The Boy by Richard Williams

Author:Richard Williams [Williams, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2021-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 35 MADE IN ACTON

Tony Vandervell offered Moss a retainer of £5,000, paid in monthly installments, plus a fee of £1,000 a race to lead his squad of Vanwalls in 1957. Out of that he would have to pay his own expenses, including travel and hotels. Thirty years older than Moss, Vandervell was used to driving a hard bargain; this would not be the cushioned five-star treatment the driver had received at Mercedes, but it put him behind the wheel of a British car that might be capable of winning Grand Prix races. And he respected his new team owner: ‘He appeared a difficult and gruff man, but he was very kind and fair, deep down.’

Born in 1898, Vandervell had served as a young engineer in the Great War. Like Alfred Moss, he had raced and won at Brooklands, in a Talbot, and also competed on a Norton in the Isle of Man motorcycle TT. But most of his energies had gone into taking the reins of the company his father had founded, originally making electrical equipment for horse-drawn carriages. Its breakthrough came in the 1930s, when Tony Vandervell acquired the British licence to an American patent for a revolutionary design of ‘thin wall’ engine bearings, which became widely adopted around the world. In a sign of his persistence, he travelled to Cleveland and slept for six nights in an outer office before securing the necessary approval. Manufactured in a handsome modern factory on Western Avenue in Acton, in west London, the bearings secured the company’s prosperity.

Soon after the war, along with other representatives of British industry, Vandervell was persuaded by Raymond Mays to join the advisory board of the BRM project. Quickly frustrated by an evident lack of progress, he offered to buy the team a current Formula 1 car from Italy to get them started. Using the Board of Trade import licence granted to BRM, in 1949 he paid just over £5,000 for one of Ferrari’s latest Formula 1 cars, which arrived in time to be entered in the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Renamed the Thin Wall Special, the car performed poorly and was then stripped down and examined. Soon Vandervell was writing to Enzo Ferrari, pointing out its many shortcomings. Since Ferrari used Vandervell’s bearings and knew of his qualifications as an engineer, this did not cause the explosion it might otherwise have done. He agreed to supply a new car, in exchange for the old one, for the 1950 season. This time Ferrari also sent Alberto Ascari to drive the car at the Silverstone International Trophy, but the result was no more impressive.

Communications between Acton and Maranello grew spikier. Nevertheless Ferrari sent a new engine for 1951, to be installed in the modified 1950 chassis, and at the International Trophy its driver, Reg Parnell, was leading the Alfa Romeos when a rainstorm halted the race and the Thin Wall Special was declared the winner. A win at Goodwood and a close second behind Farina’s Alfa

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