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“I completed about 30 laps in Graham’s chassis amid a crowded Thursday general practice session and immediately felt very much at home in the cockpit.” Marcus Pye, Track Test of this Lola T642E, Autosport Formula Ford World Cup supplement, 1983
Ever since one man decided he wanted to go faster than the next man ‘wheel to wheel’, Motor Racing has had some sort of a ‘feeder’ system in place, be it Voiturettes in the 1920s, 500cc machines of the ‘40s or Formula Juniors towards the end of the 1950s. Unlike today, there was then no meaningful karting scene where four year old kids could obliterate their future inheritances and fathers were able to vicariously live out their Grand Prix driver ambitions through their children, so the L Plate Formulae of ‘proper’ race cars thrived. The problem was one of cost (despite the best intentions of the likes of Count Johnny Lurani) and it wasn’t until expensive, highly strung race engines were removed from the equation that a reasonably level playing field, accessible without pawning your silver spoon, was created. The key was dropping a simple mainstream production engine in a reasonably low state of tune into what was essentially the same sort of spaceframe chassis utilised in the previous Formula Junior and Formula 3 categories. The result was “Formula Ford” and the viability of the concept is born-out not only by the fact that it still survives today as part of the modern ladder to the top but that it is also one of the most popular and competitive series in Historic motor racing.
By the late 1960s Formula Ford was established as the first rung on the ladder to Formula 1. However, the window of opportunity to prove one’s self was relatively small with most wanabes who ultimately succeeded spending just one season in the white heat of Formula Ford competition before stepping up to Formula 3, 2 or if particularly talented, Formula 1. It was very much a case of sink or swim and as a result it produced the next generation of Grand Prix drivers.
Much like Lotus and various other low volume specialist manufacturers of the time, Lola was the almost accidental result of one man who wanted to build himself a race car and found it to be so successful that drivers were soon beating a path to his door demanding replica machines. In the case of Lola it was Eric Broadley whose ‘Broadley Special’ (complete with Lola name on its nosecone) of 1957 led to the Mk1 sports racer the following year; this showed the Lotus 11s and 17s a clean pair of tyres and Lola were on their way. Progressing from the traditional ‘garage behind the family’s business premises’ (substitute pub in Hornsey with tailor’s shop in Bromley) Lola took larger workshops firstly again in Bromley (via a quick stop off at Mo Gomm’s place in West Byfleet to build the Mk1 prototype) to Slough and eventually Huntingdon. Their first single seater, the Formula Junior Mk2, hit the circuits just two years after the Mk1 and by 1962 they were in Formula 1 with John Surtees (who chalked up a win against the likes of Clark, Hill and Brabham in the 2000 Guineas race at Mallory Park) and Roy Salvadori so to say their progress was meteoric might be considered an understatement. With success across a range of disciplines from Sports Cars to Le Mans (Hollywood didn’t think “Le Mans ’66, Lola v Ferrari” was quite box office enough), Indianapolis and Can-Am, Lola were certainly adept at keeping numerous plates spinning.
In small capacity single seaters, Lola were well represented as Formula Junior evolved into Formula 3 and thence Formula Ford. Its first offering in the new feeder formula, the 1970 T-200, showed well in the UK and USA providing future Formula 1 stars Jody Scheckter and Tom Price with early rungs on the ladder. From then on models followed a similar pattern with a new design launched towards the end of a season to try to capture sales for the next and then a season or two of evolutions generally with 2 added to the original model number. So in 1971 the T-202 was the firm’s FF offering with the T-204 seeing service from 1972 until the new T-340 arrived for 1975. High points were the ‘sprung chassis’ T-340/342 which was super-competitive (as long as you didn’t try to strengthen the chassis), even in less than gifted hands. Its T-440 follow up with revolutionary weight distribution was relatively unsuccessful in Europe though it fared better in the USA. Lola were back on song with the stiff and sturdy T-540 which saw sterling service for four seasons from 1977 through to 1981, winning the BRDC Esso Formula Ford 1600 and the BARC Junior FF1600 Championships along the way.
The Broadley and Andrew Thorby designed T-640 arrived in 1982 with greater emphasis being placed on aerodynamic performance. A front mounted radiator was by then quite an unusual feature but allowed the bodywork to be kept as narrow as possible between the front and rear wheels. Inboard springs and dampers minimised airflow disruption as did oval profile wishbones. With lessons learned from Formula 1’s ground effect era, Broadley and his design team placed emphasis on getting air to exit cleanly from the rear of the car hence preventing a ‘queue’ forming under the machine itself and the ‘Manta Ray’ rear bodywork was one of the results. With its bluff, somewhat tacked on nosecone (Lola referred to it as a ‘fairing’) necessitated by the radiator, the T-640 was functional rather than pretty but as the old saying goes, there is nothing prettier than a winning car and on that basis it was gorgeous. With Julian Bailey onboard, the Western Model Cars, Racing for Britain and Minster-Power sponsored T-640 won the Townsend Thoresen FF 1600 Championship and, from a sales perspective perhaps more importantly, the end of season FF Festival. Considering of the thirty examples built, just three were to ‘E’ specification for the European market, it was a pretty good return for the Huntingdon team and this resulted in strong interest in the T-642 follow up model from this side of the pond; this time the split was seventeen ‘E’s out of the total of twenty-nine cars built.
