Ti22 MkII: the titanium racer that shook Can-Am

Some of you reading this may have a dream car. And given that it’s the car of your dreams, it likely cost   a princely sum. In January 2025, bidding on the Porsche 917 that Steve McQueen drove in his 1971 film Le Mans went to $25m (£18.5m) before seller Jerry Seinfeld decided that simply wasn’t enough. But what if money’s not your issue? What if the problem is that the only example of the car of your dreams burned to the ground over half a century ago, nothing surviving save a pair of flyaway glassfibre doors? What do you do then?

Well, if you’re California tech entrepreneur Bob Lee, whose motto is ‘Lord, give me patience and give it to me now’, you plunge headlong into an odyssey that will involve, in no particular order, a box of blueprints, a dead man’s hard-drive, Paul Newman, Holmesian powers of deduction, an argon purge chamber and a Baker’s Pride pizza oven. For some of us, it will serve as a cautionary tale. For others, pure inspiration. But the end result is a brand-spanking-new, savagely fast machine truer to 1970s racing in America than a great many so-called ‘original’ Can-Am cars. And if you have any gasoline in your veins and get to see and hear it in person, know this: it will make your toes curl.

The Autocoast-sponsored Ti22 MkI was   a sensation when it arrived on the scene during the 1969 Can-Am season. Papaya Orange McLarens, piloted by Denny Hulme and team founder Bruce, had come to dominate the no-holds-barred series. That year, they would collect their third straight title, sweeping all 11 races. Imagine the surprise, then, when at the last three a machine designed by a modestly educated non-engineer leading a tiny team — so small it couldn’t afford a back-up chassis — showed up and posed a credible threat to   a juggernaut that had seen off challenges from Ford, Ferrari and Porsche.

It was the brainchild of 31-year-old London-born expat Peter Bryant. He’d been taken over to the US not long before by Mickey Thompson to work on the Californian’s star-crossed 1964 Indy 500 entries. He remained there as   a mechanic for a variety of teams, including Shelby and Carl Haas – Lola’s US importer.

“He told me he wasn’t going to get anywhere in England,” says Bryant’s US-born widow Lois, “because if you aren’t from   a social standing, you can’t really advance.”

The car Bryant had created stood out for two reasons. One, extensive use of strong, lightweight titanium: Ti22 is the atomic symbol and number for the precious metal referred to then in racing circles as ‘unobtainium’. TIMET, aka Titanium Metals Corporation, supplied all that Bryant required at a fraction of the cost. It meant the Ti22 MkI was stiffer and lighter than other Can-Am cars – a crucial advantage. The second thing was its approach to aerodynamics. Bryant integrated innovative ‘fences’ from the tops of the front fenders to the rear spoiler — something McLaren would copy in future models — and a sloped underbody to convert airflow into adhesion. “You could feel enormous downforce,” driver Jackie Oliver told Sports Car Digest, “like F1 cars 10 years later.”

“As the rise went over the top, the full force of   the air got underneath the Ti22. It did a full 360”

If the Ti22 MkI’s three starts in 1969 raised eyebrows, at the first two of the ’70 season jaws dropped. At Mosport, Oliver qualified third, then proceeded to pick off both McLarens. Eventually American golden boy Dan Gurney, standing in for recently killed team leader Bruce, was able to slip back by. The Ti22 had to settle for second.

At St Jovite, Oliver again qualified just behind the McLarens and was in the process of passing them… when disaster struck. “I was chasing Denny on the opening lap,” says Oliver. “Got tucked up right behind him on the rise, and as the rise went over the top, the full force of the air got underneath the Ti22. It did a full 360 in the air, fortunately, and landed back on its wheels.”

The landing may have saved Oliver’s life. It killed the Ti22 MkI. Resurrecting it would be a massive undertaking, and Bryant was concerned it might always run second to the McLarens, so he decided to fast-track development of his intended 1971 challenger and the subject of this story, the Ti22 MkII.

The second-generation Ti fighter would enjoy three main upgrades: extending the wheelbase and widening the body; turning   the engine into a stressed member and attaching the rear suspension to the transaxle to save weight and reduce flex; and developing new suspension at both ends to run stiffer springs and more anti-dive.

“The car was stiffer, the body was better, the geometry was better,” remembers Alex Groundsell, a fellow Londoner like Bryant who joined the team as a mechanic after big-league experience with Alan Mann and Ferrari privateer Ronnie Hoare.

