The Ex-Sir Stirling Moss, ex-Richard Thwaites, ex-John Monson
1964 Elva-BMW Mark 7S Sports-Racing Two-Seater

• Previous Goodwood Revival Entrant
• Extensively campaigned in period
• First built for British hillclimbs
• Ideal for historic racing


Here we offer this delightful Elva-BMW sports-racing car which during the late 1980s was owned campaigned at Historic level by none other than the legendary former world's finest racing driver Stirling Moss - many years before, in 2000, he was Knighted thus becoming Sir Stirling Moss.

During the late 1950/early 1960s Sir Stirling had become absolutely 'Mr Motor Racing' known worldwide for his extraordinary capabilities as a racing driver. He was for several seasons the absolute performance yardstick by which all other professional racing drivers measured their own abilities.

Tragically, his frontline career was cut short by a terrible life-threatening accident in a Formula 1 Lotus-Climax 18 during the 1962 Easter Monday Goodwood race meeting. Recovery took several years, but Sir Stirling never lost his taste for racing which he indulged, initially as team patron and entrant, and later with a return to "occasional racing", not least in 1980 driving semi-professionally for the Audi team in the British Touring Car Championship.

He was not very impressed by the driving standards he encountered within that category, not least by widespread acceptance of driving standards and body-contact between the cars which would have been unacceptable in his heyday of racing with bare arms, simple cork-and-canvas polo helmets and nothing in terms of seat harness and roll-over protection.

Opting out of such competition after that season, he became increasingly involved in Historic racing with both Grand Prix and sports-racing cars. He liked cars which were neat, and clever, and fast - and such pretty little 2-litre sports-racing cars as this Elva-BMW Mark VIIS really appealed to him.

Of course, he had scored perhaps the most incredible race win of his stellar career in 1955 when he took top honours for the factory Mercedes-Benz team in the notoriously challenging Mille Miglia 1,000-mile road race around Italy, averaging over 97mph for the entire distance and beating team-mate Juan Manuel Fangio - five-times Formula 1 World Champion - into second place.

That same year had seen Bexhill, Sussex-based engineer Frank Nicholls launch his Elva Cars company, producing small-capacity sports-racing cars for customer sale. Subsequently the company was re-formed and re-housed in Rye, Sussex. The brand name derived from 'elle va' - simply French for 'she goes'.

Elva had considerable success with sports and Formula Junior single-seater car designs into the 1960s. Staff engineer Keith Marsden was credited with design of the Elva Mark VII sports racing car intended to race up to international level in the under 2-litre category. Mark VIIs were completed with a variety of engines installed, up to flat-four-cylinder 4-cam Porsche units, but one of the most popular and successful options was the 2-litre BMW in-line 'four'. Most memorably within British racing the Elva Cars works entry of a BMW-powered Mark VIIS for driver Tony Lanfranchi was notably rapid, and successful.

Engine development had been by the legendary BMW head Alex von Falkenhausen, in conjunction with Nicholls, Frank Webb - former HWM team chief mechanic, then founder of Nerus Conversions - and engineer Ray Martin (later famous for his Martin V8 F1 engine) who designed the dry-sump conversion.

Considerable modification to the original Elva Mark VII multi-tubular chassis frame had been necessary to house the German power unit, with deeper cross-section through the engine bay. The engine was then installed at an angle of 17-degrees to the right when viewed from behind. The Mark VIIS chassis also featured improved brake ducting, an increase in 13-inch wheel rim width to 6-inches front and 7-inches rear, and strengthened suspension mounts.

This particular example of the pretty and highly competitive Mark VIIS was campaigned prominently by Richard Thwaites before it was sold via Tony Hildebrand of the London dealership Straight-Six to Sir Stirling early in 1987. He then competed in it within the prestigious new FIA Cartier Championship for Historic Cars.

It is believed that this 1964-built Elva-BMW was completed originally to special order from customer Ray Terry - of the Terry valve springs company family - in 1600cc BMW-engined form for customer Ray Terry to use in hill-climbing and it passed later into the hands of leading female driver Georgina Bailey-Hill. We understand it was at an early stage fitted with a Nerus-tuned Ford engine and later hill-climbed by Roy Lane and Mike Carroll until 1973, when Richard Thwaites and Mike Wood then bought it for the 1974 Classic Car Championship, to be driven by Mr Thwaites. It was in 1975 that it was re-equipped with an Alan Smith-tuned 2-litre BMW power unit (one of only six such Smith-BMW engines), and it was in this form that it promptly carried Richard Thwaites to Championship victory. In 1976 Mike Wood campaigned the car, winning his class and finishing second overall to Thwaites, by that time Brabham BT8-mounted.

After several years in storage the car was then offered through Straight-Six and bought by Stirling Moss. While generally driving, as he would put it, "...just for fun, old boy", he still proved searingly fast whenever he chose, and in one memorable race-round at Brands Hatch he seemed set to win until he was baulked by a back-marker on the very last lap, and had to settle for second place overall.

Racing writer John Blunsden, himself a most capable driver, track tested Tony Lanfranchi's works car at Brands Hatch in mid-summer 1964. He reported in the monthly 'Motor Racing' magazine that "...the BMW engine has a lot of torque, making Brands Hatch short circuit a three-gear problem - third for the hairpin and Clearways and fourth everywhere else except for the top straight where fifth comes up past the pits. This was with the transmission geared to give 140mph at 7,200rpm.

"The engine did not seem at all 'top endy' ... giving more horsepower at 5,000rpm than the majority of under 2-litre units are turning out when right on the cam. You really have to take care with that right foot... a state of oversteer can always be Provoked... it speaks well of the chassis that when I put my foot in it too deeply coming over the top of Clearways the car used less than half the width of track in pulling itself out of a very healthy four-wheel slide."

He continued: "The speed build-up in fourth and fifth is quite spectacular - the car seems to rocket up the straight...I was seeing 6,000rpm in fifth before Paddock Bend, and braking early. Later, Tony put in a few laps and saw 6,500 at the same point, which is about 126mph!...The Hewland gearbox proved extremely fast, third to fourth across the gate being incredibly quick - just like tripping a light switch".

John Blunsden ended his track test by declaring "I wouldn't pretend...that...I learnt to drive the Elva-BMW properly. Yet despite all the feather-footing we managed to get below 58 seconds, which last year would have been knocking on the door of the sports car lap record". Later that same day Tony Lanfranchi clocked 55.0secs - faster than Hugh Dibley's contemporary 1964 lap record in a 2 1/2-litre Brabham-Climax...entered by Stirling Moss.

Now this ex-Sir Stirling Elva-BMW Mark VIIS is offered for sale, having been raced in recent years at the iconic Goodwood Revival Meeting and prepared by Hall and Hall. It is accompanied by a considerable file of documentation detailing its individual history and including considerable Moss material. We recommend it for the closest possible consideration by any would-be Historic racer, and - plainly - what a great track day conveyance it would also be...

Incidentally while, upon close inspection, the car's chassis plate is plainly stamped '059', it can in haste be mis-read as '069'. This appears to be the case concerning the old FIA Historic Passport paperwork in the most extensive history file, which lists the chassis serial as '069' - plainly in error since that identity relates to the half-sister Elva-Porsche Mark 7S preserved for many years within the Revs Institute collection in Florida. This car's provenance as '059' appears firm dating back to initial customer Ray Terry, in 1964.