The Beast – The Jardim Special - 1968 – 1972

In the middle and late sixties there was tremendous enthusiasm for motor racing. My brother Alan and I were young men in our early twenties, in love with engineering and fascinated by motor racing. We were also penniless, so the prospect of actually taking part in some way in motor racing was remote. The race meetings of 1968 changed all that, as Kenneth Veerasammy’s Kenveer Associates had imported a Lotus Super Seven which was driven by Eric Vieira in masterful fashion. Later that year, space framed U2's and Lotus Super Sevens came from Antigua to reinforce what Eric had done, and also to show quite clearly that light and simple space frame Clubmans cars could compete with the best and fastest, and at a fraction of the price.

Thus encouraged, Alan and I pooled our savings and set about building a Clubmans car. The design had started life as a takeoff of the Chapman designed Lotus Super 7, using the Hillman Minx engine and running gear we had inherited when Alan bought a crashed Hillman Minx. Because he wanted to use the Hillman front seats so the car could be licensed and driven on the road, (we didn't have any others, and we had no idea how to make seats), the car became quite wide. It soon became evident that the Minx 1,496cc engine did not have enough horsepower, and so on a whim, Alan approached Compton Pooran, who was then the head of Sandbach Parker's motor division. Compton generously provided us with a longer stroke crankshaft which took the engine to 1,725 CC and the grand total of 88 BHP! Nevertheless, the tubular chassis we had built weighed only 85 pounds, so the car was impressively quick, and even on narrow 13 inch wheels went around corners like it was on rails.

The first recognized GMRC driver to become interested was Conrad Williams, who in those days was very quick in a screaming Honda S800 sports car. We took the car to the circuit and Conrad did some fast laps. He was quite impressed with the acceleration and cornering but far less impressed with the drum brakes at all four wheels which quickly lost any stopping power after a lap or two. Fast it was, but it was no Honda S800, prepared in Japan.… We simply didn't have the money to correct the obvious shortcomings so the project languished for a few months.

Alan, ever the go-ahead type, felt that we would never attract any drivers without creating some excitement and felt that the way to provide excitement was with lots of power in a very light car. That would attract drivers and sponsorship, which would allow us to buy the brakes, tires and other requirements for a credible racer. The list of expensive racing components was of course endless, and also endlessly expensive, but we decided to go ahead.

Alan decided to fit a Ford 292 cu. in. V-8 we had bought for scrap. He disassembled it and found that there was very little wear. He rebuilt it carefully. The engine started easily and ran smoothly, and made a most impressive roar. Being penniless, we mated this V8 to a shortened version of the Hillman Minx gearbox, which had an output shaft of about 3/4 in. diameter (the size of a finger), and to the Hillman rear axle. In testing, the car was brutally fast, but neither of us was a racing driver, able to put the gearbox and rear axle to the test.

We interested Danny Fraddette, who was a moneyed young man about town and a talented driver. He had had much success driving his Lotus Cortina. Danny negotiated with Central Garage for Dunlop sponsorship, and ordered 1968 Formula One tires. When these arrived, we, and practically everyone else, were goggle-eyed. No one had ever seen rubber this massive. We duly widened the rear Chevrolet and front Viva rims to accommodate them. This was the beginning of the engineering uncertainties that have always been a part of motor racing. Make it heavy and safe and you never win anything; make it too light and you risk losing everything. Even the simple widening of rims to take racing tires brought into question serious concerns about the strength of lug bolts and the surrounding metal of the rims. It was not only that the Ford V8 engine was extremely powerful, but also that it displaced 5 Litres, and had the torque of a steamroller. We were very concerned, and mostly erred on the side of safety. The eighty-five pound chassis began to be a thing of the past.

We allowed Danny and Martin Nascimento to take the car up to the circuit and try it out. Danny did most of the driving, and seemed to be duly impressed but it was hard to know whether to take him seriously, or whether he was just being kind. What was serious, was that there was a loud big end knock from the V-8. The crankshaft was ruined. We had never anticipated the problem of severe oil surge, and under the hardest acceleration out of the Gooseneck, and all of the way up the following straight, there had been no oil pressure. We could hardly blame Danny for feeling that although the car had potential, he wasn't going to wait around for us to get it right. Nothing more came out of this association.

