All-Adelaide designed and built Elfin Clisby – Australia's first F1 car – contributes technology to 1967 Brabham title
The all-Adelaide-built Elfin Clisby V6 – Australia's first Formula One racing car – had its first races in 1965 but was dogged by different mishaps. The car's technology was used by repco and contributed to Jack Brabham’s 1967 Formula One world title
More than 10,000 were at South Austrralia’s Mallala race circuit in April 1965 to see the Elfin Clisby, potentially Australia’s first internationally competitive Formula One racing car with every part of it built in Adelaide, by Adelaide engineers, with remarkably few resources.
The Elfin Clisby’s 1.5-litre, double overhead cam, two-valve, 120-degree, twin-carb, 1.5-litre V6 F1 engine was designed by wildly inventive engineer Harold Clisby and built over four years at his small factory in the Adelaide suburb of Prospect over four years from 1961.
The chassis, engine and gearbox (using a VW case) were all made in Adelaide. Clisby designed and built every part except the electrical system, in his small factory. This included aluminium alloy castings, nitrided steel crankshaft machined from a solid billet, 120-ton vibrac conrods and two triple-choke carburettors.
Clisby was supported by the skills of machinist Alec Bladwin and project engineer Kevin Drage. When Clisby was distracted by other projects, Drage saw the engine project completed and installed in an Elfin Monocoque T100 chassis modified by Garrie Cooper at his small factory in the Adelaide suburb of Edwardstown.
Cooper, was founder of the highly successful Elfin Sports Cars and a racing driver in his own right, who went to win the 1968 Singapore Grand Prix, the 1968 1.5 litre championship and the1975 Australian sports car championship – all in V8-powered Formula 5000 Elfin cars.
The Easter Monday 1965 racing debut of the Elfin Clisby, driven by Andy Brown, was reported as promising in some ways and disappointing in others. The engine had a bad carburetion “flat spot” in low-to-medium range but tremendous acceleration past that point. In his first race, Brown drove it to a creditable fifth place, despite a self-imposed rev limit of 8,000- well below maximum power at 9,500- and relatively slow acceleration away from the corners due to carburetion troubles. A rear tyre blew out in first lap of the second race and suspension damage ending its racing for the day.
The Elfin Clisby only raced three more times: at Calder in May when Brown retired with water porosity problems, back at Mallala in June when the car popped an oil line in practice, non-starting the race. In the car’s last appearance in the October Mallala gold star round, it retired from the race, won by Bib Stillwell’s Brabham BT11A Climax, after eight laps when the engine locked up in the straight, gyrating from high speed for 300 metres.
The Elfin Clisby project had a sequel.
When Repco Brabham Engines in Maidstone were looking for an Australian concern to cast their cylinder heads for the race program from 1966 to 1969, they chose Clisby Industries, via Kevin Drage, to fix problems they encountered in making the complex aluminium castings of their V6. With their learnings in this area, Drage made a critical contribution to Jack Brabham’s 1967 Formula One world title by making the cylinder heads for the victorious 3-litre 740-Series Repco Brabham V8s that powered Denny Hulme and Jack Brabham’s Brabham BT24s.
So Australia’s first all-Adelaide, but largely unraced, grand prix engine contributed to the Bradham F1 world championships of its Repco successors.