Description
•Painstakingly built as a replica of the AFP Fane works car
•Highly developed 1500cc Meadows engine producing 203bhp
•Maserati-style, Roots-type supercharger
•Front-running car eligible for VSCC and Goodwood meetings
The Frazer Nash marque built a name for itself during the 1920s and 1930s with a series of distinctive cars that performed well in competition, and in more recent years they have been a mainstay of Vintage Sports-Car Club events.
With their distinctive chain-drive transmission, these Frazer Nashes have earned a cult following, and the single-seater being offered for sale here was a long-term labour of love for two marque enthusiasts.
Frazer Nash built only a handful of single-seaters in period. This is a faithful replica of the first of them – a car that was raced by AFP Fane for the works team through 1936. The wealthy, debonair Fane was synonymous with the marque and his success at the wheel of various Nashes made him the perfect ambassador.
During the 1960s, aircraft engineer Barry Peerless – who restored vintage cars in his spare time – started gathering the parts that would enable him to build a replica of the Fane single-seater. He was helped by another marque enthusiast, Mike Gibbs, to whom he offered the unfinished project in the early 1970s.
When Gibbs hesitated due to work commitments, it was sold instead to Cameron Millar – well known for his Maserati 250F replicas. Only a few years later was it finally acquired by Gibbs, who duly commissioned Barry Peerless to complete the project. The work benefitted from the input of Harry Olrog, a long-time employee of Frazer Nash who had been closely involved with the works single-seaters in period.
The finished car was due to make its first appearance at a VSCC Silverstone meeting in 1986, with Peerless sharing driving duties with Frazer Nash devotee and famed Motor Sportcorrespondent Denis Jenkinson. Frustratingly, teething trouble led to them non-starting, but the car has since enjoyed a long and successful competition career.
From 2006 onwards, it entered a new stage of its development. The original cable-operated brakes, for example, were replaced with hydraulically operated, finned magnesium drumsthat were fabricated using Maserati patterns.
The 1500cc Meadows engine initially used a Cozette supercharger and gave just over 150bhp. This was subsequently replaced with a Roots-type Maserati-style ‘blower’ that was built by John Bibby. Along with a compression ratio of 7. 5:1, it helped boost power to 203bhp when running on methanol.
A new engine block was made in 2011-12 and was mated to a two-port Meadows 4ED cylinder head. The crankshaft, con-rods and pistons are all made to a modern design and the powerful four-cylinder unit features state-of-the-art cylinder head sealing.
Mike Gibbs designed a compact, bolt-on bellhousing, and an AP twin-plate racing clutch was fitted. A GKN propshaft runs to a bevel box with Duplex chains. The bevel box looks standard but was made using a special military-grade alloy of twice the normal strength.
Suspension is by original ‘Woodhead’ quarter-elliptic leaf springs all round – the fronts beingmounted on outriggers, as per the original cars. The front tubular radius arms are to exact works spec, as are the rear Dural radius arms, and Andre Hartford friction dampers have been fitted. The steering is via an original Adwest worm-and-peg system, while the removable steering wheel features a locking-pin mechanism that was made using an original drawing from a 1930s Auto Union Grand Prix car.
The bodywork was hand-formed in aluminium to be a faithful replica of the Fane car, and the wheelbase, track, wheels and tyres are also a perfect match for that famous single-seater. The whole thing weighs only 650kg with 30 litres of fuel on board, and when it was tested by Mark Dixon for an article in Octane magazine, he wrote that it ‘takes off like a ground-launched missile’.
The Frazer Nash has not only been raced regularly over the past 10-15 years, it has proved itself to be both quick and reliable thanks to the care and attention that’s been lavished upon it. Superbly engineered throughout, it is more than a match for contemporary voiturette racers from the likes of ERA and Maserati, and has twice finished second at the Goodwood Members’ Meeting.
It has also raced at the Goodwood Revival and is eligible for VSCC events. Now being offered for sale for the first time since it was completed in the mid-1980s, it is a beautiful, unique and extremely competitive choice of pre-war racing car.