At this point, in early 1969, Martin Nascimento who had raced at Brands Hatch in England and at the South Dakota Circuit, and who had been loosely involved with Danny in developing the car, said he wanted to drive it himself. He was very enthusiastic and would frequently find parts that we asked for in a matter of days by putting the touch on some friend. Like his brother Kit, he was very much a people-person. He was also a genuinely nice person to deal with. His positive can-do attitude leapfrogged all difficulties.

We took the car to Timehri and did some testing and he was full of praise, though I could see that he was concerned about safety, something which had been low on our list of priorities as we struggled to put the car together. He wanted to build up the sides of the cockpit, and was concerned about the steering column (we later dog-legged it). In the event, we didn't do very much about these things. We probably did not know where to begin. The best we could do was to make a very strong rollover bar, and to shield the driver from the drive line.

We agreed to have the car ready for the November 1969 meeting and went to the circuit for the Friday practice session with Martin to do some preliminary testing. The car was a handful on the straight, especially under braking. In those days, it was assumed that very light cars on the bumpy surface of the long circuit were always going to be a handful. U2 drivers used to tell me that they frequently could not guarantee whether they would go under or around the Dunlop Bridge which was at a part of the long circuit where you were going fastest just before braking for the entrance to the Gooseneck. Said as a joke, it was no laughing matter. Our tachometer and gearing said that we were doing better than 140 miles an hour at this point.

I had had more than a suspicion that the front-end geometry was providing a large amount of bump-steer but somehow had put it out of my mind so I began to file down the rear brake shoes on the Hillman Hunter axle to reduce their braking area in the hope that it was the rear brakes that were locking first and making the car fishtail. Vain hope. On one of the practice laps after this, Alan and I were standing at the exit of the low speed bend where we hoped to see what the car did under braking, when Martin approached at high speed, probably 120 mph, and got on the brakes. The car struggled from side to side violently, and finally he let go of the steering wheel, hands in the air, and disappeared up the sandy escape road at probably 80 miles an hour. I felt sure that he would run into the trees with fatal consequences but the next thing we knew he was reversing out, sand and dust pouring from the rear wheels. Later on that afternoon he got down to a respectable time as though nothing had happened, instability and all.

The next morning, I resolved at least to remove the worst of the problem if I could not completely cure it. I did this by getting longer Pitman arms and heating and bending them to fit the Vauxhall Viva steering knuckles. I had to heat them to bend them but did this with great concern, because the heating and cooling of the steel forging could easily have crystallized the metal at that point and made it brittle. I got two other arms and did the same heating and bending with them, then tried to see if I could break them in a hydraulic press. They didn't break right away, and when they did it was at an enormous tonnage. This meant that the Pitman arms would only break after all the suspension members had been ripped off. Some reassurance, but I was glad of it. Thankfully, the modifications did seem to make the car at last drivable.

We qualified well for that November 1969 meeting at one minute twenty-eight seconds, fastest of the local entries, and beaten by only the Twin Cam Escort of Englishman Mike Crabtree. I remember standing somewhere by the entrance to the pits and seeing Martin blast by, the V-8 roaring and echoing off the pit walls, the sound echoing and singing through the trees as he climbed the slight hill up to the high speed bend. Every lap, I would wait and wait to hear when he would lift off for the bend and it always seemed as if he kept the power on another two or three seconds. In the afterglow of that Saturday practice session, second-fastest time of the day, we had great confidence and there was quite a buzz in the clubhouse over this powerful upstart who had leapfrogged all the other local competitors. Martin, flushed with enthusiasm, there and then nicknamed the car "The Beast".

