11 road cars driven by F1 hero Jim Clark

It wasn’t just single-seaters…

More than half a century after his fatal accident at Hockenheim in Germany, Jim Clark is still regarded as one of the finest racing drivers of all time.

The twice Formula One World Champion, Indianapolis 500 winner and Berwickshire farmer is of course best known for his performances at the wheel of various Lotus single-seaters.

Here, however, we’ll be avoiding those, and concentrating on the road-legal cars Clark either owned or had access to.

As you’ll see, it’s a varied selection – Clark’s road-car experiences bore little resemblance to those of fellow World Champions Juan Manuel Fangio, Ayrton Senna or Lewis Hamilton.

(All photos are of representative cars, unless indicated otherwise in the text.)

1. Sunbeam-Talbot 90

Clark’s first car was a Sunbeam-Talbot 90 given to him by his father James Clark Snr (known within the Berwickshire farming community as JC1), once he had finished with it.

Clark Jnr (JC2) took part in local rallies in this not particularly sporty saloon.

He soon developed a reputation among young local motoring enthusiasts for being very quick, if sometimes a little reckless. The latter criticism would disappear as his motorsport career developed.

2. Sunbeam MkIII

Clark fans are well aware that their hero started out in a Sunbeam. It is less well known that he had two.

The first was written off after a road accident on the night of a Hawick and District Young Farmers dance.

Clark replaced it with an updated model (no longer bearing the Talbot name) which he bought from a dealer in Coldstream, less than a mile from the border with England. This was the first car in which he competed in track events.

3. DKW Sonderklasse

JC1 and Mrs Clark tolerated their son’s participation in most motorsport events, but drew the line at circuit racing, which they considered too dangerous.

Clark’s friend Ian Scott-Watson tried to get round this in June 1956 by taking him to a race meeting at Crimond in Abderdeenshire, where he had entered his DKW Sonderklasse saloon (pictured – the first of five ‘Deeks’ he would own) and only mentioning when he got there that he had secretly entered Clark in one of the events.

Competing against sports cars, Clark finished last, but he was also three seconds a lap faster than Scott-Watson, who was himself a fine driver.

News of these exploits reached the family home before Clark did. His parents were surprisingly good-humoured about it, and felt they could no longer tell Clark he couldn’t race when he had already done so.

4. Goggomobil T250

Scott-Watson crashed his third DKW beyond repair in 1957 while avoiding a drunk driver, injuring his left knee in the process.

Petrol rationing was in force at the time, as a result of the Suez crisis, so he decided to replace the dead Deek with the most economical car he could find. This turned out to be a Goggomobil T250, a tiny German car with a 247cc two-stroke engine mounted in the rear.

Scott-Watson modified it by mounting the driver’s seat much further back than usual so that he could operate the clutch with his whole leg, rather than putting strain on his still recovering knee.

As we’re about to see, it was due to a combination of the Suez crisis and Scott-Watson’s injury that Clark is surely the only F1 World Champion ever to have competed in a Goggomobil.

Goggomobil T250 (cont.)

Clark spent very little time with the Goggomobil, but he did share it with Scott-Watson in a driving test (or autotest as it would be called today) at the barracks in Leith, organised by the Scottish branch of MG Car Club.

“Everybody was roaring their heads off seeing him driving this stupid little car,” Scott-Watson recalls today, “but he was absolutely amazing in it.”

5. Porsche 1600 Super

As perhaps Britain’s best-known DKW owner, Scott-Watson built up a good relationship with the UK importer, AFN Ltd.

AFN also imported Porsches, and contacted Scott-Watson in 1957 to offer him a 1600 Super (a variant of the Porsche 356A with a 75bhp 1.6-litre engine), which had previously been owned by band leader Billy Cotton.

Cotton was a large man, and even though the car was only a year old it listed noticeably to the right, where the springs had weakened under Cotton’s weight.

Porsche 1600 Super (cont.)

Scott-Watson used the Porsche as a dual-purpose road and competition car, and offered it to Clark to compete in races, sprints and hillclimbs from October 1957 to July 1959.

