Story and photos by Vince Johnson
Barossa Vintage Collingrove Hillclimb, 6 October 2024 Spring in South Australia’s wine country sees the vines in leaf and the Barossa Valley hills at their finest. Vintage at the wineries is still a long way off but the long weekend in October brings a different vintage to the SA Sporting Car Club’s hillclimb track at Mount McKenzie near Angaston. Celebrating its 90th anniversary this year, the world’s second oldest continually-running veteran car club’s Collingrove meeting echoed to the sounds of last century’s classic and sports cars and motorcycles as they raced the clock to the top.
The weekend started on a gentler note on Friday evening with a welcome dinner at the local Brauhaus Hotel. Saturday saw entrants at the track for morning tea and familiarisation runs, then on tour to Springton’s Grand Cru Wood Oven Restaurant in the Eden Valley for lunch. Dinner at the Stockwell Hotel was timed for 6pm as clocks went forward an hour overnight to change to summertime.
Following documentation and briefings early on Sunday morning, competition runs began with the air-cooled vehicles. Other categories included Group K (1931-40), Marque Sports, Special Interest Vehicles (pre- and post-war, up to 1500cc, 1501-5000cc, over 5000cc), Regularity and Come & Run. Motorcycle entries were grouped by period: Vintage (1920-45), Classic (1946-62) and capacity (cc): 125, 250, 350, 500 and unlimited.
This year two examples of the imaginative creativity of South Australia’s Eldred de Bracton Norman (1914-71) took to the hill. Greg Snape returned with the 1955 Zephyr Special (see VT Collingrove 2022), its front suspension bolted directly to the engine. Norman had removed the need for a chassis, welding brackets for the body, seat and fuel tank to the torque tube that went back to the clutch and gearbox. In Greg’s hands it finished 7th fastest (37.35 seconds) of the day.
Buying surplus army vehicles after WW2, Norman had built a racer from a Dodge weapons carrier chassis powered by two Mercury V8s in line, coupled with sprockets and chains. Eldred assembled the body from Mustang aircraft panels and entered it in the 1951 Australian Grand Prix in Western Australia. Retiring after 7 laps with broken front suspension, it was sold and competed two years later in the Johore Grand Prix, before eventually being scrapped in 1958.
When Victorian Darren Visser saw photos of it he made the obvious choice. Having already designed and built a year-round snow tunnel for snowboarders and a Chamberlain tractor that holds a dry lake world speed record, in 2020 he began the re-creation of Norman’s long-gone V16 racer. He joined two Mercury V8s from Ford Blitz trucks by the same sprockets and chains set-up, ran it on truck wheels and tyres and the exhaust note is impossible to ignore.
With fewer cylinders and kilograms but very similar times up the hill were the two Amilcars. Hillclimb stalwarts Angus Mitchell (1925 Grand Sport S/C) and Richard Creasy (1925 Type G) flew the tri-colour all day long on track.
Keeping company with the Mitchell Amilcar in the paddock was Trevor Montgomery’s 1928 Alfa Romeo 6C 1500 S/C. Imported as a rolling chassis for A. A. Davison by W. H. (Bill) Lowe, who became Australia’s first Ferrari distributor, it received a Martin & King saloon body in Melbourne. With more than 200,000 km (124,000 mi) under its wheels, it passed to his son Lex who removed the body. With wife Diana he drove it, in chassis form with just two seats, to Bathurst to compete in the 1946 New South Wales Grand Prix. When Lex took on an Alfa P3 Monoposto for racing it became known in the family as the ‘Little Alfa’. He later went on to be a four-time winner of the Australian Grand Prix while the 1500 stayed in the family for decades. After it came out of storage in the late 1970’s Diana continued to use the car in historic events, until Trevor took over its diligent custodianship.
Off track, two Bugattis in the paddock created interest. The meeting had special significance for Victorian Michael Anderson in his father’s Type 44.
“This meeting” he explained, “would have been my father’s 60th anniversary at Collingrove, as he first competed here in 1964 in a Type 35C Bugatti. His Type 44 came into Australia new in 1929 as a rolling chassis and had a rather heavy period body put on it by Diskon & Molyneux in Sydney, which it wore for the next sixty or so years. It was imported by Arthur Burkitt, Professor of Anatomy at Sydney University, who was a keen motorsport aficionado. He competed as a navigator in some notable road races of the time and was also famous for sponsoring drivers. Prominent among these was Australian racing legend W.B. Thompson, with whom he rode as riding mechanic in Burkitt’s Bugatti 37A (37358/263), winning the 1930 Australian Grand Prix.
