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Morgan / BRM Morgan / Repco Holden Sports

FEW W.A. built cars have had such long and complex careers. The Repco Holden Sports has been three different racing cars in at least six different colour schemes!

The Repco Holden Sports began life as a stock Morgan Plus 4, raced by David van Dal and supported by Bill Richards Motors, the W A Morgan distributor.

As a Morgan Plus 4, the car won the 1952 Northam Flying 50 with David van Dal behind the wheel. At a later hillclimb, the car was badly damaged, and Bill Richards, aided and abetted by David van Dal and John Cummins, stripped the car down and built an offset single seater on a tubular frame. This car, known as the BRM-Morgan ("BRM" = Bill Richards Motors; nothing to do with the British F1 team, but Bill definitely had his tongue in his cheek when he named the car), retained the Morgan's Vanguard engine, 4-speed tranmission and Morgan suspension. It emerged from the workshop painted red, but was soon changed to electric blue (which was in fact the colour of the original Morgan) and a spectacular set of chromed exhaust extractors added visual as well as aural oomph.

Very light and relatively powerful, the BRM-Morgan was almost as fast as the big boys' cars - Mick Geneve's Ballot Dodge, Syd Negus' Plymouth Spl, and Sid Taylor's TS Special, all of which had engines nearly twice the size. The Morgan-BRM was raced for a few short years by Van Dal, John Cummins and Merv Dudley, with Merv Dudley the usual driver.

Later, when Cummins returned to the East, David van Dal focussed on the Bugatti conversion, and Merv Dudley linking with Peter Bond to build the Bondley Spl, the BRM-Morgan underwent yet another transformation, back into a sports car. David van Dal, who had a lot to do with the design of the BRM-Morgan chassis, was happy to help out, and as a sports car it went on to an astoundingly successful career.

The alloy body was formed by Cliff Byfield for new owner Jack Ayres, and instead of the Vanguard-based Morgan engine, the new car, the Holden Sports, had a Holden grey motor. Initially it raced with a regular Holden head, but later, during 1960, it acquired a Repco cross-flow head from Terry LeMay and a slightly different name: Repco Holden Sports. After Lionel Beattie retired from racing it was bought by Rod Waller, who raced it for the next 5 years, with "David Rockford" (David Drew), Lionel Beattie, and (in the late 1960s), Bob Webb sharing driving duties with him in Six Hour Races. For its last Caversham Six Hour, the car was fitted with a 186 engine and disc front brakes which, Rod says, resulted in it going slower. In that form Rod Waller then sold it to Bob Webb, who raced it a couple times before moving to Queensland. Rod sold the Repco head to the NSW "Berco Holden" speedcar team, whose driver was Howard Revell.

Before he left WA, Bob Webb sold the sports car to an Italian who planned to fit an Alfa Romeo engine, but the new owner returned to Italy, and the car rotted in obscurity for many years, winding up more or less as scrap largely due to the tubular steel chassis rusting out.

While the Repco Holden was lost in limbo, Rod Waller conceived the idea of reconstructing itr, and enlisted Van Dal's help. David drew up a set of chassis plans. When Neil McCrudden bought the remains, Rod passed the drawings on to McCrudden who had the new chassis built. A new Repco-head grey motor also had to be built, and Neil McCrudden advertised for a Repco head. He got three responses, and by fluke one of the three was the car's original Repco head, which Rod Waller identified from a modification he had made.Today the Repco Holden Sports is racing again, in the Historic category.

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