Race day however was another story. Martin started from the right side of the first row of the grid, and it was easy to foresee what would happen next; in the noise and confusion of the start line, he revved the V-8 hard and popped the clutch, breaking the rear axle spider gears and locking up the axle, which broke the gearbox. Reminiscent of the BRM in its first race, the Beast barely rolled five feet. It was a great disappointment for Martin who was shortly to leave for England and a new career, to have victory snatched from him, but Alan and I were elated by the events of the entire week, when two 25-year-old kids had stuffed it to the establishment. We were now firmly accepted. The unlimited sports car races were won by Mike Crabtree in a Twin Cam Escort, with Arnie Poole in an MGB second. This was said to be a "Le Mans" MGB, which was not very convincing at about one minute twenty-six seconds. We were sorry to lose Martin, who was a very fine driver and test driver, and a fine person too.

With Martin's departure, Eric Vieira appeared on the scene, determined to drive the car in the April 1970 meeting. Eric was some 15 years older than Alan and I, and was a legend in motorcycling and car racing. The first few times he came to see the car we actually called him "Mr. Vieira".

Eric took the car very seriously and so did I. Knowing that the gearbox was not strong enough Eric obtained a four-speed manual gearbox from an American Mustang V-8, the last word in heavy-duty V-8 transmissions of that time. This actually had a Hurst shifter, some of the crudest ironmongery ever designed to shift gears. This gearbox too had to be shortened, as we had moved the V-8 rearward until the car was more mid-engined than front engined, in an effort to get more power to the road, but it was less problematical than the Hillman Box. The shifter itself was a different matter and had to be linked forward as the gearbox, shortened to the minimum, had a driveshaft only ten inches long to the rear axle. Shifting was always a big guess, and whenever Eric would fail to get third gear, downshifting from fourth for a corner, it would inevitably result in a lurid spin. For a while, we actually dispensed with the Hurst Shifter and put a dog- leg in the “gear stick”, so that shifting was more up-and-down than fore and aft. Crude, but it did work.

The biggest problems were unsprung weight, and the inadequate Hillman axle. The structure of the car was quite light compared with the massiveness of the engine and transmission. Any solid rear axle strong enough to accept the engine torque would have been far too heavy both of itself and as unsprung weight, and on the rough surface of the long circuit it would have been almost impossible to keep the wheels in contact with the road. Inevitably, we had to opt for independent rear suspension with inboard disk brakes, in an effort to move as much weight as possible inboard. This allowed us to use a rather massive 3.55:1 final drive, but meant that designing the rear end of the car would be a feat of engineering. Doing this design nearly exhausted us, because of the inherent contradictions of working with a saloon car differential, but the execution, which included the making of splines and heat treatment was even worse. I was also under great time pressure, having to go to England on business shortly after. Eric was very resourceful and helpful, scouring the storerooms of Bookers Agricultural where he worked, for suitable universal joints for the half-shafts. We went through at least two versions of the independent rear. One practice day, after Eric had done some very creditable times, over maybe twenty laps, he came in, and pronounced the car excellent. “Don’t touch anything!” Someone suggested he should practice some starts… on the first attempt, the rear half shafts wrung like pretzels, depositing bits of outer universal joints on the tarmac… Back to the drawing board for Mark II!

One depressing day, when I said that the maximum size of shaft we could use was still not going to be sufficient, (we'd already made them) Eric suggested that we harden them. We heated them and did the most violent quench we could in cold water, (not a very nice thing to do to a piece of high tensile steel) but though they improved, they still were not hard or strong enough. He asked what we could do and I said half-jokingly that we could quench them in brine. Taking me seriously, he hustled off to the neighborhood shop and came back with 5 pounds of salt. With nothing else to do, I reheated and quenched the shafts in the brine. They were now impressively hard, but I told Eric there was an increased likelihood of failure from cracks. He Said, "Let me worry about that!".


