It’s probably fair to say that what Tony Southgate hasn’t done in motorsport isn’t worth doing.
This designer’s CV is one that scarcely can be believed, as not only does it have extraordinary range it also has extraordinary success. Indeed he even is winner of motorsport’s Triple Crown, as cars he penned have won the Indianapolis 500, the Monaco Grand Prix and the Le Mans 24 Hours with Jaguar and later with Audi.
Having cut his design teeth with the 750 Motor Club then Lola in the 1960s, Southgate went Stateside with Eagle where his car won 1968’s Indianapolis 500. He then designed multiple innovative and successful Formula 1 cars with BRM – where in 1972 Jean-Pierre Beltoise took his P160B to Monaco victory – Shadow, Arrows, Theodore and Osella.
Southgate’s longest stint was in the TWR Jaguar effort that rose to topple the ubiquitous Porsche and dominate 1980s’ sportscar racing, and twice conquer Le Mans. Then after working on Group C Toyotas, the Ferrari 333SP, and developing a Nissan Le Mans car, Southgate was crucial in sharpening Audi into its Le Mans-dominating shape.
And that’s not even the end of it. He’s also stopped in at Lotus and Brabham, among other places, and he’s even designed a Group B rally car with the Ford RS200.
We’re therefore very grateful that he took the time to answer the Motorsport News readers’ many questions. And given everything, it’s best to find out first where these seeds started to sprout.
Question: How did you first get interested in motor racing? And in design?
Alexander Cameron
Via email
Tony Southgate: “Well I was always interested in mechanical things at school, anything really. My very first interest was things like boats, I loved boats, I made a little boat in my bedroom when I was a kid at 12 or 14 or something, and attempted to sail it. It was only a little boat about eight foot, seven foot long for sailing on the Avon, which was fun for a while.
“At school I was good at things like drawing and what we called metalwork theory and practice, which was about engineering. So I had a leaning that way and I got an interest in little model aeroplanes, and then real aeroplanes, because of people making their own little aeroplanes in those days, fairly basic things with motorbike engines on the back and I thought I fancy one of those.
“But then I started going motor racing at about 14, going to races and I got hooked on that and I joined the 750 Motor Club when I was 17 where they catered for people like me, if you can build yourself a car and race it. And it took ages because I was an apprentice at the time at an engineering company, it took me about three years to finish this car. I attempted to race it in 1961 and it lasted about three races and blew up to pieces because it was an Austin 7 engine, they were very fragile.
“But then that coincided with me finishing my apprentice so I decided see if I could get into motor racing. Motor racing in those days was very basic, in the early ’60s, and half the teams were just garages and they were weekend businesses almost. There was only a handful that actually employed people. I tried at Lotus, there was nothing going on at Lotus at the time. So I thought Lola’s, because I wrote to Eric [Broadley, Lola founder] and he said ‘come down and see me’.
“And I was living in Coventry then because that’s where I was born, and I went down to see him in Bromley in Kent. I was used to, in Coventry, big factories and all that sort of stuff, and he had this weeny little workshop with about five or six people in it. And he was very ambitious and he got all these cars he was making, which was like landing in heaven to me, and he offered me a job, at way less money than I was already earning at Coventry, at £13 a week I think.
“Anyway, I accepted, he wanted someone to draw the cars, because he didn’t do so much drawing. He was a quantity surveyor, most of his drawings were on the back of old plans of civil engineering projects, things like that, so he didn’t have to buy paper [laughs]. I joined him in January ’62, and he’d only been in business himself about three years, and like many of the others he did it as a hobby and then he produced that little 1100 sportscar which was the class of the field and he got lots of orders and so he took the big plunge and decided to make them and sell them and try to live off it.
“I joined him when he’d just got into the Formula Junior stages, he’d done the Mk2 and when I got there he was actually building a Formula 1 car, which I thought ‘blimey’. So that’s how I started.”
MN: You mentioned 750 Motor Club, a lot of designers started out there. So why do you think that was?
“Well they offered the
