Peak Journalism: Caversham 6-Hours Le Mans

As the 1950s entered their latter half, open-wheel and sports cars remained the headline act at race meetings, with the common-or-garden touring cars still languishing in the support ghetto. But if touring cars were slow to be recognised as their own distinct category, this wasn't matched by the cars themselves. Grid sizes were only trending upward, and the cars themselves were getting faster by the year thanks to a growing aftermarket of go-faster parts and accessories.

Lovely image of a Caversham starting grid, probably early '60s (Source: Facebook)

Speed Dealers
The undisputed king of Holden performance was Merv Waggott. A Sydnersider by birth, in his earliest days Merv worked repairing commercial refrigerators, founding Waggott Engineering somewhere circa 1948. He made ends meet doing general engineering and machining work, until his brother Ken got into motorcycle racing and asked Merv for some performance upgrades. Almost immediately the performance side of the business took off, word-of-mouth attracting more and more weekend racers beating a path to his door. A new workshop was built in Mayvic Street, Greenacre around 1952 specifically for doing performance work, where Merv built his own manually-operated cam grinder. By the mid-1950s, the workshop was manufacturing Merv's famous Waggott heads for Ford side-valve V8s, as well as doing marine conversions, scavenge pumps and intake manifolds for Holden Grey sixes. This, in a roundabout way, led to the development of the legendary Waggott head. 

High-quality images of the Waggott engine, one of its many homes and the Mayvic St premises itself (Source: TheGreyMotor.com)

As we've noted before, a lot of the popularity of Holdens for racing was the sheer upgradeability of the Holden engine. Seeing the latent potential in the Grey, Waggott turned his workshop over wholly to the task of turning it into a race engine. The block, crankshaft and conrods remained Holden stock (albeit with capacity increased to 2,440cc), but he dumped the pushrods in favour of his own twin-cam head system, matched with custom pistons, a dry-sump lubrication system and triple twin-choke Weber carburettors. With the camshafts driven by a chain from the crank, the redline stretched up beyond 6,500rpm, where it would make anywhere from 120 to 150 kW – more than three times the output of the stock engine. Although unquestionably the most powerful Greys ever built, they were held back by their exclusivity – only nine were ever built, and today Merv's son Peter can account for about half of them (up to six, depending on which source you trust). The engine won the Australian GT Championship for Queenslander John French in his Centaur in 1962, while another went into the the WM/Cooper open-wheeler raced by Jack Myers. That one was initially fed by six Amal carbs but these were later replaced by six 1¾-inch SUs: the engine developed around 145 kW at its peak. Only one Waggott head was ever fitted to a touring car, and once again Myers was the lucky recipient, though by then he was well into his winning streak in the yellow 48-215 so it's debatable whether it really made a difference.

To unlock mass participation, therefore, would require something a bit more turnkey than a highly-exclusive, hand-crafted OHC conversion of the Holden engine. Something offered over-the-counter by a major company. Someone like Melbourne's Replacement Parts Company, better known as Repco.

You may recognise this logo from the nose of Jack Brabham's championship-winning BT19 (Source: Repco.co.nz)

Research engineer Phil Irving had discovered that the main problem with the standard Grey was its lacklustre gas flow, so in 1956 he designed a cast-iron “Hi-Power” head that would bolt straight on to the standard cylinder block. The brochure bragged it was, “A revolutionary design with hemispherical combustion chamber and a separate port for each valve,” which was Repco's way of saying it was a simple-but-effective twelve-port crossflow design with the valves set across a semi-hemi combustion chamber. The fuel-air mix came in via long, square inlet ports, was burned and then exited again via short round exhaust ports on the opposite side – an efficient straight-through airflow arrangement. The kit came with inlet manifolds, exhaust manifold plates drilled to accept 1.625-inch diameter pipes, a cast-aluminium rocker cover and all screws and gaskets needed for assembly (no word on whether it came with an Allen key). Repco claimed at least a 50 percent increase in power and that it was, “designed for the speed connoisseur”, which was certainly true: altogether the Hi-Power head took the power on an otherwise stock Holden Grey up to the 100 kW range, and Repco supplied it as a complete kit for just £167 – about $6,800 in 2024. 

Repco Hi-Power in situ, c. 1956 (Source: Primotipo)

It was Repco's head that kicked open the door to mass participation, but relatively few were ever fitted to the more refined second-gen Holdens – it's believed you could count on one hand all the FE and FC sedans that ever entered a touring car race. At the top of the list, however short, was that of Lou Kingsley. Though quite old at the time (and not always particularly fast...), Kingsley took his FE Holden around the country in the late fifties and even, on his sole trip to Perth in 1957, managed to win the WA state touring car championship at Caversham. Which if true, not only means the FE actually won some silverware, it handily brings us to the topic of Caversham and its seminal "6-Hour Le Mans" races. 

Caversham
It's almost criminal how overlooked Caversham's production car enduros are, especially when the case could be made that they acted as important connective tissue between the one-off Mount Druitt 24-Hour race and the emergence of the Armstrong 500. Lest we forget, the original Grand Prix d'Endurance was meant to be a 24-hour race for ordinary production cars, even if it tended to be won by the really expensive ones. There's probably a book to be written on the Caversham Le Mans races, if one hasn't been already – the first of a trilogy on the quirky WA scene, maybe, with book two covering the halfway-house “Street Car” category of the 1970s, and book three dedicated to the Barbagallo 300.

