Forgotten Classics: Designed by John Tojeiro

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The car pictured above may look vaguely familiar to a vintage road racing fan…or a road racing fan of a certain vintage.  The low nose, covered headlights, and elliptical air intake remind you of a D-Type Jaguar, don't they?  The high, rounded tail reminds you of the Lotus Eleven. The knock-off, slotted disc wheels look British, but the body is painted in Scottish racing colors.  When you find out that it's really a Tojeiro, you wonder if that's some kind of etceterini...

But the '58 Tojeiro Jaguar at the top, like the first Tojeiro ever (powered by MG, above) was built in the Mother Country.  John Tojeiro was born in Portugal of Portuguese and English parents in 1923, and moved to England soon after.  Serving as an engineer in the Fleet Air Arm during World War 2, he began to engineer special chassis for racers not long afterwards, beginning with an MG-based car.  Soon there would be a Bristol-engined car for car dealer Cliff Davis as well...

The Bristol-engined special is #76 above; the MG is #62.  They both share an alloy-paneled body design clearly based upon the Ferrari 166 Barchetta by Superleggera Touring.  The use of cast alloy wheels is predictive.  The cars also share a simple tube chassis with independent suspension by transverse leaft springs, front and rear...

When management at AC Cars saw Tojeiro's chassis, they thought it might form the basis for a modern follow-up to their prewar Ace* using their overhead cam, long-stroke 2 liter six. They showed a prototype at the London Motor Show in 1953, and put the car into production in 1954, with body refinements by stylist Alan Turner including raised headlights over a now-famous "mustache" grille, a slightly taller deck and rear fenders, and most important, the option of the more powerful Bristol six in 1956.  The result was among the most graceful production cars of the era, and possibly ever...

The car soon became a favorite with weekend racers in England and in the US... 

And in 1962, when American Carroll Shelby replaced the Bristol and AC engines with a Ford V8 to make the first Cobra*, the car retained its Tojeiro chassis design, with 4 wheel independent suspension by transverse leaf springs, but now with disc brakes on all 4 wheels. The first Cobra completed by Shelby is shown below...

After licensing his original design to AC Cars, Tojeiro continued to refine it, supplying privateers with cars focused on club racing, like the 1954 Tojeiro Bristol below.  Built on a lightweight tubular chassis with De Dion rear suspension, it sits on an 87 inch wheelbase, 3 inches shorter than Tojeiro's Ace design.   The tall, long-stroke Bristol six hides under the hood blister, well back in the chassis.

In search of more power and lower profiles, Tojeiro eventually adopted Jaguar engines, and designed a space-frame chassis to handle the greater power. The alloy-bodied example below was built in 1957.  Note that it has a lower tail, wire wheels, and a more conventional profile than the blue 1958 car in the top photo.  By this time other specialists like HWM* and Lister had adopted Jaguar power, and the race was on to extract maximum advantage from aerodynamics, weight reductions...

…and adoption of the dry-sump D-Type engine with its wide-angle head, which Jaguar sold to outside specialists after closing down its factory-sponsored racing program in 1957.  The car below was built a year later.

Meanwhile, AC Cars had called on Tojeiro to design a more focused road racer than their production Ace Bristol, and the result was the LM 5000 which took 8th place at Le Mans in 1958, and competed that fall at Goodwood.  While the tall Bristol 100 / D2 engine forced body designer Cavendish Morton and builder Maurice Gomm to deploy a hood blister, the low nose, covered headlights and high tail recall contemporary designs like the Lotus 11.

In the same year, Maurice Gomm produced the even sleeker alloy body for the Tojeiro Climax Mk. 2 below.  The 1,100 cc Mark 2 featured a new lightweight tubular chassis and a leaned-over Climax FWA engine to create the low-profile nose and uninterrupted hood line.  

Despite real success on the track (one car scored 4 wins and 5 podiums in 1959), the Tojeiro Mk. 2 only sold in 4 copies, far fewer than the competition from Lotus, Lola and Elva.  Too bad, as it may be one of the most elegant front-engined racers ever...

Like the 1958 car in the top photo, the 1959 Jaguar E-E was commissioned by the Scottish Racing Team, Ecurie Ecosse.  It also features a De Dion rear axle, and while a hood blister was not required for the original 3 liter "short block" engine based upon the Jaguar 2.4, that engine failed in competition, and the hood bulge was added to accommodate a tall-block based on the 3.8 liter unit, with displacement reduced to 3 liters to meet the 1959 rules.  Note the low wheel arches, also a feature of the Tojeiro Mk. 2, Lotus 15 & 17, and of the last Lister Jags. 

With the Climax Mk II and the '59 Ecurie Ecosse Jag, Tojeiro had perhaps taken the front-engined format to its lowest-profile conclusion. After Formula Junior, another attempt at low-cost racing for Everyman, began to enjoy popularity in the early 60s, Tojeiro produced a mid-engined Formula Junior chassis in the Cooper and Lotus mold, along with some Formula 2 chassis...

The Formula 2 chassis was the basis for a mid-engined GT racer that appeared about a year before the better-known Lola GT* and 2 years before the wildly famous Ford GT40. Initially Tojeiro built 2 cars for Ecurie Ecosse with Climax 2.5 liter fours and the same transmissions used in the Cooper Monaco.  Gearbox and engine woes prevented success at the '62 Le Mans and Monza, and in the search for durability, the Climax fours were switched for the 3.5 liter aluminum Buick V8s, originally with modified Corvair transmissions.  Eventually Jackie Stewart won a race at Charterhall in 1963 with a Tojeiro Buick, and one of the cars was re-engined with a Ford V8.  One coupe was converted to a better-looking roadster, but after a disastrous crash it's been returned to coupe form, and has hit the show circuit with its sister coupe.  Along with the single seaters and all the postwar AC 2-seaters from Ace through 289 Cobra, they are a testament to the resourcefulness and persistence of John Tojeiro.

*Footnote:  We told the history of Tojeiro's design for the postwar AC Ace in "Happy Accidents with Bristol Power", the first of a 4-part series on AC Cars, posted Dec. 24, 2016.  We visited the AC Cobras in "Roadside Attraction—Shelby American Collection Part 1: AC and Cobra", on Dec. 28, 2017.  HWM cars received a retrospective in "Forgotten Classic—HWM: Racing into Obscurity" from Nov. 23, 2020.  And we profiled the Lola GT in "1st Impressions at the Monterey Historics: Whatever Lola Wants" on Aug. 28, 2018.

Photo Credits:
Top:  news.cision.com

2nd:  Bonhams

3rd:  laluneta.com.ar

4th:  aceac.weebly.com

5th thru 7th:  the author

8th: wall.alphacoders.com

9th:  flickr.com

10th & 11th: Wikimedia 

12th:  autopuzzles.com

13th & 14th:  Wikimedia

15th:  DK Engineering (dkeng.co.uk)

16th:  flickr.com

17th:  twitter.com