Eric in his usual can-do way insisted on driving the car as soon as possible. The design of the lower wishbones was less than optimum, and Eric had supplied four Triumph Motorcycle rear shocks for the suspension. It was all he could find at the time, and we hoped that four spring- shock units would be enough. When the weight of the car was put on the shocks they bottomed out. I was also very unhappy with the strength of the 5/16" shock upper and lower mounting bolts (which there was no way of changing), and my own harried and immature design of the lower wishbones. Never enough time, never enough resources.

Trying to save valuable development and practice time while I was in England, Eric tried to run the car prematurely . On his way up to the racetrack at Timehri, he spun in the wet, and then phoned me in England to tell me of the near disaster when an oncoming truck narrowly avoided him. In those days, people routinely drove race cars on the road. The police were generally very understanding. Most were race fans. Eric was definitely the bravest driver I have met, and had the stuff (and the technical knowledge and talent) to have been world-class.

Looking for more speed for the April 1970 meeting we decided to use eight separate exhaust pipes, one for each cylinder, of 1-1/4 inch diameter stainless-steel. These had come from a sugar factory and were full of scale which we had to remove by heating the pipes cherry red. If this were not enough, bending them required filling them full of molten lead to avoid kinking, then melting the lead out after bending. It was massively time-consuming but it had great cosmetic value, as we buffed the stainless steel pipes to a high sheen. These exhausts were fitted under Eric's house in Courida Park, not least because the Barbadian racing team was staying next door and we hoped they might be intimidated. Every bit counted!

A few weeks prior to the November 1970 race meeting, looking to get in some experience and practice, Eric insisted that we should do some early morning runs, and said that I could meet him at the circuit on my way to Mackenzie on business. Joey King and Eric's wife June were there to lend support. Eric proceeded to make some rapid but inconsistent laps of the long circuit, the car looking very ragged and Eric stopping to make understandably ragged comments every other lap. Finally, he lost it in a big way on the high-speed bend and entered the trees at speed. The car was full of sand from having slid sideways but apart from this there was no damage. It was admittedly very difficult to drive fast and this was his first full session with the Beast.

The car was not impressively fast at 1 minute 25 seconds for the November 1970 meeting but was faster than almost anything else in Guyana, so we had a respectable place in all our races and were part of the establishment. I particularly enjoyed driving it around on the lap of honour at every meeting while Eric, as club president escorted the club patron, impressing my friends and scaring myself at its brutal power which I knew quite well I could not hold flat-out for a full lap.

At the April 1971 meeting, the stainless-steel individual exhaust pipes kept breaking off from fatigue failures at the welds. The car was not very fast, at best 1 minute 24 seconds.

In those days, Eric was generally regarded as the bravest and most talented racing driver around, and insisted on entering a Club Day Meeting which I thought was not worth the trouble and expense. The real trouble was that Eric's energy and have-a-go spirit were up and we had to go, regardless. During the race, about three laps from the end, one of the oil breather hoses came off of the valve cover and the engine, which already had a severe oil control problem because we had never been able to cure completely the oil surge problem, began to blow hot oil mist back over Eric. He was being badly burned and could hardly get a grip of the steering wheel or gearshift, and with oil all over his visor, how he saw anything was a mystery. He certainly could not move to avoid the oil spray in the cramped cockpit. Nevertheless he kept on and crossed the finish line first, jumping out of the car before it stopped rolling, and rolling himself in the sand to get rid of the hot oil.

The car's performance in the April 1971 meeting was so unconvincing that for the November 1971 meeting it was thoroughly rebuilt, with much additional diagonal bracing. It became a great deal stiffer and lower, but also heavier. All bodywork above the frame rails was removed and the radiators were mounted nearly horizontally in the nose. The front suspension was completely redesigned and rebuilt to cure the bump-steer, and the rear suspension lower wishbones became parallel links also to improve directional stability. (Three years later at a Grand Prix meeting at Brands Hatch, McClaren were proudly showing off this new rear suspension design on their 1974 Grand Prix car. We were chuffed! In one of those unaccountable racing developments, the original front suspension of the Beast, circa 1968, used horizontally mounted inboard springs for better control and lower unsprung weight, a development that was not seen in Grand Prix cars until the eighties. But we could not get sufficiently stiff springs for it, and had to abandon it for a new design using outboard spring-shock units in 1970). The New front suspension used knuckles and disk brakes from the MGB of Peter Willems who had written off his car, and who gave us all the parts in exchange for me doing some small amount of work on the crankshaft of his Marauder. The larger brakes made the world of difference, and we no longer suffered from boiling brake fluid. Such was the generosity and spirit of enlightened competition of people like Peter. The Beast contained parts from many cars and Guyanese companies, almost all given for free…