Bryant had to form a new company, TRC, to build the new and improved Ti22 MkII, which was ready, if barely, for the two season-ending 1970 races, where it proved to be everything he hoped. At Laguna Seca, Oliver qualified fourth, 0.6sec behind polesitter Hulme, and finished second, just over 1sec behind the newly crowned series champion. The Ti22 set fastest lap. At Riverside in California, Oliver again finished a close second, and again set fastest lap. At a time when it was rare for others to finish on the same lap as the Orange Elephants, both Hulme and Oliver lapped the field in both races.

Actor Paul Newman, then starting his own racing career, was so taken with the MkII that he arranged to drive it at Ontario Motor Speedway for his 1971 documentary Once Upon a Wheel. The team hoped it might lead to an influx of cash. When that didn’t happen, Bryant was forced out of his own squad and what remained of the car was sold at   a bankruptcy auction. Which makes what happened next an even more improbable part of the Ti22 MkII story.

“Hobbs proceeded to bully his way past the 27 cars ahead of him, passing 13 on the first lap alone”

In autumn 1971, T-G Racing, another small team, purchased the remains and decided to enter it in the final two Can-Ams of the season.  The ‘car’ was very much in pieces and parts were missing, most notably sets of thicker-wall suspension components that had greatly improved the car’s reliability and safety the previous year. Mechanics Tom Jobe and Bob Skinner, who had revolutionised drag racing as ‘The Surfers’, were brought in to put it back together as best they could. They also made improvements. They reinforced the chassis, installed better brakes and, for Riverside, introduced a low-drag wing. Recently crowned F5000 champion David Hobbs was brought in to drive.

At Laguna Seca, Hobbs qualified a stunning third behind the McLarens. Stunning because the underfunded, now one-and-a-half-year-old car qualified ahead of Formula 1 champion  Jackie Stewart in the factory Lola T260, former Ti22 wheelman Oliver in the factory Shadow Mk II, World Sportscar Championship star Brian Redman in the factory BRM P167 and F1 and WSC winner Jo Siffert in the latest Porsche 917/10 “At one stage he was on the front row with [McLaren team-mate Peter Revson],” said an incredulous Hulme. “Hobbs is a nice guy, but I don’t like him that much.”

Riverside was even more shocking. The rear titanium crossmember failed in practice, forcing Hobbs to start the race from the back. People who witnessed what followed talk about it in hallowed terms. Hobbs proceeded to bully his way past the 27 cars ahead of him, passing 13 on the first lap alone.

“At one stage [we were] the fastest car   on the track – I was really carving my way through the field,” says the Brit. “I was very impressed. With a few changes, I think it would have been right there [with the McLarens].”

On lap 17 he was about to overtake fourth-place man Sam Posey when a patch of oil caused the Ti22 to yaw slightly and strike   a tyre marker. The team, so poor it had no spare nose, was forced to retire.

The following year, in the hands of club racer Nick Dioguardi, the Ti22 was leading the California Sports Car Club nationals at Riverside when it crashed through a steel guardrail and exploded. Dioguardi would recover, but the sole MkII that ever existed was consumed in the inferno.

And that’s where the story would have ended if not for Bob Lee.

Its resurrection started, improbably, with a 427 Cobra. “I had been a workaholic,” says Lee. “My wife and I worked around the clock.” When Bob and Linda sold their company in 1987, they bought one of Carroll Shelby’s AC-Ford offspring. They thought about racing it until a fateful club event at Willow Springs where Bob nearly rolled the beast and Linda nearly did likewise — with her 18-year-old son Ilja Burkoff in the passenger seat. Chagrinned, Bob consulted some of his racer friends.

“Being a novice and not a car guy, I said, ‘What has horsepower and handles?’ And they said, ‘Well, a Can-Am car.’ So then I’m like, ‘OK, I gotta get a Can-Am car.’”

Thereafter, Bob began an improbable lifelong love of Can-Am cars, campaigning   a series of them including the ex-Hollywood Sports Cars McLaren M6B, ex-Denny Hulme McLaren M20 and ex-David Hobbs Lola   T310 ‘aircraft carrier’.

After reading Pete Lyons’ landmark book on the series, Can-Am (1995), he became fascinated by the Great-White-(and blue)-Hope of a car that had nearly toppled the McLarens and thought, “If I could buy the rights to it,   it would be wonderful to recreate it.”

Bryant died in 2009, but in 2013, Lee heard his widow was selling the drawings for the MkII. First he purchased the rights to it, which still belonged to Dioguardi. “Then I called Cris Vandagriff [president of the Historic Motor Sports Association in the US] and asked, ‘If   I recreate the MkII, will it be accepted at the Monterey historic races?’ Cris said yes – if   I make it out of titanium.”

At the Bryant house, Lee discovered   a bonus. Not only did Lois have a box of drawings, but “Peter had started to put the car in CAD, because his dream was to rebuild the MkII. He hadn’t finished it. But he had done a lot of work. I told Lois I’d like to buy the drawings and files off his hard-drive.”

