Beschreibung
Very reluctantly for sale is a British racing icon, the legendary 'Escort Martin V8' originally built by Chris Lawrence of Lawrence Tune. This car was originally owned by the Denby Brother's who were steering wheel manufacturers during the 1960's and indeed the car still has its original Denby steering wheel. The brother's initially raced the Escort with ford mechanicals, but with a raging desire for more power they approached Chris Lawrence who persuaded them to have a Martin V8 racing engine fitted. These Martin engines were originally designed in the mid sixties by Ted Martin specifically for Formula 1 racing cars, but were overshadowed by the illustrious Cosworth 'DFV' engine which was developed around the same time. The Martin engines were then used in various cars including this Escort, Morgan's, Saunderson's and a car called a Monica which was built by Lawrence Tune for a French entrepreneur and named after his wife.
At some point the Escort changed hands and Lawrence Tune acquired the car and it was raced competitively by their employee Robin Gray. During the early seventies the car gained quite a reputation in the racing world and indeed, Dave Brodie wrote about the Escort in his Autobiography and articles appeared in Motor and the September 1970 edition of 'Cars and Car Car Conversions' describing it as 'The most Powerful Escort in the World'.
The car has not raced for many years. When I bought it, it was a rolling shell missing the engine and gearbox, but had the original back axle incorporating the Hewland LSD. My intention was to track down a Martin engine and ZF gearbox and return the Escort to its original racing spec, but this search for many years proved fruitless, then one day I had a call from a guy called Alan Rennie who was interested in buying the car. The sale didn't happen, but Alan turned out to be a guru on Martin V8 engines and offered to build me a new engine and remarkably he had in his possession the original 5 speed ZF gearbox which had originally been in the Escort. A deal was struck and the gearbox purchased and engine built to a capacity of 3. 4 litres. New down draft Webber carburettors have been fitted and the engine and gearbox are in the car but not yet plumbed in - electrics, dry sump and cooling system yet to be fitted. Manifolds and exhaust system will also need to be made up for the car.
The body is generally sound and original, but will need repairs to the floor pans and lower rear wings. The front end is a single piece fibreglass forward hinging panel which was fitted towards the end of the cars race life.
The car is reluctantly for sale and there is huge potential for someone to bring this racing icon back to the track where it belongs.
