Forgotten Classic Revival Follies Part 3: Frazer Nash, the 3rd Time Around

You probably remember the chain-drive Frazer Nash*, a lightweight, spindly little thing built seemingly as a caricature of British Motoring between 1922 and 1939.  If you don't remember It, it cannot be because it wasn't memorable.  With an almost complete absence of anything  to enhance creature comforts, the FN seemed stripped down to performance essentials, though it lacked a couple features that might've enhanced performance too…like a gearbox or a differential. No surprise, then, that the hardy band of enthusiasts who raced and hillclimbed these cars was known as the Chain Gang.  And no surprise, either, that the make's popularity  waned as other car builders like Jaguar began to offer inducements like interior-mounted shifters and emergency brakes, windshield wipers and even heaters to attract customers, so that only one chain-drive 'Nash was built in 1939...

War in that year interrupted a program started five years earlier by the firm's owners, the Aldingtons, to import BMWs outfitted with Frazer Nash badges, but in 1948 they displayed 3 new High Speed models at the Earls Court Motor Show. These cars probably look pretty stripped-down to modern eyes, but compared to the pre-war FN they were models of refinement, with interior levers for their smooth-shifting four speed gearboxes (no more bicycle chains and sprockets) and differentials betwixt the driven rear wheels so they wouldn't skip around tight turns.  Reaffirming the late pre-war connection to BMW, Frazer Nash powered the cars with 2 liter inline sixes from Bristol Aeroplane Company. These were actually the BMW 328 design that antedated return of global war by a few years, and drawings and rights to the design were transferred to Bristol under a war reparations agreement. After a High Speed Frazer Nash finished 3rd at the 1949 Le Mans 24 Hours, the company renamed the car the Le Mans Replica.  Later successes for the cycle-fendered road racers included winning the Targa Florio in 1951, and the Sebring 12 Hours in 1952. Franco Cortese became the Sports Car Champion of Italy in a Frazer Nash by adding victories at Enna and a 2 liter class win in Sicily to his Targa Florio win, in a field populated with more powerful Ferraris and Maseratis. This Le Mans Replica below showed up at the Steamboat Springs Vintage Races in the mid-Eighties...

Production was kept low by hand-fabrication methods and resulting high prices.  Eventually, competitveness on the track suffered as the Bristol engine became obsolete; it was over 20 years old when the last Frazer Nashes were built at the Isleworth shop in 1957.  Those cars were powered by the new BMW V8s, but high prices meant only 2 sales, and Frazer Nash became the Porsche distributor for the British Isles, which turned out to be a better business proposition.  Over a dozen years after production stopped, specialist restorers Crosswaite and Gardiner built half a dozen replicas of the Le Mans Replica with Bristol engines, based upon the chassis design of a 1953 Le Mans Replica rebuilt in their shop. These "new" Frazer Nashes are called Le Mans Replica Replicas.  You cannot make this stuff up...

You can, however, make up any car you like if you buy the rights to a famous (or almost famous) old name like Frazer Nash.  And as the Branding Era collided with enthusiasm for hybrid and electric cars, that's what happened to Frazer Nash.  In 2009 Frazer-Nash Research,  by this time a hyphenated part of the mysterious Kamkorp Group, announced the Frazer-Nash Namir (Arabic meaning leopard), a hybrid powered by an 814cc Wankel rotary gasoline engine charging an electric motor at each wheel.  The battery pack was mid-mounted and extensive use of carbon fiber kept weight down.  If the unusual means of transmitting power was perhaps in the spirit of the original chain-drive Frazer Nash, the styling by Italdesign Giugiaro was like something out of Star Wars rather than the steampunk world of Jules Verne.  Italdesign ditched rear the rear window in favor of rear-vision cameras and some feral-looking stripes. The visual aggression continued at the front, where the sharp V-shaped windscreen wrapped into glazing on the obligatory supercar scissor doors.

The design progressed well beyond the zoomy but static mock-up phase that stalled many classic revival attempts, and one prototype was studied in Britain's MIRA wind tunnel, as well as demonstrated at that year's Goodwood Festival of Speed. For a car with 362 hp, performance was more than perky, with 0 to 60 in 3.5 seconds and a top speed of 187 mph.

Two prototypes were built, and the decision to employ a top-tier design and engineering firm, along with producing a unique hybrid power system, resulted in high development costs.  Frazer-Nash Research pursued other projects involving hybrid power, and Kamkorp later attempted a revival of the Bristol make, but with suppliers and consultants to pay, and with no products on the market to bring in cash, money ran short of dreams, and British courts ordered the liquidation of Frazer-Nash Research in late 2018.  Kamkorp Group followed it into liquidation in 2020.  

*Footnote:  For a brief history of the pre-war chain-drive Frazer Nash, please see the Archives  for "Not Your Grandpa's Nash", from January 27, 2017. For more on postwar Frazer Nash cars, see "Frazer Nash Part 2: When a Replica is Not a Replica", posted February 3, 2017.  For a look at other vintage racers that showed up in Steamboat Springs, see "Lost Roadside Attraction: Vintage Racing in Steamboat Springs", posted January 31, 2019.

Photo credits:
Top:  Linda La Fond
2nd & 3rd:  the author
4th & 5th: Italdesign Giugiaro

6th & Bottom:  Wikimedia

7th:  youtube.com