The ex-Tony Gaze, Grand Prix-wheelbase then Formula 2
1952 Alta Racing Single-Seater

* Built for Australian RAF hero Tony Gaze
* WW2 pilot owner first suggested racing at Goodwood
* 36 years in the Donington Collection
* Gorgeous restoration project almost completed
* Storied history, F1 to F2 to sports-car, and back

This fascinating purebred competition car from the well respected – and by enthusiasts much-loved – Alta Car & Engineering Company is offered here in almost (but not quite) completely restored condition. Its last previous owner, renowned Alta specialist collector and restorer the late Mr Alan Ede, had acquired it in 2005 from legendary British connoisseur Tom Wheatcroft of Donington Collection fame.

Mr Wheatcroft had acquired the car in an E.J. Brook & Son auction sale at Blenheim Palace in March 1969. He had it restored by his contemporary engineer Tony Merrick as the original prototype postwar Alta Grand Prix car 'GP/1' – which at the time, in its original guise, it was indeed believed to have been – and from the opening of the Donington Collection at the Donington Park race circuit, Derbyshire, in 1971 it remained a most pampered exhibit there alongside the first-off sister GP cars from several other marques.

In fact its origins date back to 1949 when Australian ex-RAF wartime fighter pilot Tony Gaze DFC (and two bars) ordered a GP Alta from the Tolworth, Surrey-based company's founder and principle Geoffrey Taylor. While the contemporary Formula 1 regulations placed a 1.5-litre limit upon eligible supercharged racing engines, Tony Gaze planned to race the car back in Australia where more liberal rules would allow him to use a 2-litre engine which he and Taylor planned to equip with two-stage supercharging...no less.

However, Geoffrey Taylor and his tiny Alta company had always lived a hand-to-mouth existence and were perennially under-funded. This led to delays in manufacture of the projected superchargers and Gaze's plans quickly changed. He opted instead to remain UK-based and turned his attention away from Grand Prix racing and towards contesting 2-litre unsupercharged Formula 2 races both here and around Europe. Apart from any other consideration, such a programme was far more likely to pay for itself in terms of appearance, travel and start money being offered to privateers such as himself.

The engine was consequently completed unsupercharged, with four SU carburettors. He campaigned the new Alta at Goodwood, Silverstone, Monza, Genoa, the Nürburgring, Rome, Naples and on the dauntingly fast high-banked AVUSring in Berlin.

Its racing record in Tony Gaze's hands was as follows:

1951

March 26 – Goodwood Lavant Cup – Troubled debut, practice problems, DNS
May 5 – BRDC International Trophy, Silverstone – Heat 2 track flooded, Rtd
May 13 – Mona Autodrome GP, Italy – Heat 1 16th – Heat 2 12th – 12th overall
May 20 – Columbus GP, Genoa, Italy – 8th
June 3 – EifelRennen, Nürburgring, West Germany – 8th
June 10 – Rome GP, Baths of Caracalla, Italy – Rtd (qualified 5th)
June 24 – Naples GP, Italy – Rtd
July 1 – AVUSRennen, Berlin, West Germany – Rtd after averaging 110mph

Season curtailed due purely to lack of available spare parts from factory.

Through 1952 he confined his single-seater racing in this Alta to three early-season British events.

1952

April 14 – Richmond Trophy, Goodwood – 12th
Lavant Cup, Goodwood – 5th overall (from back of grid)

May 10 – BRDC International Trophy, Silverstone – Heat 10th – Final 16th

Tony Gaze then exchanged this Alta for an ex-works 1951 HWM which he then used for the remainder of the Formula 2 season while also pursuing a sports car programme in Europe

During 1953, John Heath of HW Motors' high-profile racing team telephoned Tony Gaze to say that one of his clients - well-known HWM-Jaguar hill-climb specialist Phil Scragg "had a friend" who wanted to acquire a similar car to Scragg's. That friend was one John Forbes-Clark and it was for him that John Heath initially exchanged an ex-works team 1951 F2 HWM with Gaze for his then-ageing F2 Alta – with the intention of converting it into a Jaguar-engined sprint and hill-climb special.