We built new exhaust headers of 1-3/4 inch tube with three inch collectors. Because we could not bend thin wall tube, this involved sectioning every bend of tube from various exhaust pipes we had gotten from Philip DeFreitas at Central Garage. This took a complete week of hard labor (at this time I was conscious that my father was saying that we were going to lose our company if we kept on) but the result looked and sounded impressive, painted in white and red Sperex heat resistant paint. It also definitely added horsepower. Philip DeFreitas had been a constant and generous supporter, and supplier of parts, even though we competed against him. The Beast raced on 13” Minilite Magnesium front wheels that he’d very kindly given us.
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Alan and I fitted a new ignition system, as we were sure that the standard distributor could not keep track of the 7,000 RPM we were using. With a standard crankshaft we must have been crazy to do this, but we never suffered a crankshaft failure. I made a gearbox which geared two four-cylinder distributors together at right angles, and Alan fitted dual capacitor discharge ignitions. This modification alone transformed the car. We now had separate ignition systems for each bank of four cylinders. We had not realized that large-bore V-8's required up to 45 degrees of ignition advance.

While the rear suspension was off, Alan thought that he would test the engine with the new ignition system and timing while applying the inboard rear brakes as hard as he could. I remember sheets of fire from the brake pads as the brake rotors glowed cherry red after only two or three seconds. We were elated. No disc brakes could hold this engine! Eric had also enthusiastically imported an Iskendarian camshaft which had an outrageous duration, which Iskendarian themselves claimed was useless below 4,000 RPM and topped out at 7,000. For our part, we had polished and ported the heads and surface ground them until we had a compression ratio of probably 11:1. We didn't care that we were going to unleash all of this on a standard cast-iron crankshaft. We didn't care. We clearly had the power now!

Eric said that he preferred not to think of all this mechanical violence two inches away from his left knee, and that at any rate, he couldn't think of any such thing while flying up the back straight and planning the braking for the high-speed bend. In the cockpit, there was almost no place to put any shielding. The engine had had to be offset six inches to the left to accommodate Eric, and even so, getting in and out was quite a job. The fit was so tight that the pedals had to be mounted on their own movable pedal box, if there was to be any prospect of adjustment for the driver's position. I remember Eric headfirst down in the foot-well carefully bending the accelerator, so he could heel-and-toe.

Around this time we became very friendly with Rod Grimes-Graeme and his partner Tom Wilson, who operated InAir, out of Ogle Airport. These two were true racing enthusiasts, and genuinely shared everything with us, promoting more competition. Rod had bought and was driving one of the Antiguan U2's, and Tom Wilson had completely rebuilt another U2 and fitted a Lotus Twin cam engine. The car was a joy to behold. Tom was an aircraft engineer, and brought his high standards to everything he did. No fluid line or cable went without a nylon tie or a restraining cleat screwed to the chassis. All fluid lines were Aeroquip, and the bodywork sheeting was aircraft Alclad, neatly riveted, or held in place by Dzus Fasteners. This had immediate effects on us, as much of our work was quite serviceable but rather agricultural, and we began taking parts off of the Beast and reengineering them to the new standards. Rod and Tom also lent and gave us many components which we simply could not have obtained otherwise. The most important thing though, is that they took a professional approach to their racing and immediately began to look for sponsorship. This materialized in the form of the Demerara Tobacco Company. Ltd. who agreed to sponsor a three-car team, to promote their Embassy cigarettes. Rod and Tom generously invited us on to the team, Team Embassy. Tom, in his usual excellence, painted all three-cars in the white, red and gold Embassy livery, with impressive graphics and a high standard of finish. They looked too pristine to be raced. DEMTOCO themselves, knowing public relations as they did, arranged for the three cars to be displayed in the lobby of the Pegasus. It was highly successful, and caused a lot of favorable comment.