Even with the CAD files and blueprints, Bob realised that was only part of the battle.

“We had drawings but didn’t have a clear view of what the front and rear subframes looked like,” Lee explains. “And we were missing all the drawings of the tops of the fuel cells.” So Lee commenced a search for every period photo he could find, especially of details under the skin. He knew that even if he had full drawings, discrepancies might remain. In those days, if during a build a team ran into, say, a clearance issue, they’d fix it without necessarily updating the prints.

He found much of the photography he needed at the Revs Institute in Florida. Karl Ludvigsen’s pictures were a treasure trove. “Wonderful photos of the front and rear suspension,” says Lee. “Close-ups. I could see the calipers. I could see that they used the monobloc Hurst/AirHeart caliper, not   the two-piece caliper that they used on the MkI.” Crucially, Lee could also “see where they’d made changes to the drawings. I could see all the plumbing and everything they did in the rear of the car”.

“Bob did a tremendous amount of research,” remembers Burkoff, “because there’s big holes in the drawings. There were parts we didn’t have any drawings for. Then there would be others [where] we’d have three drawings with three different sets of notes that contradicted each other.”

Lee entrusted his stepson with the fabrication effort. He was a terrific choice. By day Burkoff was a general electrical contractor. But he also has experience in welding, machining, carpentry and antique restoration.  And Lee put just as much thought into the rest of the team.

“I wanted to make sure we would have no interference problems making the chassis,” says Lee, “so I hired a design engineer, Sandor Bota, to finish putting the chassis in CAD. This gave us files we could use to waterjet-cut the titanium panels. I engaged a titanium expert, Chuck Dohogne, plus a racing engineer, Peter Hansel, to specify shocks, springs and anti-sway bars.” Another key player was Jordan Coonrad. The San Francisco native answered a Craigslist ad for a machinist with aircraft experience. Coonrad remembers the reverse engineering involved in trying to reconcile things that appeared on the car that weren’t on the prints.

“There were parts we didn’t have drawings for. Others, we’d have three contradicting drawings”

“I spent hours studying photographs and figured out the scale dimensions from pictures, so when I did something, it was going to look like the original car,” says Coonrad. “One was a little switch box on the instrument panel, about 2in deep. It turns out Oliver couldn’t reach the switches the way the car was built, so they had to build a little box to bring the switches back to where he could reach them.”

They also consulted some of the original builders, including Groundsell and Al Willard, co-designer of the MkII. One of the first questions was safety.

“Ilja and I were concerned about the Ti part failures that Hobbs experienced at Riverside and what caused the Dioguardi crash in ’73,” says Lee. “We determined why the rear crossmember shock support failed and came up with a fix. I also learned from Jobe that the original thick-wall suspension used on the MkII had gone missing and they had had to run the thin-wall pieces, resulting in the lower front A-arm failure. So, we used the thick-wall Ti tubing called out in the drawings.”

The technical challenge was learning how to machine, weld and hot-form titanium. “Virtually everyone told me, ‘Don’t waste time on titanium, make it out of steel,’” Lee adds. “But it wouldn’t be the Ti22 if it was steel.”

“Titanium is an interesting metal to work with, in that it’s not a very good conductor,” says Coonrad. “You could hold a piece up to a grinder and actually have it white hot at one end and be holding it 2in away.

“Titanium was the only material I’ve ever worked with where you could drill a hole and after the bit came out, the hole was smaller than the bit. The material was so ductile it would expand around the bit, then cool back off to [where] the hole would be smaller than the drill bit that just came out of it.”

Burkoff, who’d worked on Can-Am cars, says using titanium was “exponentially harder. Just the fact that we had to hot-form all the bends.” Unlike steel or aluminium, you need to heat titanium to form the shapes you want. “To Bob’s credit, he found that pizza oven.”

Ah, yes, that Baker’s Pride pizza oven.   At first the team tried heating just the areas of the parts that needed to be bent. No dice, says Lee, “because you end up warping the titanium. When it cools off it doesn’t assume its old shape. You’ve gotta heat the whole piece of Ti. Well, we had pieces 54in wide, and I’m looking at commercial ovens, which are $20,000-$30,000, and you still can’t get the size of the Ti [pieces] in the oven. Finally, on Ebay, I see a pizza oven for sale, and the dial goes to 800°F. And it’s wide enough to get the widest piece of Ti in.”

Welding posed additional challenges.

“We purchased an argon chamber to weld the sub-assemblies,” says Lee. “You have to weld titanium in a chamber purged of oxygen to prevent oxygen and nitrogen embrittlement and other contamination. I recruited a fantastic titanium welder, Jai Hardy-Flores.”

