Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Written off Canon Nagaris

Further to Monday's post about Peter's queries, here's the Auto Action reports on each of the 2 incidents.

6 comments:

PeterG said...

Did Terry Spooner loose Canon as his major sponsor after the crash? When the car(or replacement) re-appeared at Winton in May '74 the Canon script on th nose was replaced whith 'Thermatic', later 'Dynotune' when Chris Clearihan owned it.

Note the Clearihan car at Hume Weir - the third member looks like a B/W Falcon unit, not the larger 9" & the rear suspension is located by an 'A' bar. At the front, the suspension arms and pivot points look surprisingly standard in size and location.

'One Shot Canon' mentions Terry Spooner virtually demolishing his street Nagari: at this time was it the Coupe registered LMR.222 ??
How many Nagari's (road cars) did he use in his role of Sales Manager?

John L said...

I can assure you, Peter, that the replacement car was not so standard. When it came to South Australia it was extremely modified compared to our road cars and over the years Allan Hanns improved it even more. I think it speaks well of Chris' driving skills that he was able to keep up with the likes of Peter Warren and Steve Webb. Trevor Jones, too, began racing B8/72 as a standard and road registered car, gradually turning it into a race car as time went on. That car was bought by Dave Lewis in 1987.

John L said...

Peter, Jim S tells me that Terry had three road cars that he knows of - a bronze coloured coupe, B8/?, LGP666 and LMR222. (can anybody put chassis numbers to these cars?) He doesn't remember Terry having any accidents other than with the race car (he'd left the chains off the coupling!). The race car was rebuilt with a new body over the Christmas/New Year break (1973/74) by Ross McConnell with Terry's help. Jim asks if anyone knows where Terry is these days. Bit of trivia - the original race car body was a Cortina indicator one which someone must have updated before it was painted. The car sat around partially completed for quite a while.

John L said...

From Jim again:-
"I have remembered that Terry did have an accident in his blue coupe. It was a front end one where the driver's wheel ended up damaging the footwell. The wishbones sheared off at the chassis as sometimes happened. As I remember it Terry wasn't impressed."

PeterG said...

That clears up a few things - the Spooner car kept the same chassis but was rebodied after being wrecked on the trailer, what did Chris Clearihan do with it after Hume Weir? and what chassis No. did it have?
The prize car was a totally new car ??
The Canon car when first raced with large flares had window glass, when it reapeared in 1974 it had the smaller flares and probably lightweight doors with no windows, Chris Clearihan raced in this form, and when he replaced it wth B8/57 it too was less door windows, Allan Hanns raced it in this config. and that car didn't appear to get windows untill it was painted solid blue - Johns photos at Mallala.

Anonymous said...

Hello im writing on behalf of my dad, Terry Spooner as im more adapt to the internet then he is.

The canon sponsorship was for that competition only and they requested that they get great exposure which, the crash gave them. Suprisingly they werent upset as my dad thought they would be.
He also had 3 Road Cars and one race car. A Gold coupe, red soft top, the racing car and a blue BMW coupe - which was the one he first had an accident in. He tells me that he was leaving a photo shoot and was driving a bit to fast as he was late for an appointment a volkswagen infront of him did a u-turn and with little time to avoid it, they crashed. To dads suprise a minister got out of the car swearing profusely at him.

If you would like to ask more questions you can get him at:
terry55spooner@yahoo.com.au

Sarah