Page 10 - On the Prowl: The Definitive History of the Walkinshaw Jaguar Sports Car Team

ON THE PROWL
1984-1985: Birth of the XJR-6
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Tony Southgate
Tony Southgate was a born engineer. From his earliest days
he would tinker with toy cars and create doodles of machines in
his notebooks. His first big project was the construction of a boat in his
bedroom that ended up too big to get down the stairs of his house!
Naturally he wound up in an engineering job after finishing school
and went into a five-year apprenticeship. As a youth, he always had an
interest in motorsport, but after becoming an apprentice he turned his
attention to actually building and racing his own car, with the amateur
750 Motor Club. After gaining experience with 750s and completing his
apprenticeship he decided to make a career as a race car designer and
wrote a very polite letter introducing himself to Eric Broadley, the owner of
Lola. Broadley was impressed with the young man and despite the small
size of his design department, offered Southgate a job in early 1962.
For the next eighteen months, he worked on Lola’s Le Mans GT
prototype, the Mk6. This cleverly designed chassis was built to
allow a Ford V8 to fit, given that the rules at Le Mans now allowed the
larger American engines. Ford paid close attention. They had been in
negotiations with Enzo Ferrari to buy his company, but unbeknownst to
them it was all a ruse to increase the price he was trying to get from FIAT.
When the American manufacturer refused to allow Ferrari to run in the
Indy 500, the stubborn Italian had an excuse to pull out of the deal. Henry
Ford II was furious, having spent millions of dollars on due diligence, and
vowed to go to Le Mans and beat Ferrari at its own game. To do that, Ford
would need to partner with an experienced race car builder.
Meanwhile, Broadley, Southgate and the Lola team had successfully
assembled a single Mk6 for the 1963 running of Le Mans, where it ran well
but didn’t finish. The potential of the car, with its Ford V8 engine, didn’t
go unnoticed by Ford, which decided to pursue Broadley for its Ferrari
revenge project.
Terms were settled and the Ford GT40 project began in the summer
of 1963, with a two-year agreement. Ford’s own team of engineers soon
arrived, and Southgate could see the writing on the wall: there was no
way he was going to get a chance to be involved, green as he was. He
left Lola for the Brabham race team, only to return just as the first year
of the GT40 contract was coming to a close. Despite the interesting work
at Brabham, the affable Southgate had clashed with the co-owner Ron
Taurenac, so it wasn’t too hard for Broadley to convince him to come
back. Ford had decided that they had gotten as much benefit from Lola
as they needed and ended the arrangement halfway through the term.
In the intervening year, the company had moved to much larger new
premises in the London suburb of Slough, and Southgate now found
himself part of a larger and more professional company. He stayed with
Lola until 1967 before getting an offer from Dan Gurney’s All American
Racers team to design its 1968 Formula 1 car. Expecting to be based in
AAR’s UK office, Southgate quickly discovered the job would be in the
US headquarters in Southern California. His fiancée Sue was none too
pleased to have to postpone their October wedding while he rushed to
finish the car during his first months overseas.
By the end of the year the design was complete, and Tony and Sue
were married, but Gurney pulled the plug — the money to run in F1 just
wasn’t there. All was not lost, as the Englishman was moved over to the
Indycar project, where he spent the next two years. After an encounter
with dual motorcycle and F1 champion John Surtees at a Riverside Can-
√ Tony Southgate was part of the team that designed Lola’s Mark 6,
which was the forerunner of Ford’s GT40. This car went to Le Mans in
1963 painted in British racing green, and was driven by David Hobbs and
Richard Atwood, who did a terrific job of getting up to ninth before an
accident put them out of the race. (Lola Archive)
VTony Southgate’s first fresh design for BRM was the P160 F1 car, which
was driven to a fine second place in just its fourth race by Pedro Rodriguez
in June 1971 at Zandvoort. The race was won by Jacky Ickx in a Ferrari.
Three weeks later, the Mexican was killed, ironically behind the wheel of a
Ferrari. (Eric della Faille Photograph Collection/Revs Institute)
FPO FPO
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