Experience gained from a season with the T-640 was applied and its design perfected, most notably with improved brakes and stronger suspension components to better cope with the cut (up) and thrust of Formula Ford racing. Cast aluminium uprights (specially spelt aluminum versions were available for US market cars) plus tweaked springs and anti-roll bars were also incorporated. Evolution of an already successful car proved to be a shrewd strategy and the T-642 was quick straight out of the box though despite being in a ‘Junior’ formula, these pure-bred racing machines were pretty high tech. and it was not easy to get the best out of them. As well as setting the cars up in the workshops and fine tuning them at the circuit, cockpit adjustable brakes and anti-roll bars required the input of a skilled and sensitive driver while on the move. Lola recognised this and offered preferential deals to the very best teams to ensure both race results and top-quality feedback for the constructor. To this end towards the end of 1982 Lola Sales Manager Mike Blanchet wrote to a number of top teams, “… we feel that a key element in achieving results is in having the right teams run our cars. Professional racing organizations such as yours are more likely to extract the best from sophisticated equipment, and we gain by receiving better feedback.” As it turned out Pegasus Motorsport were just the people. Set up by Brian de Zille and well-funded through sponsorship from his Leicester based clothing manufacturing and retail business’, they were the de facto Works equipe. Ex-F1 spanner man Trevor Foster led a talented bunch of mechanics and the 1983 season could scarcely have gone better for the Quorn based operation. Fielding two cars, senior driver Andrew Gilbert-Scott swept all before him winning both the Townsend Thoresen FF1600 Championship and RAC British FF1600 Championship while the less experienced Graham de Zille used this very machine, chassis number H.U. 42, to wrap up the BP "Superfind" Junior FF1600 Championship. The outstanding preparation skills of Pegasus along with the efforts of two supremely talented drivers secured the RAC FF 1600 Manufacturers Championship for Lola.
Focusing on this car, Graham used it for just one season, winning seven rounds of the BP Championship on his way to the title; a better than 50% hit rate. He also won twice in the Champion of Snetterton series, just to keep his eye in so to speak.
When Graham moved onwards and upwards to FF2000 in 1984 (the good guys didn’t do more than one season in each stepping stone formula), unlike most race cars the T-642 was not passed on to the next aspiring hot-shoe to eventually be butchered in an attempt to extend its career or repurpose it into a different class of motor racing. Instead, H.U.42 was tucked away in Graham’s personal collection though before that it was Formula Ford guru Marcus Pye’s mount for his Autosport Track Test quoted above.
Graham then moved on up through the ranks netting a top ten finish in Monaco’s prestigious Formula 3 race in 1985 and competing in everything from Renault Clios, BTCC Sierras and Ferraris; he won the Ferrari Challenge UK’s Coppa Shell as recently as 2021 with eight wins from ten starts.
Having kept his Lola exactly as last raced for twenty-five years, in 2008 Graham had the T-642E rebuilt by Pegasus’ original engine supplier, Minster-Power and his nephew, Ben de Zille Butler, gave it one last outing in the 2009 Formula Ford Festival. Since then it has resided with Graham and more recently been on display in the New Forest showroom of Meridian Modena Ferrari who prepare and run his 488 Challenge Evo.
Today the pictures tell the story with the Lola still in effectively freshly restored condition. The dry sump system has just been drained and refilled and the engine briefly run, sounding, as one might expect from a Minster unit, particularly sweet. As with any machine that has been standing for over ten years, it would be prudent to go through the car changing fluids and generally checking it over before returning it to the track. Safety equipment such as belts will also need to be replaced for competition work as is the case with the tyres.
The Lola comes to auction fully rebuilt, effectively direct from its only owner and driver via a leading Formula Ford dealer and expert. Both as a potential racer with just one season under its wheels or a piece of Formula Ford history we feel this is a fantastic opportunity. Mr Pye summed things up expertly in his Autosport Track Test of H.U. 42; “Only meticulous work with scrupulous attention to detail from Foster, chief mechanics Nick Burrows and Andy Hollingworth and the Quorn, Leicestershire-based crew, brought each of Lola’s British Championships to Brian de Zille’s ambitious equipe. Superbly reliable and downright quick engines from the stable of David Minster and the tireless testing and race work of Andrew Gilbert-Scott (RAC and Townsend Thoresen) and Graham de Zille (BP Superfind ‘novice’) completed the series-winning equation.”
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