B8/12

At the preview of the new Nagari I met Andrew Giannopoulos who has owned B8/12 for some time now. Above is a picture of his car which I believe is languishing in Melbourne wating to be moved to his new home in Sydney. Andrew also has a Maserati Merak and is a member of Maserati Owners as well as the NSW branch of our club. He's not the first one to have that combination. A surgeon in Adelaide by the name of Don McKinnon bought B8/58 new in 1972 and followed it up by buying a Merak. If Don is still alive today (and I certainly hope he is) he would be rather elderly as in those days we were young blokes in our twenties and messing about with Mark 7s and in my case Mark 5s, he would have been a successful man about town in his forties. Anyway, I digress (which is a habit - You'll have to excuse me), at the event last month in Melbourne, Andrew and I were talking about his Bolwell and I promised I would tell him a bit about my memories of it all those years ago. So, with his permission, I am sharing it with everyone.

The original owner of B8/12 in road registered form was Paul Hoult who lived in Sydney. I say "in road registered form" because the real original owner was Steve Webb and this was his racing car. I know everybody is going to jump up and down and say that B8/7 was Steve's racer, but he did have two. Anyway, Paul was a very tall man and had trouble getting his knees under the steering wheel. Bolwell solved this problem for him by lowering the floor on the driver's side. This modification is still there and is quite visible in photos which I will show you later. It was Paul's everyday car for some time, until he sold it to Max Ullrich who raced it from 1975 to 1978 before using it as his road car until 1982. Here is a picture of Max getting more than a bit out of shape at Amaroo.

Amaroo is now a housing estate I believe. My recollections of the place are the delays in the start times for your race while they went about retrieving the pranged ones from the previous race. I have a great photo of a start grid at Amaroo Park of a ProdSports race full of Nagaris and the odd Mk.7 which I'll share with everyone one day when I find it. That particular photo is memorable to me for reasons other than Bolwells. It was an early race for Allan Hanns in the first of his Datsun 2000s before he moved on to racing Nagaris. I have admiration for Allan as a natural and determined race driver when he put his mind to it and this day he certainly did just that and the Datsun was giving stick to the odd Lotus Elan, TR7V8, MGB and Bolwell Mark 7. Jackie Stewart was saying on Radio National this morning that it was his "natural" talent that he had from the outset that kept him at the forefront (and kept him alive too probably). I'm off the track again (so to speak).

In the mid seventies the South Australian Bolwell Club entered a team in the Six-hour race at Calder. In those days our team was usually made up of Mark 7s with the odd Datsun 2000, Clubman or Cooper S thrown in. The Victorian club's teams were mixtures of Mark 7s predominantly, but accompanied by Mark 4s and the SR6. Anyway, there was a Nagari competing in this particular event but it was in the NSW Sprite Club team. This was B8/12 in the hands of Max. This was the first time I had met Max. At the time I didn't know that Paul had sold the car. Anyway, from that time on Max has been a good and valued friend. I do recall that he was plagued with overheating problems at Calder. That shouldn't be the case these days because I also recall a subsequent owner, Rankin McKay, fitting a huge Neil Stevens radiator to it. Remember Neil at Fleetwing Lakemba service station?

I'm going to go and scan a few photos to continue this post and come back with part 2 probably tomorrow.