- Thrice winner of the HSCC Autosport 3-hr race
- Winner of the HSCC Guards Trophy Championship and 2013 Spa Summer Classic etc
- Prepared by Ian Jones of Racing Fabrications and in race ready order
- History researched by Allen Brown of OldRacingCars.com and outlined in an accompanying dossier
- Lester Owen engine currently fitted. Spares include bodywork, long-range fuel tanks, wheels and gear ratios etc.
Further Info:
David Good had an impressive racing career. He annexed the 1961 British Hillclimb Championship driving a Cooper JAP 1100 before moving to seemingly ever more potent machinery, including a Group 7 Lola T70, F5000 McLaren M10B, F1 four-wheel-drive BRM P67 and DFV-powered Lyncar. These cars would have tested the resolve of even the most talented able-bodied racer, let alone one such as Good, who was born minus right forearm and hand, and therefore forced to change gear with his left hand while steering with his stump. This extraordinary driver was the first owner of Chevron B8 Chassis No.DBE38 and purchased the bright Yellow racer part way through the 1968 season to replace an older version of the same marque. By removing the road-going equipment that defined it as a GT car he was, at some venues, able to enter it as a sports racing car and therefore be eligible for championship points. At Great Auclum near Reading for example, he finished an astonishing 3rd overall among the single-seaters. At Loton Park he was only beaten by Peter Lawson in Good's old four-wheel-drive BRM.
Presumably impressed, former hillclimb champion Lawson purchased the Chevron in order to go circuit racing in 1969. He had his first win at Rufforth in Yorkshire on the Easter Saturday and that was followed by several more in club events, but it's fair to say he was not as assured at going round in circles as up hills, and by 1970 the Chevron had passed to another renowned hillclimb exponent, Reg Phillips, the chairman of James Fairley Steels. Despite not treating his hillclimbing too seriously by this stage, the 55-year-old Phillips still finished third in that year's Shell Leaders Championship. For 1971 he converted it to sports racer specification courtesy of an open body produced by GP Metalcraft, and with it in this guise he notched up some impressive results against far more potent machinery. Nevertheless, before the end of the season, the Chevron seems to have passed briefly through the hands of former Works Cooper driver and keen hillclimber Mike MacDowel (though he apparently has no memory of this!) before becoming the property of Barry Greenaway of Hayes, Middlesex.
It was in 1972, while Greenaway and Dave Wellings were giving the car a shakedown in a Snetterton event, that Wellings had a hefty shunt, finally landing upside down after two or three (he was apparently unsure exactly how many!) somersaults. It transpired the oil tank pressure relief valve had become blocked, causing the reservoir to burst and spray hot lubricant over the front tyres and brakes. The damaged Chevron then passed via Roger Andreason (later the MD of Chevron Cars) to Peter Hemming, who subsequently became the manager of actor Paul Newman's Can-Am racing team. Hemming quickly discovered the crumpled alloy body was beyond reasonable repair and instead converted the Chevron to accept a Scottish-built Gropa one. This open design had been created to allow the B8s to run in Group 6 events, but required strengthening of the sills in order to retain the right level of stiffness. Hemming discovered this the hard way and reported he could 'actually lift wheels while cornering'. In c.1974 he therefore sold the Gropa to an Italian in exchange for a Lancia Fulvia and a bag of Lira. Precisely which Italian is not now 100 percent clear, but it's thought to have been Enrico Grimaldi di Nixima. Whatever, the car, by now Dark Green in colour, then became the property of Italian collector Flavio Tullio.
According to Flavio's son, Matteo, it was at this point the Gropa body and the chassis (ie DBE38) were separated, with the latter being sold to a currently unknown person in England and the former hung on Matteo's wall, where it reputedly remains to this day. The next appearance of #DBE38 was during 1982 when it was advertised for sale in Autosport magazine by Richard Thwaites of Huddersfield. As well as describing the car as a 'Chevron B8' his listing made mention of it being 'ex-Gropa but with complete new B8 bodywork' which tallies with Matteo Tullio's account. Thereafter, it was sold by David Parkinson of Otley, Yorks, to Gary Dunkerley of South Africa in the April of 1984. The car was reportedly described on the related invoice as 'CH/DBE 38' and the major items of hardware were accompanied by BMW engine No.1694748 and Hewland FT200 gearbox No.779. Dunkerley apparently recalls the car arriving in many pieces and devoid of all plumbing or electrics. Nevertheless he had it trackworthy by the second half of 1984 and continued to race it until early 1992, during which period he competed at all the major circuits in South Africa as well as in the street races organised by David Piper in 1988. He was successful too, winning the 1986 HRCR club championship. Once he'd ceased competing with it, Dunkerley stored the car until selling it to Simon Leighton of Staines Middlesex in March 2004.
Having repatriated the Chevron, Leighton entrusted it to Ian Jones' Racing Fabrications business, where it was fully restored in Yellow, as raced by David Good all those years before. He then campaigned the car from 2006 to 2009. It was at this point that it was acquired by the vendor, Nick Fleming, who first drove it in the Gold Cup meeting at Oulton Park. He has subsequently won the HSCC Autosport 3-Hour race an unprecedented three times with the B8, as well as the HSCC Guards Trophy Championship and several individual events of note - not least the Spa Summer Classic of July 2013, at which it topped a podium of B8s and finished 2mins 20secs ahead of its nearest rival. Meticulously prepared for each event by Jones, this car has been incredibly well looked after and is very well known around the historic paddock. It is still fitted with its Spa-winning Lester Owen engine, and is on-the-button and ready to race. DBE38 comes complete with long range fuel tanks that can be dropped in with minimal work, the original Gulf-liveried South African bodywork, and a number of other spares such as wheels gear ratios etc.
In a 'Statement of Authenticity', Allen Brown, to whom we are grateful for the foregoing facts and figures, summarises the car's late '70s period as follows: "Although the Italian history is still incomplete, the link of the Gropa bodywork connects Hemming through to Flavio Tullio, and the testimony from Matteo Tullio that the car was sold back to England definitely places it back in the UK in the early 1980s. Although the connection from the Tullios is not yet proven, it is now possible to be very confident that this car is Chevron Chassis No.DBE38."
Just 44 examples of the iconic Chevron B8 were made. Much of the racing fraternity regards the model as one of the best-looking sports racers ever produced. It has also proved to be one of the most successful, with its long career continuing unabated courtesy of today's flourishing historic racing scene. Now offered in pristine order and resplendent in its original colour, there is no obvious reason why DBE38 can't continue on its winning way for many years to come. It therefore provides a rare opportunity for any budding or established sports racing car driver to add to the already extraordinary story of Chevron - the marque created by the late, multi-talented Derek Bennett and currently celebrating its 50th anniversary.
![Eadgar silver penny of the Reform Coinage [973-975], Spink 1141, obverse reads:- +EADGAR REX ANGLORX, reverse reads:- +LEOFRI](https://cdn.globalauctionplatform.com/23dd7232-3289-47f1-8a86-a4b901035020/c391559c-a247-48ad-8ba4-ea563b27d28e/468x382.jpg)