Another issue was finding the period-correct parts for the things Lee, Burkoff and company couldn’t make themselves. The   right period-correct Vertex Magneto. The right Lucas MacKay fuel injection system. The correct Gurney-style wheels. Bryant had used a number of AAR/Gurney parts for both Ti22s including wheels, uprights, steering wheel and shifter. Fellow Can-Am owner Dave Pozzi identified the Ti22’s unusual taillights as long-obsolete Grote 201 SAE side marker lights. Bob’s pursuit of them led to a guy in Texas known as — and we’re not making this up —   the ‘Taillight King’.

Lee insisted even the parts they made themselves be as accurate to 1970 as possible. “Bob and I had constant discussions about keeping it original. I remember at one point, Bob was like, ‘Why are you making the shift linkage out of steel?’ Because in period photos, you can see it’s a black-painted piece, so we assume that’s steel because if [any part] was Ti, they kept it bare Ti.”

“The other issue we debated were the brakes,” says Burkoff. “The original Hurst/Airheart units were a problem. One of the reasons the car went quicker in Hobbs’ hands was because Skinner and Jobe had switched to far superior Lockheed brakes. I wanted to put Lockheeds on the car, but Bob wanted   to keep the car as accurate as possible to the 1970 Riverside Can-Am. So Bob borrowed a Hurst/Airheart monobloc caliper from an AAR [Eagle] Indycar owner and had an engineer put it in CAD so we could recast the calipers.”

“At the 2018 Monterey Motorsports Reunion, fans were cheering as Ilja moved up the field”

One of Burkoff’s biggest triumphs was the bodywork. “First, I had to make a body buck. We had cross-section drawings for the MkI and a full-size side view, but the MkII was different. It was 2in longer and 4in wider. We put up the full-size MkI drawing on the shop wall and cut it in half at the cockpit and spaced the pieces 2in apart. Bob had acquired the original MkII door bucks and door moulds, and they were a great help in getting the buck right. It was a major thrill when I got the Ti22 nose [from the glassfibre shop] and it fit perfectly.”

Lee and Burkoff debuted the car at the 2017 Long Beach Grand Prix support race, which included a spectacular gathering of first-generation Can-Am McLarens, Shadows, Lolas and Porsches. There were still issues to be sorted — Burkoff had to back off halfway down the straights — but it looked fantastic and finished fourth. Dioguardi’s family   came and were clearly moved.

Once sorted, the results were even more impressive. At the 2018 Monterey Motorsports Reunion, Burkoff beat every car in a 21-car field apart from Craig Bennett’s 1974 Can-Am champion Shadow DN4 — a landmark Tony Southgate design created four years later with four more seasons of technological evolution behind it. Burkoff set fastest lap in the process.

“Fans at the Reunion were cheering as Ilja moved up the field,” remembers Lee, “and many came by our pits to thank us for bringing back the car.” Among them Lois Bryant.

“That was a special thing for those people to see that car come to life,” says Burkoff.

Having driven a number of first-generation Can-Am cars, Burkoff can compare. “The [McLaren] M6 kinda rolls and talks to you   a lot,” he says. “This car stays very flat. It’s more like a go-kart and a lot of fun.”

Critics point to the fact that the Ti22 MkII is a recreation, even though many so-called ‘original’ Can-Am cars have few if any original parts and deviate sharply from their original specifications. Perhaps the better question is, as long as they’re represented for what they are, are today’s enthusiasts better served by seeing an accurate recreation of an otherwise extinct car or should we never see them again?

Perhaps the last word should go to Groundsell, who was there with Bryant giving birth to the original Ti22 MkII back in 1970. “I had thought initially that [Bob] was quite silly and would never complete the project,” he says. “How wrong I was… and how determined Bob and Ilja were! They have made an amazing replica of the original car. Seeing it run in anger at Sears Point also made me sad for one reason: the memory of Peter [Bryant], Al [Willard], Mike [Lowman], Barry [Crowe] and I all working long, underfunded hours and came so very close to succeeding as a team.

“I think that if we’d finished the season and started to build a second car, if we’d had money, we would’ve been champions.”

Without the physical recreation of the ultimate Ti fighter to gaze upon, listen to and, yes, curl our toes, all of these emotions, all of this history would be lost in time, to quote   a different sci-fi epic, like tears in the rain.

TI22 MKII

Engine 7-litre Chevrolet V8
Chassis 6Al-4V titanium aluminium monocoque
Power 800bhp
Transmission Hewland LG600 MkI 5-speed
Suspension Independent unequal A-arms with radius rods
Wheels Magnesium front   11in x 15in and rear 16in x 15in
Weight 775kg