Forgotten Classic Revival Follies Part 1: The Connaught V10 Type D Saga

We've seen so many examples of the "revive a classic marque" program since the 1990s that it seems there must be a script somewhere.  An investor or investors with some money (usually not enough) buys the rights to the name of an expired make, sometimes famous (Bugatti) but usually more obscure (OSCA) or utterly forgotten (A.T.S.*).  Then there's a  press release about the revival of past glories, and after awhile a prototype or concept car appears to wow crowds at the shows. Sometimes the prototype remains a lonesome one-off (the lovely OSCA Dromos*), and sometimes manufacture of a new car really begins, but the operation goes bust (the first Bugatti revival, in the 90s).  Fasten your seatbelts for yet another episode showing how car building greases the tracks on the way to bankruptcy...

The 2004 Connaught revival might have ended differently if the revivalists had paid more attention to Connaught's history.  Yes, the company founded by Rodney Clarke and Mike Oliver in the late 40s went bankrupt in 1957, but one reason it had lasted nearly a decade was that Clarke and Oliver had mastered the art of using off-the-shelf components (engines, transmissions) while advancing techniques of aerodynamics (as in this '55 B3 Streamliner GP car) and introducing innovations like disc brakes to GP racing.

That "off-the-shelf" aspect is kind of important if you're operating out of a minor league garage and don't have a bundle to spend on machine tools.  Even the Connaught GP* racer made do with an off-the-shelf Alta twin-cam racing engine, which (along with the talent of novice driver Tony Brooks and those disc brakes) allowed the Type B to be the first British car to win a GP in decades, breaking the jinx* in 1955.  An open-wheeled  Type B like that Syracuse GP car is shown below...

Connaught sports cars like the 1954 AL SR below used the Lea Francis production car engine, which was available off the shelf until the company stopped production in 1954.  Note that even the sports cars had tight, economical and disciplined shapes, with no unnecessary details.  Really do keep that picture in mind, because in the early 21st century when a new team of Connaught revivalists bought the name, great things were expected  as they announced plans for a new hybrid car that would cater to the high performance market while offering low fuel consumption and emissions.  For context, the Toyota Prius Series 2 had appeared a year before, in 2003, after a 6-year run of the first model.  Hybrids were in the news.  There was a bit of puzzlement when Connaught Engineering announced it would feature a 2 liter narrow angle V10 engine, but still, there was hope of something lightweight, visually simple and maybe a little bit Lotusey...

The prototype of the Connaught Type D V10 hybrid that appeared in 2004 is shown below. "Wait a minute," you're probably thinking, "didn't you get the wrong photo here?  That looks like a customized Toyota Celica from an old SEMA show. You know, the one where they were trying to make it look like a late-60s Camaro."  Nope, this is it.  And so far as we know, the hybrid V10 powertrain was never worked out,  though the V10 engine was run on a test stand, and no press test drives of the hybrid or of a promised but apparently unbuilt supercharged non-hybrid GT were ever recorded. From a mechanical design standpoint, it may have been a costly mistake to design a new V10 to take on the prosaic role of being the internal combustion partner in a gas / electric duo. Even in the much more expensive (sticker price, not tooling cost) Fisker Karma that surfaced (briefly) 7 years later, that role was played by an off-the-shelf GM inline four.  

In visual design terms, the Connaught team got into trouble right away, with the car's blunt nose and chunky overall form, a form interrupted by annoying details like the tiny vents behind the angry-looking headlights and the contrasting color of the lower body cladding, where the discontinuity in the shape only serves to emphasize something most designers would try to hide: the door shut line. Details are not used to reinforce the overall form, and so the form has little continuity within itself, and none at all with the simple, curvaceous, aerodynamic forms of Connaught's Fifties racers. Remember, these guys were trying to revive a car brand here...

Is there a lesson in this tale of woe?  Well, one lesson might be that engineers sketching out concepts for a new car should be expected to know something about tooling and manufacturing costs. Another might be that it's a good idea to get industrial designers, rather than those same engineers, to design the body...

*Footnote:

The story of how the Connaught came to be, and of how it became the first British car to win a Grand Prix race after World War II, is told in "Celtic Rainmaker: Connaught Ended  the Longest Drought in Grand Prix Racing", in our archives for July 24, 2016. The Subaru-powered OSCA Dromos is detailed in "The Etceterini Files Part 16—OSCA Dromos and Jiotto Caspita: Subaru's Distant Cousins", posted October 28, 2018, while the A.T.S. revival is reviewed in "Forgotten Classic Revival Show: ATS 2500GT and GTS", from Nov. 11, 2018.

Photo credits:
Top & 2nd:  Auto Classics on youtube.com

3rd & 5th:  wikimedia
4th:  planetcarsz.com
Bottom:  Connaught Engineering