Caversham's layouts, the "D", the "Triangle" and the rarely-used "T" circuit. The runway was also turned into a Martinsville-style paperclip oval on at least one occasion. (Source: Speedway and Road Race History)

Caversham was your classic post-war airfield circuit, an agricultural town in the heart of Wajuk land in Western Australia (now an eastern suburb of Perth). Originally built during World War II for the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm, the airfield was rapidly taken over by enthusiasts once peace broke out, both a local gliding club and, of course, the motor racing community. The airfield hosted the first post-war race meeting held in Australia, the 1946 Victory Grand Prix, and by 1956 the lease was in the hands of the Western Australian Sporting Car Club, who rapidly turned it into one of the premier circuits in the country. They even managed to attract the Australian Grand Prix for 1957, held on 4 March on the so-called “D” circuit comprising the main runway and “tricky” eastern service roads. In that meeting the recently-resurfaced track broke up in the blistering heat, the temporary pits blew down during practice (twice), and there was controversy over whether the race had been won by Stan Jones or the combination of Lex Davison and relief driver Bill Patterson. But that's a story better left to Primotipo...

The inaugural Caversham 6-Hour Le Mans race was run on 11 April 1955, and attracted only 11 starters... meaning if they'd dropped out at a rate of one every half an hour, by the chequered flag there would've been negative one left! This race was run on the simpler “Triangle” circuit made up of the airfield runways, as the “D” layout was considered too demanding for such a long race. Run to Le Mans rules, the race was dominated by the Austin-Healey 100 of Sydney Anderson and Sid Taylor, who completed 127 laps despite frequent downpours (something which would become a feature of the event). Their only serious opposition a Jaguar XK120 which had retired just before half-distance. Was this Mrs Anderson's XK120 FHC, or even Peter Whitehead's Competition version from the Mount Druitt race? Or was it another car entirely? I haven't been able to find out. 2nd place went to one Aub Badger (great name) in a Holden FJ, albeit 8 laps down on the little British sports car.

The 1956 race was originally scheduled for 13 May, but ended up postponed until 20 May instead: either way, it produced the same result. Anderson and Taylor won it again with their Austin-Healey 100, this time with 166 laps on the board, hinting at drier conditions. In fact, the first three cars home were all Austin-Healeys, with 3rd place falling to one owned and co-driven by a Miss Shirley Deane (women racing drivers are not a new phenomenon). Remarkably, Sydney Anderson managed to extract three class wins within this one race, winning outright in the Sports Car class as a driver, and then taking the Closed Production Car under-2,500cc class win as the entrant for the Carboni siblings, who drove a Holden for his dealership, Sydney Anderson Automotives. He then repeated the feat in the Closed Production over-2,500cc class as well, entering A. Mackintosh and W. Solloway in a Chevrolet (probably a six-cylinder sedan rather than one of those sexy new Corvettes, but a man can dream). Anderson and Taylor made it a hat-trick on 3 June 1957, defying the rains to take their third win in a row in an updated Austin-Healey 100-4, this time with 147 laps. But their time in the sun was about to end, for come the 1958 event, they were finally beaten.

Twenty-three entrants were flagged away at 8:00am on 2 June, in front of a 10,000-strong crowd, a remarkable figure for such a time and place. This was the traditional Le Mans start, where the drivers started on the opposite side of the track and ran to their cars on foot, climbed aboard, started them up and only then roared off on what could be a journey of more than 600km. As per Le Mans tradition the trouble started immediately, with Northside Service Station's Dave Sullivan managing two complete revolutions when he rolled his Holden. The car's bruised appearance attracted plenty of attention when it eventually rejoined the race later in the day.

Vin Smith and Ted Hantke had it even worse, mechanical problems forcing them to change the fuel in their Austin-Healey before the race. Then came a fire in the cockpit, which mechanic Brian Cropley, in a wonderful display of fortitude, simply beat out with his bare hands. Finally their brakes seized during the race, but even after all that they were 7th outright and only 16 laps behind the leaders when they greeted the chequered flag.

But the iron man of the race was surely Dick Blythe, who drove his Austin Lancer without relief for the entire six hours. True, Aubrey Melrose drove without relief in his Austin-Healey 100-4, but he still got a few moments of smoko during pit stops. Blythe, by contrast, apparently did not stop for the whole the six-hour ordeal, not even to top up the tank. Which was certainly a strategy one could try...

The Triumph on its way to, well, triumphing (Source: Speedway and Road Race History)

In the final hour the win seemed set to go the Morgan entered in the name of the Loftus Service Station, driven by Barry Ranford and his son, Barry Jr. Late in the piece, however, the Morgan started overheating, requiring several returns to the pits to take on water. These frequent stops allowed the Triumph TR2 entered by the Performance Cars dealership, driven by Jim Harwood and Bill Downey, to stay in the game. The Ranfords' troubles gave them the opportunity they needed to make up the lost laps and nip through in the dying minutes to take the win. Both they and the Barries were on their 181st lap when the chequered flag flew, a remarkably close finish after six hours of competition where anything could happen.

A smiling Harwood and Downey after their win (Source: Speedway and Road Race History)

Despite all the colour they gave us above, the article in Visor magazine admitted: “The race was full of interest right throughout and filled with incidents which are not possible to chronicle in the limited space at our disposal.” Which is as amusing as it is frustrating – if you've been wondering why I haven't been covering the 1950s in much detail, this is why. When they tell you previous generations worked harder than you, yeah, not always true...