We were saddened to hear that tuning legend Dave Brodie has passed away recently. We interviewed him in issue 258, which we have reproduced below in full.
Laughter subsides only long enough for him to say in all seriousness: ‘There is nothing you can write that will offend me. Fill your boots.’ Dave Brodie is on a roll, firing out anecdotes like buckshot. A renowned driver coach has just been skewered verbally: ‘He’s all ego and has the mechanical sympathy of an air raid.’ Prior to that was a yarn about a racer who turned to nefarious means to pay for drives, not forgetting stories about the extracurricular activities of some big names; the sort of tales that may result in you propping up a flyover should they ever be repeated in print. The man himself couldn’t care less. Do your worst.
It was always thus. An outspoken figure from an era not exactly lacking for characters, ‘The Brode’ enlivened saloon car racing throughout the 1960s, ’70s and beyond, as much by his every utterance as by his burning desire to win. He was nothing if not a charismatic rebel.
‘I always wanted to do well at sport, and I was a good boxer in my youth, but motor racing became my thing,’ he says. ‘I am glad that I found my niche. I was pretty much unbeatable from the start. I went to the first post-war Grand Prix at Silverstone with my dad when I was very young and I suppose that fired the interest. My heroes when I started out were Jim Clark – obviously, but also Chris Craft and John Fitzpatrick.
‘My first car was an Austin A35. Actually, it was an A30 that I turned into an A35. The old A-series was taken out to 1100cc and it had Formula Junior rods, pistons, crank and block, along with two Amal carbs. The family trade was electroplating, and I was a metal polisher. It was a nasty job but I was making £35 a week, which was good money for the early 1960s. Anyway, I can remember sitting on the roof of the Austin, watching a saloon car race at Brands Hatch from the inside at Druids. There were two or three guys who were obviously good but the rest were useless. I said, “I could be third in this race – with this car.” My mates ribbed me mercilessly.’
Suitably riled, he paid ten shillings for a race licence shortly thereafter, joined the Harrow Car Club and participated in his first race in June 1963. ‘It was the Eight Clubs meeting at Silverstone. I won first time out and was third in the second race that same day. I should have finished second but I got distracted by Brian Culcheth’s Mini. I couldn’t believe the way it was being driven and the amount of smoke that was pouring off the front tyres. I was hooked. I then sold the Austin but kept the engine. I put it in a Turner, but I got banned from driving on the road, which meant I couldn’t keep my race licence.’ Pause. ‘I then competed as “Roland Perrin” for a bit.’
Cue more laughter. ‘In all seriousness, I only did a few races in the Turner before I put it on its roof at Snetterton. I was mostly working hard earning money while I built up a Ford Anglia. It had a five-bearing 1300cc motor, actually a de-stroked 1500, with downdraught head, 48IDA carbs, five-speed Jack Knight ’box; all sorts of stuff. I raced that car throughout 1966-67.’ Our hero then accrued one win from as many starts aboard the ensuing twin-cam Anglia ‘Big Nelly’ before he received an offer for the car that he couldn’t refuse. A less happy foray into single-seaters followed.
I had the ten greatest years you could have in motorsport. If the car held together, I usually won
‘I did a deal with Charlie Lucas for a Titan F3 car, complete with a box of Hewland ratios, a set of mag wheels and slicks plus a car cover, all for £2100,’ he muses. ‘It was designed by “Tom the Weld” – Roy Thomas – and had one or two quirks that I didn’t know about: it wasn’t sufficiently rigid and would swap ends in a heartbeat. At that time I was working myself stupid trying to pay for the car so I took on a race mechanic who turned out to be hopeless: I spent a year driving around in a drip tray. I had a few decent results [including a Formula Libre win at Snetterton] but it wasn’t for me so I got on with building the Escort.’
And by Escort, Brodie is of course referring to the ‘Run Baby Run’ Mk1 that dominated the Special Saloons category from 1969 to ’71. ‘That was a brilliant car. We welded cast-iron bores into a twin-cam block and took it out to 2.1 litres. Later on, we got it to 2.2 litres, fuel-injected it, and gave it a 16-valve Cosworth head. When I first raced the Escort, the car was in primer because I couldn’t decide on a colour. Nobody did racing cars in black back then. It didn’t happen, but I always liked to be different so I got my guy in Feltham to do it. I remember him opening the doors of his paint shop and seeing the car for the first time. All that was missing was a taxi sign on the roof.
‘I then came up with the idea of getting the car pinstriped, with squares. It was striped in canary yellow, not gold like everyone says; on the bonnet, the roof, all over. It took about three days to do and looked incredible. This was before Lotus did its cars in John Player Special colours. I still maintain they stole my idea! I was only beaten twice: Roy Pierpoint gave me a driving lesson at Brands Hatch in the Bill Shaw Rover P6. He left-foot-braked me all around the circuit, something I wouldn’t dream of doing. I wasn’t happy. The other time was by Roger Williamson who was a superb driver; one of the best I ever came up against.’