Two Saturdays before the November 1971 race meeting, when Alan and I were hoping for a rest from working on the car, which had become a six-month-long operation, Eric came to the workshop and suggested that we take it to the circuit for practice because Rod and Tom were going to be there with their U2's to offer competition. We were all very tired, but we went down to the Pegasus and got the car out of the lobby. The car had been taken to the Pegasus hotel where it was on display so we had to go there and retrieve it, something we had not planned to do for a week. I remember actually fitting a variable diameter pulley to the water pump right there in the Pegasus lobby before we took the car out. We had custom-made the variable pulley the night before, as there was no room for a tensioner pulley and the car had no alternator.

The car looked pristine on its arrival at the circuit, and Eric set off to do some pretty quick laps. After awhile he came in with severe overheating problems and we realized we would have to abandon our new aerodynamic nose and open some exhaust flaps in the bodywork.

A few laps later, he went missing and someone rushed into the pits to say he had had a huge accident in the high-speed bend. Alan and I went out to see what had happened with the greatest misgivings, to find that the car and Eric were undamaged in the accident but, to our great dismay, it had lost its left rear wheel under braking. The wheel had barely missed hitting a Marshal, Tony Dias, and had gone into the trees so hard that it had bent the rim, even though the tire remained fully inflated.

We used the Taylor Woodrow truck-mounted crane to retrieve it and took it back to the shop, where Eric immediately insisted on finding a solution. I was in a state of shock, as I knew only too well what would have happened if the half-shaft had broken at full speed on the straight on race day. Eric would have been in big trouble to say the least, but probably also many spectators could have lost their lives. There was not a word of concern or complaint from Eric, nor did he give the slightest hint that he might reconsider racing the car, after having lost a wheel at 140 miles an hour. He simply asked me if I could make it stronger, and said he would accept whatever I did. Not an easy thing to deal with.

Eric drove us all over town from junkyard to junkyard and we finally found one that had old Ford half shafts, which we bought right away. When we looked at the broken shaft, we realized that the Ford Motor Company had not left any fillet radius where the bearing butted up against its shoulder. We had simply assumed that they knew what they were doing. My best solution was to make a very large fillet radius to the axle flange, and to make a large radius washer to go up against it. We then polished the fillet radius to a mirror finish. I did this with grave misgivings because I felt that the axle was nowhere near strong enough for the 300 horsepower we were putting through it. It was at most 1-1/8 inches in diameter and not heat treated at that point. Good enough for a 5,000 pound American car, but probably not good enough for an 1,800 pound racecar. No way of knowing. Nevertheless, it never failed again over many races, and many spins, and the harassment of racing at the small and tight bushy Park circuit in Barbados. Perhaps my innate conservatism paid off. Perhaps.

Eric prevailed, and the next Saturday, the car was back at the South Dakota circuit for practice. In the meantime, Alan had reset the electronic ignition and we did one minute 21 seconds in practice, faster than anyone else, including the English racing team.

On race day, Eric's determination and bravery really shone. He led the race from the second lap, taking the lap record lower and lower every lap, until he set best time of the day and the outright Long Circuit lap record at 1 minute 18.1 seconds. We had not realized that there was such a Guyanese following for a Guyanese car driven by a Guyanese driver. Lap after lap, people waved shirts, towels, anything that came to hand; they danced and slapped one another on the back until he crossed the finish line, winning by the proverbial mile. We all had a great party at the clubhouse then went home in a state of euphoria which continued all week, as congratulations flooded in and more parties were held.

