote:   More details on the Porsche-powered Elva Mk. VII can be found in "Porsches by Another Name, More and / or Less" in our post archive for March 25, 2017. Other designs by Trevor Fiore show up in "Rootes in Foreign Soil", posted on March 31, 2018. Another expatriate car designer in Italy, Tom Tjaarda, was the subject of a career review in "Architect-Designed Cars Part 4: Tom Tjaarda—Life Before and After the Pantera", posted on April 30, 2020.

Color Photo Credits:  
Elva-BMW Mk. 7S front views:  the author

Elva-Porsche Mk 7 rear view:  Ian Avery-DeWitt

Elva GT160 racer #42:  elva-cars.com

Monochrome Photo Credits:  
Elva GT160 design sketch:  Trevor Fiore
Elva GT160, three exterior views:  Elva Cars