As a result of Clark’s performances in the car, Huschke von Hanstein, then head of Porsche’s motorsport activity, offered to give it a full service at the factory in Stuttgart.

The ‘service’ was more comprehensive than anticipated. Although no competition parts were added, the car was stripped down and completely rebuilt – and once the process was finished it no longer listed to the right.

“It looked absolutely pristine,” says Scott-Watson. “I got a bill for £120, but it must have been well over £1000 worth of work.”

6. Jaguar D-type

The Border Reivers team was founded in the early 1950s by Jock McBain, who owned a garage in Chirnside (the town nearest Clark’s farm) and a Ford dealership in Berwick-upon-Tweed, less than 20 miles to the east.

In 1958, Border Reivers bought a Jaguar D-type (pictured with Ian Scott-Watson in 2018) which was intended to be shared by the team members, though as things turned out Clark did nearly all the driving.

In the D-type, the Porsche and another car which we’ll come to shortly, Clark competed in over 50 events that year, and took overall or class honours in nearly half of them.
 

Jaguar D-type (cont.)

Although it was road-registered, the D-type was almost always transported to competitions. Clark would never have driven it on public roads, had a series of unfortunate events not occurred before a race meeting at Full Sutton in Yorkshire on 5 April 1958.

The Border Reivers team member who used his farm lorry as a transporter pulled out at short notice because it was snowing in Berwickshire (though not, as it turned out, in Yorkshire).

Clark decided to use his own lorry instead, but managed to fill the water system with the radiator tap open, allowing the water to fall straight on to straw underneath. The engine was cooked by the time he reached Berwick-upon-Tweed.

The only remaining option was for Clark to drive the D-type to Yorkshire, with Scott-Watson following in the Porsche. Clark won two races at Full Sutton in the Jaguar (becoming the first person to lap a British circuit at an average of over 100mph in a sports car), and finished sixth in another in the Porsche, before driving the D-type back home.

7. Triumph TR3

Late in 1957, Clark bought the Triumph TR3 which had been on display at that year’s Scottish Motor Show in Glasgow.

He used it principally as a road car, but also competed with it occasionally during his very busy 1958 season.

Triumph TR3 (cont.)

The events Clark took part in it included two hillclimbs held on consecutive weekends at the Rest And Be Thankful in Argyll and at least one autotest.

He was reasonably competitive in his class in the hillclimbs, but was beaten on each occasion by himself in the Porsche.

8. Lotus Elite

In what he has since described as “a mental aberration which I have never regretted”, Scott-Watson agreed to buy a Lotus Elite for Clark to compete in, on the strict understanding that Clark would buy the Porsche in return.

His first race in the Lotus was at Brands Hatch on Boxing Day in 1958. He failed to beat Colin Chapman in another Elite only because of an encounter with a backmarker on the last lap. Chapman, already impressed by Clark after a previous test session at Brands, was now sure that he was looking at a future star.

On the way home, the Elite’s engine blew up within a mile of Scott-Watson’s house. When he complained about this, Chapman replied that this sort of thing was bound to happen if you raced a car.

Scott-Watson pointed out that Lotus had been track testing the Elite before he bought it. Chapman acknowledged this, and sent a replacement engine at no cost.

Lotus Elite (cont.)

That Elite had an interesting life. Many years down the line, Scott-Watson was asked by a later owner to confirm that this was indeed his old car.

Scott-Watson said that it was, on the basis of three pieces of evidence. First, there were signs of repair at the point where a rear shock absorber had punched through the monocoque while Clark was racing at Oulton Park. Second, there was a hole for an aerial, made when Scott-Watson decided to fit a radio.

Third, the bonnet was slightly damaged. This was because two fighting dogs had accidentally landed on it while he was driving through the village of Greenlaw.

Lotus Elite (cont.)

Scott-Watson refused to allow the Elite to be raced at Le Mans in 1959 because of the shock absorber incident at Oulton Park.

Clark and John Whitmore therefore shared another example which at the time was owned by Lotus, though it was listed as a Border Reivers entry.

Scott-Watson bought the car immediately afterwards. Three weeks later, Clark competed in it at the Bo’ness hillclimb (pictured). He won his class in it, beating himself in the Porsche, and also took overall honours in the Border Reviers Lister-Jaguar.