Subsequently, Eric was named Sportsman of the Year, and awarded the Medal of Service for his services to motor racing. Eric's time with the Beast was only part of a hugely talented, generous and brave commitment to motor racing over many years. He richly deserves the success and recognition he has gained. For our part, Alan and I gained a great deal of respect for our engineering. The Beast put us squarely on the map. We were more than amply rewarded. It was truly a golden time for us all.

PostScript:

The Beast was a triumph of development over lack of money and access to racing-quality components. In the late sixties and early 70’s, by the time one located a part, probably in a magazine, ordered it, had it shipped and actually received it in Guyana, an entire year of racing could pass. And information was always hard to come by.

In many areas we were simply on our own because we were having to do things that others in the developed world did not have to think about. When in 1968 we could not obtain suitable spring-shock units for the front suspension, we had to design and make inboard pushrod suspension. The lack of suitable gear boxes and final drives meant that we went to ridiculous lengths to design independent rear suspension with inboard brakes; and being unable to choose brakes for the front and rear in suitable proportions meant having to design proportional braking leverages, a task made doubly hard by the lack of master cylinders of suitable sizes. Even this was not sufficient, and we were finally forced to add vacuum boost to the front brakes, only to achieve the correct balance. This was an unheard-of situation, as even Formula 1 cars were able to get by with simple braking systems which did not need power boosting.

The engine in its the original configuration could have competed successfully with a single four- barrel carburetor, but the only one we had had very small choke sizes. Out of redundant stock at one of the garages, we found three two-barrel carburetors, but then we had to abandon the original intake manifold with all its water passages and fabricate our own lightweight manifold for the carburetors, and deal with the difficult issues of a sensible and responsive throttle linkage, and how to get six individual carburetor throats to dispense mixture equally to eight cylinders. Eventually, Eric pronounced the system undriveable, and the day was only saved when he acquired a very large Holley 2750 carburetor with 2 inch chokes from Hammy Green, who had a large Pontiac at the time and gave the carburetor without question. Even the politicians were involved! While others could get away with a light and simple throttle cable, we were forced to build a system which went around the front of the engine and used stainless steel pushrods and aircraft 3/16 inch ball ends in order to get sufficient responsiveness from the throttle. Either that, or miss gears, or spin off the circuit. The list went on and on, complexity begetting complexity and adding weight.

We succeeded mostly because both Martin Nascimento and Eric Vieira after him, were masters at obtaining good substitutes, through their own knowledge of the local garages and technical ability, and through sheer social prowess and a can-do attitude. In addition, totally impossible situations like the cutting of splines in high tensile steel shafting were salvaged only by the exceptional skill and knowledge of Doodnauth Gangaram, who was the leader of IEL's machine shop at the time. I would frequently design a component to cure some impossible problem, knowing full well that it was probably beyond our capabilities, but Doodnauth would say, " Well probably not this morning, but how about by midday?" Such was the innocent magic of racing in the sixties and early seventies. Guyana still had highly skilled and committed people, and those in racing generally had a high-minded vision of competition. If you did not help your competitor to be competitive, you were going to have a very hollow victory, and motor racing itself would die.

In early 1972, we took the Beast to Barbados to race at Bushy Park. Peter Ullyett, a Barbadian who lived and raced in Guyana was a great enthusiast, as was Ralph "Bizzy" Williams. Ralph had been a large part of the building of the Bushy Park circuit, leasing his family's land to the club for the purpose. Peter provided the enthusiasm and drive to make the visit happen.

As it turned out, because of lack of space, the Bushy Park circuit was extremely small and tight, and a good 100cc Kart of today would probably be far faster than even the Formula Caribbean 1600cc cars of the era. The Beast was very unsuited to the circuit, and looked like a muscle-bound wrestler in too small a ring. In fact the wrestling was mostly done by Eric, who hurled the Beast around bushy Park to the accompaniment of much manhandling of the wheel from lock to lock and incessant second-third-fourth gear changes. This violent style was very different from what we had been accustomed to on the long straights of South Dakota, and we paid a price in mechanical failures and being only third or fourth fastest.

