The Peerless GT – An Unusual British Le Mans Racer

In 1958 before the start of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, an unusual new car took its position ready for the race, it was the only one of its kind in the field and it was the only car with four seats that would compete that year.

The car was a Peerless GT, of the 55 cars that started the race the Peerless would finish 4th in class and 16th overall after covering 240 laps – a remarkable success that brought the young company a wealth of free media attention and helped sell a significant number of cars.

Fast Facts – The Peerless GT

• The Peerless GT used advanced construction techniques by the standards of the late-1950s, with a tubular space frame chassis, de Dion rear suspension, independent front suspension, and a body made from a modern (at the time) lightweight composite material, better known as fiberglass.
• The handsome styling of the cars was likely influenced somewhat by the Aston Martin DB2/4, however the Peerless GT is 100% its own creation, and in recent years it’s proving to be an increasingly popular collector car.
• The mechanicals of the Peerless were supplied by the Triumph TR3 thanks to a close relationship enjoyed by Peerless with Triumph, this makes maintenance and spare parts acquisition relatively simple.

Building The Peerless GT

The Peerless GT was originally to be called the Warwick, the aluminum-bodied prototype carried this name however by the time production began in 1957 the name had been changed to the simpler “Peerless GT” and this is the name that would be used for the full production run of the original cars.

The elegant styling of the car has been winning it fans for generations, but due to the low production numbers we don’t often see them come up for sale.

The car was designed by Bernie Rodger with input from fellow company founders John Gordon and James Byrnes. Enzo Ferrari had a name for upstart British companies who appeared out of nowhere and starting building low volume cars, he called them “garagiste,” and Peerless was an excellent example of the phenomenon.

Rodger was a highly-regarded local engine builder and performance tuner who could squeeze every ounce of performance out of any engine you gave him. Byrnes was a club racer who had seen some on-track successes and wanted to try his hand at building his own car, and Gordon was brought onboard due to his experience in the world of automotive sales and for the fact that he was a keen club racer himself.

As it happened, James Byrnes was also a restauranteur. One of his restaurants was close to the Standard Triumph headquarters and as such it was a favorite with company executives. It was this familiarity that would see Byrnes secure access to Triumph engines and parts that the company would come to rely on for the rest of its existence.

Peerless GT Specifications

Though the Peerless GT is sometimes believed to be merely a rebodied Triumph TR3 nothing could be further from the truth. The car has its own motorsport derived tubular steel space frame chassis, and it measures in at six inches longer than the TR3 and five inches wider.

The GT is powered by the 100 hp, four-cylinder engine from the Triumph TR3, and it’s capable of 110+ mph.

These specifications coupled with the lightweight fiberglass body, the four-cylinder Triumph TR3 engine producing 100 hp and 117 lb ft of torque, and the four-speed gearbox with Laycock overdrive resulted in a car that could exceed 110 mph, a heady figure for the day, particularly for a four-seater.

The car was displayed at the 1957 Paris Motor Show where it received a positive reception and no small amount of curiosity about its fiberglass body, known to be the same material used by the Americans for their fancy Corvettes.

Later the same year a Peerless GT would be entered into the 1957 24 Hours of Le Mans piloted by British drivers Peter Jopp and Percy Crabb. Remarkably the car finished well and shot the fledgling car maker into the headlines.

Despite the promise of the car and the company the production of the Peerless GT ceased in 1960, it was exceedingly tough for small automakers to remain competitive but Peerless did better than most – building 325 cars and making a good name for themselves.

The Return Of The Warwick

In the years that followed the GT was successfully relaunched using its original name, the Warwick, by company co-founder Bernie Rodger. Though largely similar the car incorporated some chassis and body changes, and an updated dashboard. He kept the car in production from 1960 until 1962, selling approximately 40 of them.

The interior of the car offers seating for four and an excellent driving experience thanks to the chassis and suspension which had been developed for competition.

Rodger had plans for a more powerful version of the car using the all-alloy Buick 215 cubic inch V8, two prototypes with this engine would be built and the name was planned to be either “3.5 Litre” or “GT350.” Interestingly the tooling for this engine would later be bought by Rover and it would become the legendary Rover V8.

This still wouldn’t be the end of the road for the Peerless GT, John Gordon and Jim Keeble used the original Peerless spaceframe design to build a new car initially called the Gordon GT and later named the Gordon-Keeble. This car was powered by a Chevrolet 327 V8 and it featured bodywork designed by Giugiaro and built by Bertone. Approximately 100 were built.

The Peerless GT Shown Here

The car you see here is a 1959 Peerless GT that was given a comprehensive body-off restoration by a Peerless Register member in 2014. The restoration of rare vehicles like this is often best undertaken by marque experts, as they tend to have a wealth of knowledge that assists them in doing things correctly.