The project also became delayed, however. Through 1954-55 it was then Phil Scragg himself who commissioned HWM to build a revised and updated 'HWM-Jaguar' for his own use, based upon the chassis of the Gaze F2 car, while instead selling his already up-and-running original hybrid hill-climb car to Forbes-Clark. Scragg's new ex-Tony Gaze chassised sports car with cycle-wing bodywork then starred upon the British hill-climbing scene before he decided to have its chassis/suspension assembly replaced within it by a new and more up-to-date HWM frame and suspension set designed by HWM engineer Eugene Dunn.

Lacking only its cycle-wing sports car bodywork, this then-redundant ex-Gaze F2 chassis was advertised for sale in 'Autosport' magazine, priced at £775 inclusive of "Jaguar D-Type mechanicals", together with a 3.8-litre 6-cylinder Jaguar engine rebuilt to new standards and "since unused", for £785.

The buyer was British Racing Drivers Club member Ken Yeates who made several appearances in the Jaguar-powered Alta before selling it as an engineless rolling chassis to confirmed Alta enthusiast and prominent Vintage Sports Car Club member Hugh Clifford. He built-up the car using GP Alta parts taken from the Alta-Jaguar hybrid sports car and clothed it in the bodywork from original GP Alta 'GP-3' which had been retrieved from 1950s Irish owner/driver Joe Kelly by fellow VSCC luminary, Ray Fielding of Forres, Scotland.

Through 1964 this revived Alta single-seater raced at Oulton Park in the hands of Hugh Clifford and David Gardiner, before it was acquired by John Roberts. It went subsequently to dealership Vintage Autos of Northampton and passed to a Mr Russell. It finally re-appeared in public at the E.J. Brooks & Son auction sale of March 22, 1969, at Blenheim Palace, at which it was knocked-down to Tom Wheatcroft to join his personal racing car collection at his home in Wigston, Leicester, eventually to be become his Donington Collection from its subsequent opening.

Renowned restorer Tony Merrick – then early in his career – had adapted the car with additional body panels from original Grand Prix Alta 'GP2'. He also lengthened the chassis' round-section main longeron tubes from the car's 1951-specification Formula 2 wheelbase length of 7ft 9ins to full GP car dimension of 8ft 3ins, while retaining the car's F2-specification front suspension towers and lower wishbones.

It was then in May 2005 that this remarkable car was acquired from the Collection by Alan Ede, who then set about modifying the chassis and body further to return it to what he described as 'GP-F2-1' specification. Although Tony Gaze had only campaigned the car from 1951 in contemporary Formula 2 guise, Mr Ede's researches had confirmed to him the supercharged Grand Prix or Formule Libre form that the Australian and Geoffrey Taylor of Alta had originally envisaged, and he became intent upon doing precisely the same with his new acquisition.

Sadly – after some 15-16 years of sporadic work – Mr Ede became terminally ill, and this pet project is now offered here unfinished, though not far off completion. He left voluminous documentation with the car (which is now included within multiple files and folders – featuring many contemporary photographs – as part of this Lot). In part this documentation explains his finding that not only the first three postwar Alta single-seater chassis were all built to the Grand Prix car specification set by the original prototype of 1948, but that a fourth frame was also completed, to fulfil that original 1949 Tony Gaze order.

While the Formula 1 Alta prototype 'GP-1' was raced widely through 1948-49 by George Abecassis, John Heath's partner in their HW Motors business (the initials reflecting 'Hersham & Walton Motors'), car 'GP-2' emerged as private owner/driver Geoffrey Crossley's and 'GP-3' fellow-independent Joe Kelly's.

When Tony Gaze opted to have his car completed in pure F2 configuration Mr Ede found that his originally GP-length wheelbase chassis had then (for 1951) been shortened some 6-inches, with bodywork modified to match the F2 design's. This was the chassis/wheelbase modification which Tom Wheatcroft's engineer Tony Merrick had reversed during his restoration twenty years later.

BONHAMS recommends the closest possible inspection of this almost completed restoration project. Work upon it has clearly been carried out to very high standards. For an as-yet unfinalized project it is yet extremely advanced and beautifully presented. It offers tremendous potential for a return to frontline Historic and American Vintage-style racing – or for any collector's fun circuit day use – or indeed to be returned to contemplative display within a private collection or museum. It is what Alta enthusiasts and we seasoned specialists alike would describe with reason as being "just a lovely old lady". And a handsome one to own, and drive.