On the Saturday morning at practice, Eric must have had a can of "Commanding Oil", as he willed the Beast to go faster and faster when it clearly was already beyond its limits of adhesion. On the left-hand bend which went pass the infield on the back of the circuit he left the road completely and charged across an onion field, colliding with a welding set and oxygen bottle being used by the crew who were building the observation tower. There was a loud roar of escaping oxygen as the regulators broke completely off, and chaos with workmen dashing madly to get out of his way. Surprisingly, yet again there was almost no damage to Eric or the Beast, but the car was filled with large and delicious onions which Peter Ullyett turned into steak and onions that night at his house where we were staying. The next morning, we were all much the worse for wear, all having gone back to the circuit to continue working on the cars. We were awakened at 5 a.m. by Sam Cyrus, disgusted at our laziness, crowing loudly like a rooster. Motor racing was also filled with larger-than-life characters.

After the huge success of 1971 and the equally huge emotional stress of working to racing deadlines and having to accept large risks, Alan and I took a decision to stop developing the car, hoping that it would just fade away. Although we had had excellent publicity, our business had suffered badly, and 1971 showed the lowest annual turnover in three years. We weren't broke, but we would clearly have to start paying attention. We decided that we would build lighter and less complicated single-seaters, for the Formula Caribbean that was just starting up. (In 1974, we went racing with Eric again with a single-seater rear-engined Terrapin).

In mid-1972, we had however reckoned without Eric. He was still as competitive and race-ready as ever, now in his early forties, and was soon back at IEL encouraging us to look for more power for November 1972. There was no way of getting more power out of the V-8 without blowing up the engine, but this was after all an Unlimited Sports Car. It so happened that we had a Rootes-type supercharger at the shop which we used to use for pressurizing large steel fuel tanks when testing them. It would be completely within the rules to supercharge the V-8...

There were some problems: To supply enough inlet pressure, the supercharger would have to run at 10,000 rpm, and we doubted that it had been designed to do that. Secondly, there were no toothed belt pulleys or toothed belts to be had, so we had to use timing belts from a Vauxhall Victor, and mill the pulleys from solid aluminum billet. The available belt centers also meant that the supercharger and its intake manifold and intake trumpet sat very high on top of the V-8, so the driver's line of sight was problematical.

Eric and we accepted all of these drawbacks and took the car up to practice. It was immediately clear that we had an astounding amount of power. The Beast would exit the Gooseneck in a cloud of tire smoke and keep on smoking all the way up to the clubhouse. Unfortunately, when Eric backed off the throttle for the high-speed bend there would be a violent explosion in the intake manifold which would rip the drive belts off. Whenever we managed two or three clear laps, intake manifold vacuum on the over-run would suck all the lubricant out of the supercharger bearings.

We didn't realize that these problems were well-known to the drag-acing fraternity who used superchargers, and we didn't have the time or resources to solve them, so in the end we had to abandon the effort and revert to naturally aspirated form. After a few more successful appearances, including humbling the Brabham Formula 3 (running without carburetor restrictor plates) of Antiguan Jimmy Fuller, (Eric passed him exiting the Gooseneck on the last lap as Jimmy spun, but himself spun in the low-speed bend and was unable to restart), the car ended its South Dakota racing days at the end of 1972, and was sold to Lucien Tie-Ten-Quee of Jamaica, who had raced a Yamsel motorcycle at South Dakota.

Bobby Hunter reports from Jamaica that Lucien raced the car in Jamaica for a few years and won many races with it before suffering a failure of the rear differential subframe. This had always been a weak point, (requiring a few anxious repairs at Bushy Park, Barbados in 1972), as the slender frame, and the differential attachment bolts, had to withstand more than 1,500 Lbs / Ft of torque from the monster of an engine, when multiplied through the final drive.

Lucien then sold it to another enthusiast who changed the aerodynamics and lowered the suspension. In its last race, the car bottomed out heavily and probably fractured the engine block, losing all its oil. The car's whereabouts unfortunately can no longer be traced.

George Jardim – Dec 2005