The Ford from another Galaxie that revolutionised saloon car racing

Graham Hill offered a “friendly finger sign” as he passed Jack Sears and the parked Ford Galaxie during Thursday practice at Silverstone. He was laughing on the other side of his face a couple of days later when the same 7-litre behemoth came steaming past his Jaguar MkII 3.8 and those of Roy Salvadori and Mike Salmon on Hangar Straight, then disappeared up the road. That day – Saturday May 11, 1963 – changed British saloon car racing for ever.

Jaguars had ruled this form of ‘tin-top’ motor sport without challenge since Stirling Moss twirled a MkVII to victory at the International Trophy meeting of 1952. The British Saloon Car Championship had been created in 1958, since when Big Cats had won 43 races. Yet they never claimed another. This interloper, invading from a NASCAR Galaxie far, far away, licked the Jaguars and smudged out their scent with a game-changing sonic boom.

Sixty years later, modern-day British Touring Car Championship ace Dan Rowbottom – like ‘Gentleman Jack’ back then, a new convert to Ford power – is staring down the Hangar Straight in the self-same Galaxie 500, peering over the broad steering wheel and wide expanse of red-striped bonnet wondering what comes next. “Wow,” he grins later, reliving what turned out to be a surprisingly rapid journey down to Stowe corner. “It’s like being fired out of a cannon.”

“Nobody thought it would handle, or thought it would stop”

Sears revelled forever after in his shock and awe moment that (briefly) wiped that wolfish grin off Graham Hill’s face. Five months earlier, the inaugural British Saloon Car Champion had received a phone call from Jeff Uren, team manager of John Willment Automobiles, enquiring whether he fancied a taste of something high in protein. The Twickenham-based team had ordered a Galaxie from NASCAR powerhouse Holman Moody, out of Charlotte, North Carolina. It was Jack’s if he wanted it. “It sounded like fun,” he recalled.

The amusingly monikered glassfibre-panelled ‘Lightweight’ R-Code Galaxie – hey, everything’s relative – landed in time for the BRDC International May Meeting, but stuttered on first acquaintance with Silverstone. Its Firestone racing rubber hadn’t arrived with it, so Willment inflated a batch of road tyres for Sears to practice on, but one burst – which is why Jack was parked on the grass to receive Hill’s cheeky salute. “All were amazed at its size,” recalled Sears. “Nobody thought it would handle, nobody thought that it would stop. They all poo-pooed this big old Galaxie. When the tyre burst, in all honesty, it was a bit of a disaster with all those who thought they knew best saying ‘there you are, that’s what happens when you bring American cars to England’.”

But the Firestones turned up in time for Friday practice. “Without trying terribly hard I took pole position.”

Then, when Saturday comes… what would be the story?

“I thought ‘this has so much power I can get by the lot of them.’ So I did!”

“I was told to ease the car off the start line very carefully and not to put my foot down until the clutch was right out. So I made a slow start and was fourth into Copse, still fourth into Becketts and onto Hangar Straight behind the three Jaguar 3.8s of Hill, Salvadori and Salmon. I thought ‘this car has so much power I can get by the lot of them’. So I did!

“As I braked for Stowe I thought they’d all rush back past me as they had disc brakes and I hadn’t. The Galaxie was later fitted with front discs but I didn’t have those at Silverstone. But they didn’t come back past me and I thought ‘that’s incredible’. Went off down towards Club and gained a bit more on them. Then up to Abbey Curve and to Woodcote and as I went across the start/finish line for the first time I was at least 100 yards ahead. And I just went very steadily then to win the race.”

In fact, he controlled the proceedings so much that he went on to win the 12-lap thrash by more than 20 seconds.

Dan Rowbottom hasn’t driven many historic racing cars, but he’d like to – especially after this. The day job is a front-wheel-drive Ford Focus for Napa Racing, in a four-car BTCC team with Ash Sutton, Dan Cammish and Sam Osborne. It’s all new, Rowbottom having switched from Team Dynamics’ Honda Civic in the off-season, but the move has already been justified: pole position first time out at Donington Park (even if he did fluff the start) and a maiden win in the Focus at Thruxton. Now here he is at Silverstone to try something from a different Galaxie (sorry, last time… maybe).

This most famous and original of the Ford monsters that shook the year of Beatle-mania has a new owner: enthusiast David Bailie, who bought it earlier this year at a relative bargain in a Paris auction run by Bonhams. BML 9A has a pleasing patina, including an old scuff mark from a rub with Tommy Weber’s spinning Mini at a wet Silverstone in 1964. The red paint it sported when it raced in South Africa is showing through, much to Bailie’s pleasure. He faces a dilemma with the car: of rebuilding it as a historic racer, but that would miss the point; or maintaining it as historically correct, which is the favoured option. We think it’s too special for competition, and anyway this old girl did its fair share in period – and won plenty across three seasons, both in the UK and in South Africa. It’s a delight to see it back at Silverstone looking much as it must have done back then. We can’t say the same for the circuit, although fittingly Hangar Straight is one bit that hasn’t really changed over the decades.

“Braking points are… early. It doesn’t stop at all. But they were bloody mad back then”

Rowbottom steps in. The red vinyl interior looks untouched since 1963 – although at some point a fire extinguisher was fitted. The clips are empty today. “Looking at them, it must have been very small – it wouldn’t have put a cigar out never mind an engine fire,” chuckles Bailie. He points to the dash: “That’s not off the production line because the speedo has been moved over and the rev counter” – which isn’t working – “is right in front of the driver. The mileage reads 7892 miles, which is probably accurate.”