The car is now being supplied with its original ‘buff’ logbook and owner’s manual, and it would likely be eligible for a number of vintage racing events like the Goodwood Revival and Le Mans Classic due to the fact that the model was raced in period.

If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can click here to visit the listing on H and H Auctioneers. It’s due to roll across the auction block on the 8th of September and the price guide is £25,000 – £30,000.

Images courtesy of H and H Auctioneers

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The Fiat Panda 4×4 – Italy’s Toughest Little Four-Wheel Drive

The Fiat Panda 4×4 is what happens when the man who designed the DeLorean DMC-12 sets out to create a cheap car that can go almost anywhere, while still accommodating two 50 liter wine demijohns in the trunk.

The name of the Fiat Panda has long been the source of confusion, it wasn’t actually named after those black and white bears from southwest China – it was named for Empanda, the ancient Roman goddess of travelers.

Fast Facts – The Fiat Panda 4×4

• First released in 1983, the Fiat Panda 4×4 featured four-wheel drive running gear built by Steyr-Puch in Austria.
• As the name suggests, the vehicle is the 4×4 version of the regular Fiat Panda, a car that was designed to be tough, cheap to buy, and easy to fix.
• The first version of the Panda 4×4 was powered by a 965cc inline-four cylinder engine with 48 bhp and a 5-speed transmission.
• The 1st gear was very low to give a low range gear for off-road driving, the 5th gear had the same ratio as the 4th gear in a normal Panda.

Developing The Fiat Panda In 15 Days

The Fiat Panda was developed in just 15 days by Giorgetto Giugiaro and Aldo Mantovani in the late 1970s. Giugiaro designed the body and interior, with Mantovani developing the running gear and engineering.

The Panda 4×4 has slightly higher suspension than its two-wheel drive sibling.

Fiat CEO Carlo De Benedetti had laid out a simple design brief for them, the car had to be a “container” that cost no more than the Fiat 126, and it should have the same design philosophy as the Renault 4 and the Citroen 2CV.

When the two men had finished their design they quickly learned that Benedetti had left Fiat days earlier, leaving them with a completed design but no one to sell it to. Fortunately the Fiat board took the time to look over the design and quickly realized that Benedetti had been correct – this car was exactly what Fiat needed to launch themselves into the 1980s.

“The Panda is like a pair of jeans: a simple, practical article of clothing without pretense. I tried to give it the essential quality of a military design — in particular a helicopter: something light, rational, and optimized for a specific purpose.” — Giorgetto Giugiaro

The Fiat Panda entered production in 1980 and it quickly became one of the best selling vehicles in Italy, over the course of the first model’s 1980 to 2003 production run they would sell almost 4.5 million units in Italy, across Europe, and around the world.

Fiat is now on their third generation Panda and it remains a best seller, and any walk though the winding streets of an Italian town will result in countless first generation Fiat Panda sightings. A strong indication that the model has a lot of life left in it.

The Fiat Panda 4×4

The Fiat Panda 4×4 was perhaps the ultimate iteration of the original Panda, a car that had been designed to be tough, utilitarian, and highly capable but lacked the additional ground clearance and four-wheel drive running gear to make off-road use a viable option.

The spare tire is stored under the hood to maximize storage space within the car.

When it was originally conceived the Panda 4×4 wasn’t intended as a leisure vehicle for weekend warriors but for crop farmers, wine makers, dairy farmers, and others who needed a tough, cheap four-wheeler for use both off road and on.

The stamped steel unibody chassis of the original Panda was kept largely the same, however the running gear underneath was changed drastically. Experienced four-wheel drive engineers from Steyr-Puch in Austria worked with Fiat to develop the new drivetrain, which included a live axle rear end on leaf springs, independent front suspension, a transverse front mounted engine taken from the Fiat 100 series, and a 5-speed gearbox.

Rather than integrate a 2-speed transfer case to allow the Panda 4×4 to have high and low range gearing, it was decided to use a 5-speed gearbox with a very low first gear and a high 5th gear that was the same as the regular Panda’s 4th.

The drive could select to use either 2×4 or 4×4 model courtesy of a gear lever in the cabin, and both costs and complexity were kept as low as possible.

The spartan interior was designed to be inexpensive and easy to clean.

Today surviving Panda 4x4s are becoming highly collectible, many lived hard lives on farms and haven’t survived, and many more still succumbed to rust years ago. As a result, good rust free examples are seeing their values rise across the board.

The Fiat Panda 4×4 Shown Here

The Panda 4×4 you see here is a 1989 model that was originally delivered to its first owner in the United Kingdom finished in the red paint work you see it still wearing today.

