English Racing Automobiles

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English Racing Automobiles Ltd. (ERA) was an English manufacturer of sports and racing cars . The company existed from 1933 to 1954.

In the 1930s, ERA produced one of the finest single-seater racing cars in the so-called Voiturette class. The 1½ and 2-liter Riley engines with overhead camshafts made sure that ERA most records in mountain and drag race held. Between 1934 and 1939, ERA gained a very good reputation for the design and construction of its racing cars, which were among the most successful of their time.

After the war, however, the attempt to build on the earlier successes failed and the company finally stopped production. Nevertheless, most of the ERA racing cars remained in the hands of private drivers, many of which are still used in races for historic racing cars to this day.

history

ERA built in 1936 at the Oldtimer Grand Prix of the AvD 1978 on the Nürburgring

ERA built in 1936 in the paddock

ERA was founded by Humphrey Cook in Bourne , Lincolnshire in late 1933 with the aim of resuming the successes of British racing driver Henry Segrave from the previous decade. He hoped to produce a vehicle that could compete in Grand Prix races. From 1933 onwards, this became a costly affair, as financially strong and government-supported works teams such as Mercedes-Benz , Auto Union and Alfa Romeo dominated the competitions.

Therefore, ERA initially limited itself to the competition of the Voiturette class, which was limited to a displacement of around 1.5 liters. Raymond Mays was works manager and driver at the same time, the company buildings were erected in a field directly behind his house. He already had racing experience on vehicles from Vauxhall , Bugatti and Riley . The ERA was initially a further development of its White Riley and was powered by turbocharged and non-turbocharged engines of various displacement classes (1.1 l, 1.5 l and 2.0 l), which were derived from a six-cylinder Riley. The first race in which an ERA vehicle participated was on May 22, 1934 in Brooklands . By the end of the year he had won several victories ahead of other well-known brands, and from the mid-1930s to the appearance of the Alfa Romeo Tipo 158 , the ERA branded vehicles, along with Maserati, dominated the Voiturette racing series; During this time, Dick Seaman drove for the team. As early as 1935, the team took part in the important Eifel race at the Nürburgring , in which the vehicles of the ERA brand took first, third, fourth and fifth place. The Siamese Prince Bira , whose ERA, acquired by his cousin Prince Chula, was also known as Hanuman or Romulus and Remus , drove in his own team (The White Mouse Stable) , so he was not a factory pilot.

The more modern ERA E-Type , originally planned as a full-fledged racing car for the Grand Prix class, was completed shortly before the start of the Second World War , but in the absence of a suitable alternative, the 1.5-liter Voiturette engine was installed and again was by far not fully developed at the time.

A new beginning: after the Second World War

ERA Mini Turbo

ERA Mini Turbo at the British Motoring Heritage Museum Gaydon

World War II brought racing to a standstill in Europe. Bourne's factory premises were used for the production of aircraft parts. In the late 1940s, Mays joined the BRM team and the ERA brand began in Dunstable under new ownership. Leslie Johnson had acquired the company towards the end of 1947 together with one of the two pre-war single-seater E-type vehicles.

The successes in use in Formula 1 , however, remained modest. When the 1952 World Championship was held with Formula 2 cars, the team developed the somewhat misshapen G-Type in which a Bristol engine was used. Stirling Moss was the driver, but the results were disappointing. Moss later said:

It was, above all, a project which made an awful lot of fuss about doing very little. By this time I was very disillusioned by the Clever Professor approach to racing car design. I would eventually learn that even the most brilliant concept could fail if the team concerned lacks the manpower and organization and money to develop the inevitable bugs out of it.

(Dt .: Overall, it was a project in which there was a lot of fuss for too little result. During this time I lost my illusions about the clever scientific development of racing cars. Ultimately, I realized that the best concept had to fail if the team did People, the organization and the necessary money are missing to eliminate the inevitable defects of a vehicle.)

The vehicles were sold to Bristol, who used them as the basis for the Le Mans competition , where they won various classes in the mid-1950s. In the meantime the company was sold to Zenith Carburetor Ltd. been sold, the later of the carburetor maker Solex was taken, and first in Engineering Research and Application Ltd. has been renamed. ERA was now mainly active in research and development, involvement in racing made up only a small part of the overall business. During the 1980s the name appeared on the ERA Mini Turbo , a supercharged version of the Mini that was 115 mph.

Tiger Racing has been using the ERA brand name since 2003 .

World Championship participation

World Championship record
year	team	driver	# of the GPs
1950	ERA	Cuth Harrison	3
1950	ERA	Bob Gerard	2
1950	ERA	Leslie Johnson	1
1950	ERA	Peter Walker	1
1951	ERA	Bob Gerard	1
1951	ERA	Brian Shawe-Taylor	1
1952	ERA- Bristol	Stirling Moss	2
1952	ERA	Stirling Moss	1

today

Most of the pre-war racing cars - which is quite unusual for historic racing cars - are demonstrably still in existence and, despite the fact that the youngest of them is almost 70 years old, they are used in classic car races. The vehicles are often driven under competitive conditions; they are still often associated with the hill climb in Shelseley / Wales. This is certainly largely thanks to Mays, who won the first two British hillclimb championships in 1947 and 1948. The ERA held the mountain record for pre-war cars for several years.

Exhibitions

A permanent exhibition on Raymond May's contributions to racing, including while working for ERA, is located at the Bourne Civic Society's Heritage Center in Bourne.

literature

ERA Gold Portfolio , 1934–1994, Brooklands Books - compilation of historic and contemporary articles on ERA and includes the full text of John Lloyd's The Story of ERA (English)
ERA: The History of English Racing Automobiles , David Weguelin, White Mouse Press: expensive and scarce but hugely detailed and profusely illustrated book covering the contemporary and historic career of all the cars. (English)
The Racing Fifteenhundreds , David Venables, Transport Bookman Publications, 1984, ISBN 978-0-85184-024-6 (English)

Web links

Commons : English Racing Automobiles - Collection of images, videos and audio files