{"id":495563,"date":"2016-06-01T02:17:47","date_gmt":"2016-06-01T09:17:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportscardigest.com\/\/?p=31354"},"modified":"2024-12-27T12:58:39","modified_gmt":"2024-12-27T12:58:39","slug":"machiavellis-shadow-1974-shadow-dn4-1p","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.supercars.net\/blog\/machiavellis-shadow-1974-shadow-dn4-1p\/","title":{"rendered":"1974 Shadow DN4-1P – Machiavelli\u2019s Shadow"},"content":{"rendered":"

In retrospect, the end of the 1973 Can-Am championship was the pinnacle of the series. Porsche\u2019s turbocharged \u201cPanzer\u201d 917\/30 had handily claimed the championship, though Don Nichols\u2019 dark and mysterious Shadow cars were finally beginning to live up to the promise they had shown over the preceding three years. No one would have guessed, however, that over the course of the following 12 months Shadow would build arguably one of the best Can-Am cars of the series, or that the series would completely implode due to political machinations, both internal and external. Even more strangely, the rise of enigmatic team owner Don Nichols\u2019 Shadow cars and the near simultaneous collapse of one of the world\u2019s greatest racing series share an extremely bizarre 16th century connection\u2026Niccol\u00f3 Machiavelli. In order to fully appreciate how all these disparate pieces fit together\u2014along with an internecine battle between three designers and two drivers\u2014it\u2019s necessary to start with the single shadowy figure who unifies them all, Don Nichols.<\/p>\n

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Author treated the big Shadow beast with proper trepidation and respect, and ended up enjoying it as well as himself.\u00a0Photo: Dan R. Boyd<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Spooks & Shadows<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is perhaps no other figure in modern motorsport more shrouded in secrecy, misinformation and innuendo than Don Nichols\u2014and that\u2019s the way he likes it! Reports have labeled him a spy, a CIA agent and a war hero who not only fought at the Battle of the Bulge, but also saw action on D-Day. Whenever asked, Nichols always responds that he can\u2019t or won\u2019t talk about his past, only further feeding the flames of wild conjecture. What is known is that Don Nichols was born on November 23, 1924. During World War II, Nichols studied Japanese at the army\u2019s language school in Monterey, California, and subsequently joined the Army\u2019s Intelligence Corps as a translator. Nichols was stationed in Japan, after the war and eventually, as the country recovered, he saw an opportunity to both make some money and indulge one of his passions, auto racing. Nichols began by importing racing parts to Japan. Not long after, he was able to negotiate a deal to become the Firestone tire importer for Japan. During the early 1960s, Nichols\u2019 influence in Japanese racing circles was such that he also became involved in the creation of the Fuji International Speedway, which opened in 1965.<\/p>\n

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With new fuel economy rules in place, Southagte designed the DN4 to be lighter and more compact than its predecessors.\u00a0Photo: Dan R. Boyd<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By 1967, Nichols decided he would move back home to California. However, the following year, he made arrangements to ship a Lola T-70 back to Japan for Pedro Rodriguez to drive at Fuji, only he needed to have a fresh engine installed in it first. This led Nichols to the Santa Ana, California, shop of a young, budding designer named Trevor Harris. Over the course of the job, Harris shared with Nichols his idea for a radical, new Can-Am car. Harris\u2019 concept was to create an extremely small and low, high horsepower Can-Am car that had such a low frontal area that it would cut through the air like an arrow. As Harris explained to Nichols that this \u201cKnee-high\u201d car would potentially have a terminal top speed far in excess of anything previously seen in the Can-Am, Nichols began to see the potential. Soon the duo agreed to build the car together and campaign it in the 1969 Can-Am series.<\/p>\n

As a result, Nichols started a new company that he dubbed Advanced Vehicle Systems (AVS), based in Harris\u2019 Santa Ana shop. The only question left was what to call the car? Nichols himself addressed this question recently in Tom Madigan\u2019s biography of George Follmer, \u201cVery early in the project, Trevor and I discussed what we would call the team. Several names came up, but we wanted something that expressed the fact that the car (the Mk1) was very mysterious, and I had a rather secretive background. In fact I had worked at one time for an employer who didn\u2019t have an address! Anyway, in part the namesake goes all the way back to the days of radio and the program, The Shadow\u2014a show about a mystery man who fought crime and beat the bad guys. The second reason for the name came from Trevor, who is a very intellectual kind of guy. He reasoned that a shadow was two-dimensional figure. When you looked at a shadow you can measure the length and width, but the third dimension (height) is missing. With the Knee-High car it was almost a two-dimensional entity. And that\u2019s the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