Lotus Elite (cont.)

Finding the Le Mans car uncomfortable on the road, Scott-Watson bought a third Elite, which he kept in standard trim.

Clark did not drive it on the road, but he did use it for two or three practice laps before a race at the Nürburgring. Innes Ireland asked for, and was given, permission to do the same thing, followed in quick succession by Bruce McLaren and Graham Hill.

Clark had yet another Elite (pictured) – this one fitted with a Hobbs Mecha-Matic gearbox – for road use, following grumbles from Chapman about a works Lotus driver turning up to races in a Porsche. 

9. Lotus Elan

Clark drove at least three Elans, though never in competition. The most famous, because of its role in a Lotus photoshoot, was the first production model, registered 997 NUR and fitted with a 1498cc version of the Lotus Twin Cam engine.

Clark drove it for around 15,000 miles until he was offered another Elan upgraded by Harold Radford. He gave 997 NUR back to Lotus, who then sold it to Scott-Watson.

Like Clark, Scott-Watson used it only as a road car, but he loaned it to rally star Andrew Cowan (future winner of the 1968 and 1977 London to Sydney Marathons) for the first-ever race meeting at Ingliston, near Edinburgh, in 1965. Cowan finished a close second to a race-prepared Elan.

Lotus Elan (cont.)

In an echo of a story about the first Elite, 997 NUR’s engine blew up when Scott-Watson was overtaking a Sunbeam Rapier just south of the border.

Colin Chapman said he had been planning to change it anyway, and sent a new 1558cc unit. The car had 86,000 miles on the clock by the time Scott-Watson sold it.

Lotus Elan (cont.)

997 NUR was completely restored and is now in excellent condition. Its red and silver paintwork was used for the 100,000th Lotus, an Evora GT410 Sport (pictured). This car was raffled to raise funds for the new Jim Clark Motorsport Museum in Duns.

Clark’s Radford car no longer exists, but his third Elan does. This is a Bahama Yellow S3 later owned by his friend, the Swiss motorsport journalist Gérard ‘Jabby’ Crombac.

There is evidence that Clark also had another, much less well-known Elan, registered 513 WAR, which was stolen while parked at Silverstone.

10. Ford Galaxie

In 1963, Clark had the use of Colin Chapman’s Ford Galaxie. Ian Scott-Watson recalls waking up in the back seat of this huge 7.0-litre saloon on the way back from a party in Glasgow, and hearing Clark mention that the car seemed to be a bit of a handful.

Scott-Watson said he thought the road must be icy, which turned out to be true. Clark continued home at undiminished speed, thoroughly enjoying himself in conditions the Galaxie was hardly designed to cope with.

Ford Galaxie (cont.)

Clark also raced a Galaxie at Brands Hatch, and bought a roadgoing version of his own in 1965.

The road car had an automatic transmission. Professional racing drivers aren’t supposed to like that sort of thing, but Clark had been enthusiastic about autos since his experience with the Hobbs Mecha-Matic unit in his Elite.

11. Ford Cortina

In addition to mastering a great many single-seaters and sports cars, Clark was a tremendously successful saloon car driver.

Most notably, he won the 1964 British Saloon Car Championship in a Mk1 Lotus Cortina, and raced other examples on both sides of the Atlantic.

There was no need for him to drive these on the road, but this was absolutely necessary in the case of another Cortina in which he competed in the 1966 RAC Rally. He crashed out of the event, but not before impressing rally experts with his speed on gravel tracks.

Perhaps this could have been expected. Having driven so many powerful racing cars on treaded tyres, and slithered around on unsurfaced farm roads back in the Sunbeam days, Clark was no stranger to holding a slide at high speed.

Ford Cortina (cont.)

In late 1963, work began on a special version of the Lotus Cortina. Built using components already used on the Elan, the prototype had independent suspension and disc brakes at the rear, and reputedly handled considerably better than the standard model.

Clark used it as a road car for a long time, and greatly enjoyed it. Ford, however, was not persuaded by the project, and canned it before any production cars were built.