Building the Nomads

My racing started during the spring of 1962 at the Goodwood racing circuit, I was racing a Lotus Elite. I went on to drive an Elan and then a Ferrari 250LM with Peter Clarke. It was in the Ferrari that I did my first Daytona 24 Hours. I shared the drive with Peter and the American driver Bob Hurt. We did reasonably well finishing in 13th place. From 1967 onward, I became associated with Bob Curl and the Nomad project, the first race was the Anerley Trophy at Crystal Palace in May 1967, where the car appeared unpainted, straight from Williams & Pritchard who made the body in aluminum.

The Nomad project could be described as the “madness” that some people have. I loved racing and to do it in my own car seemed logical, at that time. It all came about after I’d met Bob Curl. Chas Beatty looked after my Elan, he worked for the Chequered Flag, in the arches at Ravenscourt Park, Chiswick. One day, Bob came into the workshop with a model of a sports racing car—just a fiberglass puck, about a foot long. I commented that it looked very nice and Bob said he was looking for someone to build it, and the whole story went from there. I think that was the first significant time we ever met. I went forward with the project with Bob, there was no elaborate showing off, or indeed great financial structure—funds were very limited and everyone had to work extremely hard to bring the car to fruition. The easiest bit of all was the driving, the most tiring parts are the all-nighters fixing something in readiness to qualify, or race. Getting into the car was the most relaxing part of the whole thing, no matter where you were on the grid.