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More than 800 horsepower are delivered crisply to the ground through a hefty Hewland transaxle that begs to be manhandled.\u00a0Photo: Dan R. Boyd<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Shadows of Titanium<\/b><\/p>\n

Harris and Nichols\u2019 revolutionary Shadow MkI \u201cKnee-High\u201d car began testing in 1969, and due to having worked with George Follmer and mutual friend Bruce Burness on Follmer\u2019s Lola T-70, Harris convinced Nichols to bring Follmer into the Shadow organization. While the Knee-High car is a fascinating story, in and of itself, for our purposes here it will have to suffice that a car this revolutionary was going to be plagued with problems. It took Firestone longer than anticipated to develop the smaller 10-inch front and 12-inch rear racing slicks, not delivering the first batch until late in 1969. The small wheels dictated small brake disks, which were more prone to overheating. The near prone driving position was untenable and needed to be revised, as well as a host of engine-related issues including cooling problems and issues with the Hilborn fuel injection the team first used.<\/p>\n

While Follmer was able to post a reasonable 5th-place qualifying time at the opening Mosport round, the season quickly devolved from there, with a disappointing string of retirements. After just three races, Nichols decided to pull the plug and rethink his options.<\/p>\n

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The purposeful cockpit minimizes distractions, even though the seat shown here had to be removed so the author could actually fit comfortably into the car.\u00a0Photo: Dan R. Boyd<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As Shadow struggled with making its revolutionary car work in the 1970 Can-Am series, another young renegade designer was seeing his own new concept come to fruition. Peter Bryant was a British mechanic-turned-engineer who had first come to the states with John Surtees in 1963 and decided he liked the weather and would stay. By 1969, he had designed his own unique take on a Can-Am car, the Ti22, named for the chemical symbol and atomic weight of the super-lightweight metal titanium. Bryant had built a handsome Can-Am car using titanium, and had managed to bring together a team that included sponsorship and materials from the Titanium Metal Corporation of America and the services of Formula One hot shoe and Le Mans winner Jackie Oliver. While Nichols and his Shadow team struggled during the 1970 season, Bryant\u2019s Autocoast Ti22 team showed flashes of brilliance with a surprising 2nd-place finish in the season-opening Mosport round and a pair of 2nd-place finishes, behind season champion Denny Hulme, during the final rounds at Laguna Seca and Riverside. With Oliver finishing 5th in the championship, Bryant was looking forward to building upon their success for 1971.<\/p>\n

However, he was blindsided when he was summoned into his \u201cpartner\u2019s\u201d office and told that he was both summarily fired and that he, in fact, had no ownership in the team despite representations that he did. According to Bryant, \u201cThe reality that I\u2019d lost control of \u2018my\u2019 car drove me into a deep depression that I\u2019d never before experienced. I couldn\u2019t come to grips with what happened. I just went into a funk\u2026. How had this happened to me? That was the question I kept asking myself. Why had they done it? The only reason that I could come up with was money. I was the highest-paid guy on the team\u2026if money was tight, they might cut expenses, reasoning that because they had the car, they no longer needed the designer.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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On the occasion of its initial test session at Laguna Seca, the freshly constructed DN4 looks powerful, purposeful and ready to dominate.
Photo: Dan R. Boyd<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fortunately for Bryant, the team\u2019s driver, Jackie Oliver, stayed with him, as did the lucrative Goodyear relationship. Once Bryant got out of his funk, he set his mind to developing a new design for the 1971 racing season. Since movable aerodynamic devices like those seen on the Chaparrals would be banned, Bryant reasoned that the key to speed in the 1971 Can-Am would be extremely low drag. In order to attain that he needed to create a car with a much lower profile, not dissimilar to the concept tested by Harris and Nichols with the failed Knee-High car. Figuring Harris had taken the formula too far, Bryant reached out to his Goodyear contacts and asked if they would be willing to develop a smaller-sized racing tire\u201412 or 13 inches at the front and 15 inches at the rear. Goodyear readily agreed. With this in hand, Bryant made a short list of possible financial backers, with Don Nichols at the top of that list.<\/p>\n

Bryant met with Nichols at his Palos Verdes Estates home and pitched him on the idea of a low-profile, Ti22-type Shadow that would utilize smaller, low profile Goodyears, though these would be bigger than the Firestones Nichols and Harris had used. According to Bryant, having learned his lesson the previous year, he also stated that he would need to have an ownership stake in the venture. After a day or two of deliberations, Nichols rang up Bryant and agreed to move ahead with what would become known as the Shadow Mk2.<\/p>\n