The 7-litre big block, dual carburettor V8, which appears to still boast a decent chunk of its original 500bhp, is running a little fluffy and Bailie discovered a snag with what he thinks is a relatively new fuel tank and ancillaries when he ran the car briefly at Three Sisters in Wigan a week earlier. “When I went around the hairpin it wouldn’t go up the hill because all the fuel sloshed over to one side,” he says, a tad nervously. “I’m cautious about how well it runs.”

As it turns out, Rowbottom has long enough on the modern Grand Prix circuit to get the idea. The smile is wide when he steps out. “In a straight line it would give any modern-day touring car a run for its money,” he says (his 2-litre turbo Focus only has 350bhp). “It’s quite a sensation. The caveat to that is it doesn’t stop, at all. Braking points are… early, compared to what I’m used to. But every time you drive one of these old cars you have to put yourself in the mindset of how people were at the time. And they were bloody mad, to be fair.”

“You genuinely have no idea where the wheels are pointing in a to the steering wheel”

Back in 1963, Sears took further pleasure after that Silverstone landmark by bursting a few more perceptions. Flat-out Silverstone was one thing, said the naysayers and Jaguar loyalists, but this Yank Tank won’t handle at typically tight British circuits. Except Sears won next time out too – at Aintree, despite nursing his tyres. And then again at swing-a-cat Crystal Palace. The run kept going at Snetterton and yet again back at Silverstone for the British GP meeting – although new disc brakes proved contentious, so Willment was forced to revert to drums for now. Jim Clark got his hands on Alan Brown’s Galaxie at Brands Hatch – in all, Holman Moody supplied three of these ‘Lightweights’ to the BSCC, another going to Sir Gawaine Baillie – and rubbed salt for Jaguar’s increasingly sour ‘Lofty’ England, as Sears picked up a puncture. Upon returning to Brands in September, ‘Gentleman Jack’ switched back to Willment’s Cortina GT which had also taken its bow at the start of the year, before the Galaxie had landed, and won his class. South African Bob Olthoff took over the big Ford and grabbed the overall win. Sears became a double BSCC champion in the Galaxie at Snetterton, then gave the new Lotus Cortina its debut at the Oulton Park Gold Cup where Dan Gurney looked right at home as he steered Brown’s Galaxie to victory from, ahem, Graham Hill in the Willment version. How the worm had turned. And all in a memorable season in which the Mini Cooper S also took its circuit-racing bow, to become everyone’s favourite Goliath slayer. Jaguars? Beyond getaway drivers… who needed them now?

The Galaxie remained a force in Sears’ hands through 1964, even if he narrowly missed out on another title. Also raced by Paul Hawkins and Frank Gardner, Olthoff took BML 9A to South Africa, where he’d raced it in late 1963, to win his home saloon car championship in 1965. In January 1966 Olthoff took a final overall win in the Galaxie at East London, after which he retired the battle-worn gladiator and retained it out of affection. More than 20 years later, Sears bought it for the same reason and shipped it back to the UK for restoration. He also successfully lobbied the DVLA to re-adopt the car’s original BML 9A registration and owned it until he died, aged 86, in 2016.

“Obviously it is very different to what we have today,” says Rowbottom, after revelling in his brief spell as guardian of the Galaxie (apologies once more – too hard to resist). “The first thing you notice is the tyre; there’s no feel in it comparatively to what we have now. But of course you can slide because it’s a crossply. There are some gears in there, but you don’t seem to need them! There’s loads of torque. I think I used second, third and fourth. There are probably not many places in the UK where you would need first.

“And actually it is not that heavy: 1600kg sounds a lot, but modern touring cars with all the hybrid kit are around 1425kg, so it’s not that far behind and it’s got 150bhp more. The biggest shock is you genuinely don’t know where the wheels are pointing in relation to the steering angle. I got a bit crossed up out the back and it took me a few milliseconds to figure out where the steering wheel was so I could save it. But it’s brilliant, the car moves around and slides, it seems to have endless amounts of lock and is lovely to turn with the throttle rather than the steering. It gives me a taste to do more in historics.”

Jack Sears’ Willment Galaxie will return to the scene of its seismic debut later this summer, for the Silverstone Festival on 25-27 August. The large-scale jamboree, formerly known as Silverstone Classic, will feature a Transatlantic Trophy race for pre-66 touring cars, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of that landmark 1963 season. As the phalanx of Galaxies, Cortinas, Minis, Mustangs, Falcons – and yes, Jaguars – line up for what is likely to be a highlight. The original Willment beast will not be among them, instead taking its place centre stage as a non-racing guest star. Quite right, and it should still steal the show. Sadly, there are not too many around today who witnessed first-hand Gentleman Jack’s game-changing turn. But one of British motor sport’s great figures is never forgotten, especially when beloved relics such as BML 9A are here in all their original glory

FORD GALAXIE BML 9A
RACE RECORD

ACTIVE: May 11 1963 to January 1 1966
RACES: 40  WINS: 27
DRIVERS: Jack Sears (20 races, 14 wins)Bob Olthoff (14 races, 11 wins)Paul Hawkins (4 races, 2 wins)Graham Hill (1 race)Paul Hawkins/Frank Gardner (1 race)