“This Type 44 passed through several hands and ended up with John Porter, an engineer and noted restorer in Warrandyte in Victoria, who reconditioned it mechanically. My father bought the car and commissioned Richard Stanley to re-body it in the style of a Type 50 Le Mans tourer. In doing so they managed to remove over a hundred kilograms (300lb) from the vehicle and now, being around 1,200kg (2,640lb), it gets along very smartly. It has a fabric-covered aluminium-tub body and only ever has two people in it, despite the fact that it has four seats.
“The three litre straight-eight engine was rebuilt about twenty five years ago by Auto Restorations in New Zealand and apart from some minor niggles with suspension and steering, which have been sorted out, it goes remarkably well. The crankshaft has nine bearings so it’s a very strong engine down below.
“We put a modern gearbox inside the Bugatti casing. The gearbox innards originally contained the standard Ettore Bugatti touring box arrangement, which has some notorious design limitations. This was replaced by a modern off-the-shelf constant-mesh gear configuration from Crosthwaite & Gardiner Engineering (UK) which allows for smoother and cleaner gear changes. The diff ratio in this T44 is also longer than the factory original (12×50), which now permits it to cruise comfortably at modern highway speeds, and without the necessity of fitting an electronic overdrive.
“As usual with a Bugatti engine, it doesn’t breathe especially well. They were originally supplied with a single updraft two and a half inch Schebler carburettor that was probably designed for an American truck but can work quite well on Bugattis. We’ve replaced the Schebler with twin SUs and a modern manifold. It keeps up with traffic and is very tractable. In top gear you can move from 50mph to 70mph quite smoothly but we don’t normally take it over 3000rpm”.
Michael has another project underway, a Type 49 Bugatti, the next model on from the 44, which has a similar, but 3.3 litre, engine.
“I’m recycling some components from the original Type 44 gearbox in the rebuilding of my Type 49 gearbox, which will be utilising the original Bugatti gearbox configuration, for better or worse. Fundamentally, the Type 49 DNA is about 90% the same as the Type 44 and I’ll be fitting a Schebler to it. New blocks and pistons are coming from Germany and the gearbox is being rebuilt in Castlemaine, Victoria. I’ve been working on the 49 slowly and carefully for five years and it’s now in rolling chassis form with the drive train coming together next year”.
Not far away was David Beaumont’s 1927 Type 40 Bugatti, alongside his 1962 Alfa Romeo Giulia Spider.
“The Type 40 came into Western Australia to Cyril Poole as a rolling chassis, together with a Type 37,” David pointed out. “Cyril was the state’s Bugatti agent. He raced the 37 and had the 40 bodied in Perth to be used as a demonstrator. It was still with him when I first saw it but Cyril couldn’t be persuaded to let it go. In 1975 it was offered in his estate sale, changed hands to me and came to South Australia. I like to think because it was a demonstrator in WA that technically I’m its first owner”.
It still has its original body, which came with a detachable hardtop that had an integral windscreen. Driving roofless with no screen could be awkward so David had a separate screen and canvas roof made up, based on period photos. Another difficulty was that the guards were mounted to the brake drums and turned with the front wheels.
“Cyril was quite proud of these but they kept breaking, so I had new ones made up based on the original design,” continued David. “The car’s never been restored, instead maintained. It goes to lots of runs and historical events and if they’re interstate of course it goes on a trailer. But I’ve no intention of being timed up the hill with this car, because once you do that you’re always looking for another half second.”
On the hill competition between the bikers was just as earnest. This year the featured manufacturer was Velocette with several examples entered. The fastest bike was Paul Dempsey’s 1951 Triumph Tiger 100 (42.63 seconds) with his 1962 Norton Manx Atlas just 0.03 sec behind. On four wheels fastest time of the day went to Darren Visser, though not in the 7.8 litre double V8. His 1967 Bates Cyclo with its 1972 Kawasaki 750ccc H2 power stopped the clock in 34.11 seconds. Once the presentations were done it was off to ‘The Clubhouse’ in nearby Tanunda for the Farewell Dinner. But that was not the end of the weekend’s proceedings.
With the holiday Monday to follow, in the morning many entrants joined others who had assembled on the coast 80km (50 mi) south of Adelaide at Victor Harbor. In 1936 the South Australian Centenary Grand Prix had been held there on a 12.5km (7.8mi) circuit mapped out on public roads. In preparation for that race’s 2026 anniversary, South Australia’s Sporting Car Club had arranged a display and parade of vehicles on these same roads, giving the public a taste of the sights and sounds they would have had ninety years ago. It’s what they do.
(With thanks to Michael, Khoi, David and Kent Patrick)
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