“We were approached by the Owen family because John remembered as a lad the three BRM V16s on the grid at Goodwood,” says ace historic preparer and former BRM mechanic Rick Hall. “No one was running the original ones because they were very tired, very old and had not had a lot of money spent on them for many years. His dream was to hear three V16s at Goodwood and race.”
The final part of that dream should become a reality this weekend when Hall’s son Rob contests the Goodwood Trophy for grand prix and Voiturette racers from either side of the Second World War in BRM V16 chassis IV, the first of three new cars. It will be the first race for a car only completed last year, but the idea has been to stay as close as possible to the originals and show what the much-maligned but also romantically remembered machine can really do.
TOO MANY PROBLEMS
A glorious failure or technical folly. Depending on how charitable the commentator, those two summaries were often used to describe the BRM Type 15, or V16 as it is better known.
Famously, British Racing Motors arrived with big national enthusiasm shortly after the Second World War, became a laughing stock, rose to win both
