EJS-Climax: in Chapman’s wheeltracks

For his new racer’s body, Snusher turned to another cutting-edge product of Britain’s lively mid-1950s motorsport scene, the Microplas Mistral.

Microplas had been formed in 1954 by a group of 750 Motor Club members looking to take advantage of the new technology of glassfibre to produce streamlined bodies for their Austin Sevens.

The Mistral was the firm’s second offering, released just a year later and designed to fit over the chassis of a Ford Ten this time.

Snusher decided it was just the right size for his Special and paid £58 for the body, already at least halfway through his build.

The design of the EJS-Climax caught the attention of The Autocar

Rather than the MG gearbox most commonly mated to the Climax, Snusher sourced a David Brown five-speed for his transmission.

From there onwards, however, the budding builder was remarkably creative.

He started with a steel tubular spaceframe, clearly inspired by the Lotus MkVIII, that weighed just 22kg as a bare chassis, then manufactured a suspension system completely of his own design. 

The front set-up was so novel that The Autocar devoted a page to Snusher’s new Special in September 1956, including a painstakingly detailed diagram.

Racing stripes were part of the EJS-Climax’s livery from the beginning

Two parallel transverse arms and two leading arms located each wheel, creating a sort of double-wishbone effect that provided constant camber and castor through its full range of travel.

Tubular shock absorbers provided the damping while, extremely unusually, the two front wheels shared two transverse springs between them.

The first was a helical tension spring mounted beneath the suspension; then, unable to find a helical spring of the correct rate, Snusher mounted an additional leaf spring on top of the assembly to boost it.

The Autocar reported that his plan at the time was to remove the leaf spring once he found the helical spring he was searching for, but the car’s short career meant he never got round to it – but more on that later.

The side vents were left uncut by its creator, Edwin Joseph Snusher

Snusher was particularly inspired by Chapman’s thoughts on the merits of reducing unsprung weight, which explains his desire to use a single helical spring up front and his choice of rear suspension.

He was slightly more conventional here, with a de Dion axle sprung by Woodhead-Monroe coil-over dampers, but even so he built the axle from two parallel tubes rather than the typical single piece.

Doing so created slightly more clearance for the differential (the two tubes together could be thinner than one single tube), which was useful because Snusher also fitted inboard rear brakes.

The broad transmission tunnel of the EJS-Climax dominates its functional cockpit

Even the differential was Snusher’s own aluminium-alloy casting, containing gears by Rogers and driving the wheels via halfshafts from a Bedford lorry.

Completing the recipe were a set of Girling brakes and a heavily modified Morris Minor steering rack.

All of which means Snusher built far more of his car than was typical in the owner-driver motorsport culture of the 1950s, and he wasn’t cutting any corners in the process.

He was absorbing and copying much of Chapman’s good work, while experimenting with his own ideas.

‘Snusher started with a steel tubular spaceframe, then he manufactured a suspension system of his own design’

That care is still evident today, in details such as the neat, hand-formed aluminium floor panels that enclose not only the interior, but also the engine bay from below and the rear axle.

When the new car took its public bow at Crystal Palace in August 1956, The Autocar commented on the quality of the workmanship on the EJS, as well as its unusual design.

Snusher lined up at Crystal Palace to take part in the British Automobile Racing Club’s Sports Car B race.

He finished fourth in his debut outing, which sounds impressive at first, but perhaps less so among just eight entrants.

The Microplas glassfibre bodywork was largely unchanged

He also contested the 1956 Brighton Speed Trials and a race at Silverstone; the results are not known, but presumably unremarkable.

Snusher is then recorded on an entry list at a BARC event at Goodwood, although he didn’t contest the race following a breakdown in practice.

It was a fairly muted start, and it all came to an abrupt halt at Brands Hatch late in ’56 when Snusher got into a minor accident.

The EJS wasn’t badly damaged, but its driver’s confidence was.

The redline on the EJS-Climax’s tachometer sits at the 12 o’clock position

He gave up on circuit racing but would continue as a rally driver, including entering a couple of Rallye Monte-Carlo events.

Meanwhile, he disassembled his Special and sold off the engine and gearbox.

The question remains unanswered as to whether Snusher lost confidence in the car or in himself.

Snusher has long since passed away, but we have the opportunity to form an opinion on an answer thanks to his stepson – not because he recorded Edwin’s thoughts, but because some 45 years later he put the car back together.

The low-slung stance of the EJS-Climax is most evident on the move

A correct-spec Climax FWA was sourced for the EJS, while a four-speed MGA gearbox has replaced the rare David Brown five-speed.

Sherwood Restorations did the final bits to get it on the road in 2001, painting the body along with other mechanical work.

It was sold in 2003 and has since made its way to Gallery Aaldering in The Netherlands, where it is for sale again.

Approaching the EJS-Climax – Snusher chose the name for the car’s first race at Crystal Palace – it’s remarkable just how small and low it is.

The EJS-Climax has small marker lights, instead of full headlamps

The only cars on the same scale are Lotus contemporaries such as the MkVIII and MkIX, but even those reach a bit higher thanks to their Frank Costin-designed rear wings.

The Mistral body of the EJS, coupled with such a low chassis (far shallower than the Ford Ten chassis for which it was designed), gives the appearance of an overgrown speedbump making its way down the road, almost flush with the Tarmac.