The car is accompanied by a comprehensive, mostly main dealer service history. The car’s eye-catching red paint work is matched with a multi-coloured cloth interior that extends to the upper section of the door cards and dashboard.

The original steel wheels were recently repainted in cream and four new Pirelli Winter 160 tyres were added. It’s now showing just over 38,000 miles on the odometer, and it’s one of the tidiest looking Panda 4x4s we’ve seen in recent memory.

The car is now being offered for sale by Collecting Cars in England, bidding is live online at the time of writing and you can click here if you’d like to read more about it or register to bid.

Images courtesy of Collecting Cars

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The Austin Champ Was The Quirky British Answer To The American Jeep

The Austin Champ was created in the years after WWII as the British answer to the American Jeep. Development started in 1947 and resulted in a unique four-wheel drive with a Rolls-Royce engine, all-independent suspension, five forward and five reverse gears, and a built-in snorkel that allowed wading in water up to 6 feet deep.

What the team working on the Champ didn’t know what that over at Rover another four-wheel drive was being developed in the same year, and ultimately it would be this vehicle, the Land Rover, that would become the de facto choice for the British military.

Fast Facts – The Austin Champ

• Originally developed after WWII as a “British Jeep,” the Austin Champ was officially known as the “Truck, 1/4 ton, CT, 4×4, Cargo & FFW, Austin Mk.1.”
• The first versions of the Champ were powered by the 80 hp Rolls-Royce-designed B40 4-cylinder engine with a capacity of 2,838cc (2.8 liters).
• All Champs featured unique-for-the-time fully independent suspension on all four wheels, with double wishbones, longitudinal torsion bars, double-acting telescopic hydraulic dampers, and a rubber cone and cup system.
• Austin Champs are relatively uncommon nowadays as they were in production only from 1951 until 1956, it was later replaced with the much more Land Rover-like Austin Gypsy in 1958.

The British Need For A Homegrown Jeep

The American Jeep proved itself an invaluable invention throughout WWII in Europe, North Africa, and the Pacific theaters of war. The British bought vast numbers of them for their own use, but it was clear they needed to develop their own version using locally sourced materials and parts.

Much like the Jeep, the Champ has a stamped steel body on a steel chassis, and a fold down windscreen.

The development program began in 1947 and the Nuffield Organization built a series of three prototypes, these were then vastly improved upon by a team at the government Fighting Vehicles Research and Development Establishment (FVRDE) led by Charles William “Rex” Sewell.

Interestingly, the suspension system was designed by Alec Issigonis, the man who would later become famous as the designer of the Mini.

It was clear that the British designers were trying to build a better Jeep, not just copy the Jeep outright. Although this led to some significant improvements, it also significant increased complexity and cost, which would ultimately be the down fall of the Austin Champ. Even the official name was complicated: Truck, 1/4 ton, CT, 4×4, Cargo & FFW, Austin Mk.1.

Austin Champ – Specifications

The Champ was initially powered by a Rolls-Royce B40 4-cylinder engine with a swept capacity of 2.8 liters and an output of 80 hp. Power was sent back to a 5-speed all-synchromesh gearbox and from there to a rear-mounted transfer box and differential assembly which included a reverse gear.

One unusual benefit of this arrangement is that the Champ famously has five forward gears and five reverse. Power was sent to the front differential via a long shaft which also included a dog clutch to enable four-wheel drive when required.

The suspension consists of double wishbones at all four corners with longitudinal torsion bars, a rubber cone and cup system, and double-acting telescopic dampers. Brakes consist of hydraulically actuated drums front and back with no power assistance.

The first production Champs were powered by the 2.8 liter Rolls-Royce B40 4-cylinder engine producing 80 hp.

Austin took great pains to waterproof the engine, fuel system, and electrical systems, and a fold-up snorkel was fitted to the right side of the hood. This allowed even a standard Champ to wade through water up to six feet deep, though later Champs lacked this system as it was deemed not worth the extra cost.

Much like the Jeep, the Champ has a stamped steel body fitted to a steel chassis, the windscreen could be folded down, and a folding canvas roof could be fitted.

Both military and civilian versions of the vehicle were offered, however the military version was produced in vastly higher numbers. The Champ left production in 1956, in 1958 Austin introduced the far more Land Rover-like Austin Gypsy.

The Austin Champ Shown Here

The 1952 Champ you see here has been given a sympathetic restoration according to the listing, the patina has been left in place as you can tell, and the current owner has another Champ in his collection.

The original War office registration number for this Champ was 45 BE 78 and it’s had four owners since it was bought at a government surplus auction back in 1962.

It’s currently listed for sale on Car and Classic in the UK, bidding is live and at the time of writing it’s sitting at £9,100 which works out to approximately $12,400 USD. If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can click here to visit the listing.

Images courtesy of Car and Classic

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