Mention of the Leicestershire ace, who perished in a ghastly accident eight laps into the 1973 Dutch Grand Prix, is freighted with emotion. Brodie wells up momentarily as he recalls this lost talent. ‘Whenever he was down this way he would stay at my place, Roger and Ronnie Peterson; I was best man at his wedding. They were my best mates in racing. At a torrential Brands – this would have been 1970 – I’d buggered off into the distance; lost everyone, or so I thought. Then, coming out of Clearways near the end of the race, I see these headlights out of the corner of my eye. On the last corner of the final lap, I got a dollop of oversteer and Roger jumped me. I loved the bloke so it was all right to be beaten by him.’
With 21 wins in 1971 alone, the leap from wannabe to player appeared complete, Brodie dovetailing his Escort campaign with ModSports outings aboard successive Lotus Elans. ‘One was Victor Raysbrook’s car, the other the ex-Gold Seal Car Company/British Vita Racing Team machine, which was beautiful. I did 36 races in the Lotuses and I reckon I won all of them.
‘Back then I would do three or more races over a weekend,’ he says. ‘I could make £400 in prize money, which equated to about £6000 over a season, so the racing began to pay for itself. From that first race in 1963 to my accident in 1973, I had the ten greatest years you could ever have in motorsport. If the car held together, I usually won.’
By ‘accident’, he is referring to the horror shunt that occurred during the saloon car support race for the 1973 British Grand Prix at Silverstone. It involved Brodie’s works Escort RS1600, Dave Matthews’ Capri RS2600 and Gavin Booth’s Mini. ‘I was doing the British and European Touring Car Championships and travelling constantly; having a great time. Matthews was second, and I could have taken him the previous lap but thought better of it. Anyway, he slammed into Booth’s Mini as we came up to lap it and he went off the road on the approach to Abbey Curve before rejoining the track. It hit me head-on. Matthews cartwheeled and was hanging out of the car like a ragdoll and I was pulverised. I almost had my leg amputated.
‘I spent seven months in hospital. It was agony. Once I was well enough, I went to see Ford’s competition manager Stuart Turner, who told me to help myself from the stores. I had a plan to build a Super Saloon Capri with a 3.4-litre Cosworth GAA engine.’ The result was the mighty ‘Black Beast’, a car that went from Chas Beattie’s drawing board to finished item in just five months. ‘The only problem was the engine. Tom Walkinshaw got the Cosworths and we were stuck with the old 2.8-litre Weslake V6. I should have put a small-block V8 in it. Ford made a fuss of the car when we had finished it [in 1974], and pictures were fired off all over the world, but it wasn’t competitive because of the engine.’
The notion of Brodie in anything other than a Ford seemed unthinkable but a change to less outré tin-tops with a Mazda RX-3 – ‘A terrible car to begin with’ – led to a long-standing link with another Japanese manufacturer. Brodie persuaded Mitsubishi importer Michael Orr to bankroll a BTCC bid; in a roundabout way, it led to the formation of turbo pioneers, BBR (Brodie Brittain Racing). ‘We were promised race engines from Japan but they didn’t materialise so Ken Brittain and I did our own. We made the Starion a winner. It was a superb car. When they pulled out of racing, we decided to do road cars.
‘Our first was a turbocharged Mitsubishi Shogun. Performance Car magazine pitched one against an Overfinch Range Rover and raved about it. That article made us.’ Via several other marques, including Bentley, Aston Martin and BMW, BBR found fame with its MX-5 turbo conversion, offered via Mazda GB. It’s reckoned the company boosted around 250,000 cars in total.
There came a return to the Blue Oval on-track via the mighty Sierra RS500. ‘I loved that car,’ he says. ‘You were on a knife-edge, though. I won at Thruxton in 1989 but then received a six-month ban from racing. Another driver had offered me some fuel, which turned out to be 105-octane. My car was tested, his was not. I mouthed off a bit – quite a lot, actually, which probably didn’t help! I had a habit of getting up people’s noses. The car was originally white, but it was in its “Black in Black” livery by the time I came back in 1990.’
While Brodie would continue competing into the new millennium, it was with Cosworth power that he enjoyed a final fling internationally. ‘I had always wanted to race at Le Mans and finally did the 24 Hours in 1994. Charles Bailey got involved in entering a Harrier and he asked me to build the engines; one for racing, the other for practice. The upshot was that I ended up becoming one of the drivers alongside Rob Wilson and William Hewland. My team put everything into getting that car prepared but it was a heavy old thing. William knocked two wheels off it quite early on and I remember him saying “If I had known it would cause so much trouble, I’d never have crashed,” which tickled me.’
Conversation then turns to his good friend, Great Train Robber (and Formula Junior racer) Roy James – ‘I’ve heard it said that I was one of the guys who didn’t get caught, which is hilarious’ – before explaining how he found himself in Tunisia driving a Landspeeder on the set of Star Wars. All of which is mentioned in his memoirs, Last Train to Cockfosters. All five volumes of it. It is gloriously, uproariously funny. Oh, and outrageous. You would be amazed were it otherwise.