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Jackie Oliver crests the hill heading toward The Corkscrew at Laguna Seca during early testing of the new Shadow DN4 prototype.\u00a0Photo: Dan R. Boyd<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Enter UOP<\/b><\/p>\n

For the 1971 season, Bryant designed a much more \u201cconventional\u201d car compared to the Shadow Mk1. Bryant\u2019s Shadow Mk2 was low and sleek-looking with a 98-inch wheelbase, 60-inch front track and 57-inch rear track. According to Bryant, \u201cThe dimension that would make the biggest difference in the performance was the overall height of the body over the rear wheels, which would reach just 24 inches. This was only attainable with the low-profile rear tires, and would make the airflow to the rear wing very effective in creating downforce.\u201d Bryant added, \u201cThe end result was that the Shadow Mk2 looked very low and fast and, painted black, even a little sinister. This made Don Nichols very happy. He liked that sort of image.\u201d<\/p>\n

With primary sponsorship from Universal Oil Products, the UOP Shadow with Jackie Oliver at the wheel was ready to take on the 1971 Can-Am season. While the team missed the opening round because Oliver was racing at Le Mans, at St. Jovite Oliver qualified 4th only to have a piece of fuel tank debris clog his injectors and end his day early. The balance of the season would prove to be a succession of DNFs, despite the car showing tremendous speed, including snatching the pole at Elkhart Lake. By and large the season was plagued with engine problems, as well as issues with the new, smaller Goodyear tires and instability created by using inboard front brakes as a way of overcoming the smaller disc size necessitated by those smaller tires. All within the team agreed that while the \u201crevolutionary\u201d small tire concept was fast, the team needed reliability and therefore needed an even more conventional racecar.<\/p>\n

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The remains of Follmer\u2019s crashed prototype DN4, after the throttle stuck open during testing at Mosport.\u00a0Photo: Dan R. Boyd<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A \u201cConventional\u201d Shadow<\/b><\/p>\n

For the 1972 Can-Am season, Bryant elected to keep basically the same monocoque chassis from the Mk2, but revise it to accommodate the regular, full-sized Can-Am wheels and tires. Additionally, Nichols told Bryant that he had plans in the works to develop a turbocharged engine\u2014perhaps in reaction to Porsche\u2019s announcement of its turbocharged 917\/10\u2014which meant that the new Mk3 would have to be able to accommodate nearly 100 gallons of fuel to do a full 200-mile race!<\/p>\n

Of course, in the end, the 1972 Can-Am season would be dominated by George Follmer and the Penske-run Porsche 917\/10. Oliver and the Shadow Mk3 again showed great flashes of speed, notching up a 2nd place at Mid-Ohio, a 3rd at Donnybrooke and a 4th at the season-ending Riverside round, but every other race would end in DNFs from a variety of different ailments. The Shadow Can-Am team was becoming synonymous with speed\u2026but also unreliability.<\/p>\n

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At Mosport\u2019s \u201974 Can-Am season opener, Oliver (101) was gifted the win despite Follmer (1) showing more speed.\u00a0Photo: Dan R. Boyd<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Intrigue and Division<\/b><\/p>\n

While at the Donnybrooke round in 1972, Bryant received a call from his wife Sally, asking if he had seen the latest issue of Competition Press. She went on to tell him that UOP had announced that it was going to sponsor Shadow\u2019s 1973 entry into the Formula One series, but with a car designed by Tony Southgate! Crestfallen, Bryant confronted Nichols the next day. Bryant recalled, \u201cHe told me he\u2019d intended to tell me after the Donnybrooke race\u2026. He reiterated that he had no intention of asking me to leave the team. Suffice to say that I walked back to my room feeling terrible. It was happening again! It was just like the situation with the Ti22 team at the end of the 1970 season. I was very depressed.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Nichols didn\u2019t ask Bryant to leave the team, he did completely relocate the Can-Am team from Signal Hill, California, to Chicago, Illinois (near UOP headquarters), while the F1 operation would be located near Southgate in Weedon, Lincolnshire, UK. Bryant had no interest in relocating, so he asked Nichols about his 10 percent ownership stake in the team. Bryant recalls the answer, \u201cI asked him if he was going to issue any stock to me and he said I had no stock.\u201d With nothing codified on paper, Bryant yet again found himself out of a team with nothing to show for it.<\/p>\n

