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Late in the
'68 Caversham season Mitchell split with his wife, who owned the Mk 3A Sprite
he was racing. He needed a new car, so John Hagarty built up the famous Mk1
Sprite (which was later to become the fastest Sprite racing in Australia)
in the layoff between closure of the Caversham and the inaugural Wanneroo
season. He hand-made aluminium doors for the car and removed the floor replacing
it with lighter material. The suspension and subframe assemblies were reworked,
and a hot 1100cc engine was built. The car's success was due not only to Gordon's
enormous driving ability but also to John Hagarty's ingenuity and preparation.
John Hagarty was now working at Terry LeMay's Fitzgerald Street Shell Garage
where he did much of the work preparing the Shell LeMay Minis, Peter Brigg's
ex Beechey Monaro and Chris Royston's Lotus 47. He also built and prepared
a Sprite Mk2 for Brian Cole (later campaigned by Rob Elliott) and prepared
Rick Lisle's Mini. He continued to prepare this car after David Hipperson
bought it in 1972. He also worked on the Minis of Trevor Wright, Doug Mould
and Ross Bennett, as well as doing work on Bill Downey's Lotus, Rob Housego's
Brabham, Bob Creasey's Fielding, the Toranas of Neville Grigsby and Wayne
Negus, and Bob Corbett's Triumph TR5.
By 1972 he was working for John Harris in Morley, where much of the preparation
on the racing Minis was happening. Here he raced with Bill Russell in the
light blue Datsun SR311A. He was very competitive in the car at club meetings
in early 1972 leading up to his drive with Bill in the 1972 Six-Hour Race.
John and and Bill finished 7th in the race, only a couple of laps down on
the Kostera Matich, in what was basically a fairly standard car that was driven
to the track. John later set a Under-2000cc closed sports car lap record which
was to stand for several years afterwards.
In 1973 he began to design and build the Haggis clubman racing cars. ("Haggis"
was Hagarty's nickname, and was actually first used by Neville Grigsby and
later applied to all of them.) Early interest in the cars meant that he ought
to be able to make enough profit to build one for himself and realise his
dream of racing his own car. The first Haggis hit the track for private practice
in late 1973.
"I remember the car (that of Neville Grigsby) doing its first laps without mudguards and looking very sporty indeed," says John's son Rob Hagarty.
In 1974, Grigsby and Rob Elliot
raced the cars with Grigsby being the most successful, taking out the Red
Dragon Trophy and Clubman pointscore in that season. As other cars were completed
they took to the track also, including cars for Lorraine Plues Foster, Trevor
Wright and Kerry Malone. John Hagarty also drove some races during 1974 in
John Hurney's Welsor. Unfortunately in one race the radiator bracket broke
and he skidded off on and into the dirt at the entry to what was then BP corner.
By now he was also doing work on Ian Diffen's V8 Charger Sports Sedan, John
Hurney's Welsor and Glen Nicol's Cortina V8. He also did work for Mike George
who drove his Gard 27B Formula Junior car to a new lap record for his class,
the first lap under 63 seconds for the category. However his talents were
always in the preparing of cars, not as a businessman and he never realised
his ambition of owning his own Haggis Clubman.
"To this day none of the cars
has been in the ownership of a Hagarty, which is quite upsetting," his
son Rob Hagarty says.