It’s a handsome body, to which Snusher added a few details.

Most Mistrals have full headlights cut into the front wings, but the EJS has small marker lights, while the side vents have been left uncut.

The inboard rear drum brakes and homemade differential casing of the EJS-Climax are all integrated neatly

I’m surprised that Snusher even went to the effort of painting stripes on it, although period photography confirms that the car wore them from the start.

The headlights mounted in the front air intake and the roll-over hoop are more recent additions.

My time with the car is limited: it has been sitting in storage for months, if not years, and the engine is gaining heat too quickly.

The body’s front opening is small, and Snusher’s decision to largely enclose the engine bay provides further opportunity for overheating if the cooling system is not fully maintained.

This classic car’s Microplas glassfibre body is mounted to a spaceframe of Snusher’s own making

It’s enough time to discover, however, that although this is definitely a racing car in the harshness of its controls, there isn’t anything unnerving about the way it drives.

The seat is tight and the clutch is merciless, both in its weight and the severity of its action: setting off on gravel without digging a small hole underneath each rear wheel is almost impossible, while the steering is heavy at paddock speeds despite the car’s extremely lithe 405kg.

The Climax’s hot camshaft, meanwhile, requires plenty of revving in order to make progress.

So far, so race car. But, at road speeds at least, it doesn’t feel wayward, and it corners with a neutral character unusual for a car of its era.

The prominent roll hoop is a modern addition

There’s no real roll in the corners, either – another priority for Snusher.

It’s possible, of course, given the homebrew suspension’s lack of development, that at higher speeds and under greater forces the set-up will produce a strange handling quirk, which may have been what spooked its maker.

But given the rightness of the fundamentals of Snusher’s work, as well as how little time he had actually spent in the car – it’s estimated that he drove it for fewer than 500 miles – my instinct is that he could have ironed out any such issue had he continued with the EJS.

The handbrake of the EJS-Climax is located in the sill

Whatever happened at Brands Hatch, while not catastrophic, probably just put real fear into Snusher.

His ambition was to build a better car than anyone else, but he doesn’t appear to have made any bold claims about his own prowess as a driver.

It may not be entirely coincidental that his early exit from circuit racing happened just as veteran Formula One driver and Le Mans winner Louis Rosier died in November 1956, following injuries sustained in a sports-car race at Monthléry.

‘It’s remarkable how small and low it is. The only cars on the same scale are Lotus contemporaries, such as the MkVIII and MkIX’

It’s the dream of many an enthusiast to create a sports car of their own, and Britain during the mid-’50s enjoyed a brief golden age for doing just that.

The technology was simple enough that an individual in a shed could create something genuinely innovative and of good relative quality, but it had also developed to a point where decent off-the-shelf components were widespread yet still affordable.

The EJS-Climax was not an influential car, despite its obvious potential, but it is a showcase – perhaps better even than the hallowed Lotus models of the 1950s – of both the remarkably fertile engineering environment from which it came and the limits of individual ingenuity.

Images: Max Edleston

Thanks to: Nick Aaldering, Gallery Aaldering

Coventry Climax FW: the darling of British motorsport

Inside the Coventry Climax engine, courtesy of a sketch from Autocar magazine

Starting off as a car builder in its own right in 1903 as Lee-Stroyer, Coventry Climax (the name was changed in 1917) focused on engine production after just a few years.

Its motors were used in everything from sports cars to generators and even the snow tractors Ernest Shackleton used for his infamous 1914 Antarctic expedition. 

When in 1950 the Ministry of Defence put out a tender for a new mobile fire pump that was light enough to be carried by two people, the Coventry Climax team – headed by Walter Hassan (formerly of Jaguar and the XK engine) and Harry Mundy (ex-BRM) – designed an all-aluminium, overhead-cam engine unlike any mass-produced four-cylinder seen in Britain before.

Labelled the Feather Weight, or FW, the small engine was built to run continuously at high revs, from cold, and it weighed just 82kg.

John Cooper, Cyril Kieft and Colin Chapman all agitated for an automotive version, eager to move on from all-iron, undersquare BMC and Ford engines.

The four-cylinder Coventry Climax engine was initially designed to power a mobile fire pump

The FWA was introduced in 1955 with a capacity of 1097cc and outputs of 76-96bhp, depending on tune.

Cooper, Kieft and Lotus all took the engine to Le Mans from 1955-’57, with the latter notching up an impressive seventh overall in 1956.

The FWA was used throughout British motorsport, too, in low-volume sports cars from Lotus, Fairthorpe and Turner.

A small run of FWB 1460cc engines was produced for Formula Two racing, while the short-stroke 744cc FWC won the Le Mans Index of Performance prize in a Lotus Eleven in 1957.

There was also a sole diesel prototype, named FWD, so when Lotus commissioned a 1216cc engine for the new Elite, it was labelled the FWE; power outputs ranged from 70-105bhp.

A smaller, simplified variant of the FW, the FWM, was later licensed to fellow Coventry resident Rootes to power the Hillman Imp, of which more than 400,000 were built.

The FW also formed the basis of the highly successful twin-cam FPE and later FWMV V8 Formula One engines, winning championships with both Cooper and Lotus.

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