2011 Hooniverse Car of the Year Nominee – 1968 Pete Brock Triumph TR250K

My nominee for the auspicious 2011 Hooniverse Car of the Year award is a racer that appeared on these pages a couple of months ago, but only in a supporting role.

At last October’s Art Center Car Classic, the theme was cars that had been influenced in design by the Southern California lifestyle. That meant lots of convertibles, Reed Stewart’s riff on Bruce Meyers’ Manx dune buggy, and a slew of racers campaigned by driver/designer/Golden State native Pete Brock. And capping that line was his electric blue one-off TriumphTR250K.

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I haven’t mentioned the Triumph-based racer before, possibly because I was coveting the experience of drooling over it for myself, or perhaps it was simply because I am lazy. Regardless, I’m pretty sure it was in the background of one or more of the shots I posted from the show – like the one above.

Pete Brock grew up, not in Southern California, but in the Bay Area burg of Sausalito. His High School rides included an MG-TC, and that was quickly replaced with a’46 Ford, into which Brock dropped a Caddy mill. Even at an early age, he appreciated the value in a low weight to high horsepower ratio. But Brock’s interests were even more concerned with design than mechanicals, and after high school he was accepted into L.A.’s Art Center, in the Auto design program.

A connection with GM’s Chuck Jordan, at the time assistant to Harley Earl and Bill Mitchell got Brock – at age 19 -a job at the Detroit car maker’s design studios. While there, he worked on design studies that would eventually influence the direction of the Corvair, and the original Corvette Stingray. Eventually becoming disillusioned with GM’s design direction, Brock quit and headed back west, ending up working for Max Balchowsky – the racer famous for Old Y’aller. Brock took to racing as well, campaigning a Le Mans Cooper in SCCA and becoming friends with another of Balchowsky’s drivers, a hot shot by the name of Carroll Shelby.

 Shelby later hired Brock, not as a driver but a designer, and while Shel’ was throwing the nascent Cobra around Riverside Raceway, Pete was back in L.A., sculpting the lines for the Daytona Coupe body that would eventually win the US Road Racing Championship and the World Manufacturer’s Championship. It was in follow up to the Daytona, and while Brock was forming his own Brock Racing Enterprises (BRE) team that he and Triumph Competition Manager, R.W. ‘Kas’ Kastner lamented that the Brits seemed doggedly determined not to build a sports car of modern proportion and style as Toyota had done with the 2000GT. Kastner and Brock thought the torquey goodness of Triumph’s 2.5-litre straight six, married to a light weight aerodynamic body, would give Porsche’s 911 a run for its money on the circuit.

Together, they determined to make a one-off sports racer, initially envisioned as a Le Mans competing coupe, and based on the frame and drivetrain of the robust but blunt Tr250. Brock would handle the design and construction, Kastner would go, hat in hand, to Triumph for parts, support, and most importantly, money. As was frequently the case with monetary requests to British Leyland at the time, funding was not readily forthcoming and with time running out and bills to be paid, the resulting TR250K ended up being a roadster intended to run at Sebring’s 12-hour endurance.

The car was introduced in spectacular fashion – driven onto the ice at the new home of the LA Kings hockey team, the Forum.  Years later Kastner related that they had invited the press to the introduction, spreading them out around the rink in total darkness, and then Jim Dittemore drove the TR250K out onto the ice, its 1-million candle power lights providing the only illumination while it arced in circles, doing donuts on the slippery surface.

The TR250K saw action at Sebring in ’68, driven by Bob Tullius and Dittemore, leading its class for more than three hours before a clutch failure DNF’d the effort. That same year, Car and Driver featured the car on its cover – and in an article entitled TR250K, Salvation of an Empire in which they raved over the car’s power to weight ratio, futuristic good looks, and flingability.

Alas, it was not meant to be, as Triumph’s interest in the project – never high to begin with- waned to the point of nonexistence, while at the same time Datsun was courting Brock and his BRE team. The Brits were happy to simply watch their empire crumble, while the Japanese were just getting started amassing theirs, and they recognized the old maxim of Race on Sunday, Sell on Monday. Because of all that, the amazing TR250K remained a one-off, moving in short order from contemporary to vintage racer and eventually to six-figure historical collector car.

Brock brought the TR250K to the Art Center show, along with a 510, 240Z, and a silver Daytona Coupe so pristine you could would be confident to give birth on its hood. The Triumph also looks like it just arrived from hermetically sealed storage, the steel structure and fiberglass body appearing light but still robust, only belied by the dymo labels instructing that the doors are not to be slammed shut, less the cut-down windows screwed to their tops stress fracture and spider.

The electronically-conrrolled rear aerodynamic aid – or spoiler – still raises and lowers, and the car is remarkably simple when observed through the opening – evidence of its age despite the body’s still contemporary lines. Under the flip-forward nose lies Triumph’s iron giant straight six, all two and a half litres of it. A gnarly tubular header on the left takes care of exhausting spent combustion products, while a trio of Weber DCOEs serve as throttle bodies for the Lucas fuel injection on the right. Noteworthy is the fact that the driver’s seat is on the left, evidence that the basis for the car was an American production TR250, and that this is not a factory project.

An attribute sought after in both fine wines and race cars is provenance, and that is something Brock and Kastner’s TR250K has in spades. It’s designer has one of the richest histories in racing as both driver and owner as anyone could want, and its own drivers are household names. The car itself has escaped that Silence of the Lambs basement horror that has befallen other old track cars- that of being modified time and again to the point of being unrecognizable – and it just looks so damn awesome.

All that conspires to make the car my choice for the Hooniverse Car of the Year for 2011, after all, who wouldn’t want to hoon it, just a little bit?

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