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Away from the start of 1974\u2019s second Can-Am round at Road Atlanta, poleman Follmer again siezes the early lead, but would ultimately \u201cgive way\u201d to his teammate before the checker.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When asked recently about his decision to switch designers, Nichols commented, \u201cPeter Bryant was a mechanic who had graduated to car designer. I know a lot of people who tell me they feel he had real talent. He was good, and the cars were clean and nice and they did well, but when it came time to have the big contract with UOP, then Tony (Southgate) was available. Tony had lots of advantages. He had a very close relationship with the Imperial College in London where they had wind tunnels. Plus, he had fresh ideas, and he was blindingly quick at designing things and designed some beautiful cars for us right away.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Shadow Ascending<\/b><\/p>\n

For the 1973 season, former BRM and Eagle designer Southgate\u2019s brief was to design a car for the team\u2019s first foray into Formula One. With high ambitions for his team\u2014and significant sponsorship from UOP\u2014Nichols also directed Southgate to work up a new entrant for that year\u2019s Can-Am championship, though for this latest iteration, Southgate was directed to build a stouter, more conventional car capable of accepting the new turbocharged V8 engine that Shadow had in development.<\/p>\n

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Oliver smiles as he hoists the victor\u2019s trophy at Road Atlanta.\u00a0Photo: Dan R. Boyd<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This new car, dubbed the DN2, featured a much heavier aluminum monocoque with conventionally sized wheels, tires and outboard brakes.<\/p>\n

With the team biting off such a big chunk that year with two, top-level programs, it is perhaps not surprising that both came to the grid somewhat late and underdeveloped. In the case of the DN2 Can-Am car, it made its debut appearance at Mosport not with its new turbocharged engine, but with the conventional fuel-injected one. As a result, Oliver qualified some eight seconds off of poleman Mark Donohue\u2019s pace, only to DNF two laps into the race with gearbox troubles.<\/p>\n

Despite no new engine at the next round at Road Atlanta, Oliver did qualify 4th fastest, but then DNF\u2019d again, just 11 laps into the race, with suspension problems.<\/p>\n

It wouldn\u2019t be until the fifth round of the season, at Elkhart Lake, that the turbocharged car would appear, but the engine proved so fragile and temperamental that Oliver couldn\u2019t even coax a qualifying lap out of it before having to take over teammate James Hunt\u2019s normally aspirated DN2. When asked about his early experiences with the Shadow turbo development program, George Follmer recalls, \u201cIt was a disaster. It didn\u2019t have good throttle control, it was either on or off. It was just so sudden and so violent, it was really hard to control.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, by the last few rounds of the season, Oliver was able to notch up a 3rd at Edmonton and a 2nd at Laguna Seca, but between the now seemingly ever-present reliability problems and the juggernaut of Donohue and Penske\u2019s Porsche blitzkrieg, this was not the season the Shadow team had hoped for.<\/p>\n

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Follmer at speed, during the Mid-Ohio round. Follmer and Oliver would evntually come together, resulting in Follmer retiring and Oliver winning.
Photo: Dan R. Boyd<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It All Comes Together\u2026Sort of\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

By the end of that 1973 season, two events had occurred that ultimately sealed the fate of the Can-Am. The first was Mark Donohue\u2019s domination of the season with the 1200-hp, turbocharged Porsche 917\/30. The second was the beginning of the OPEC Oil Crisis in October of that year. With gasoline being rationed in the U.S. and prices for a barrel of crude oil skyrocketing to four times its normal price, the world suddenly became very conscious of fuel economy and the impermanence of oil. As a result of both of these events, the boffins at the SCCA decided that for the 1974 Can-Am series they would create new rules\u2014\u201cEnergy Measures\u201d as they called them\u2014that would include a new minimum fuel economy (3 mpg), as well as a format change that would break the usual 200-mile feature race down into two 100-milers. Penske and Porsche took one look at the new rules and realized that their 2 mpg, gas-guzzling 917\/30 would be severely disadvantaged in this new format and, therefore, promptly decided to retire from the series as champions. With the very future of racing looking so uncertain, other manufacturers like McLaren and Lola also decided that this would be a good year to sit things out. Shadow, on the other hand, had UOP money in their pockets and a big chip on their shoulder. This was finally the season to get it all right.<\/p>\n

Southgate began work on the \u201974 contender, the DN4, early. With the new rules requiring two heat races of only 100 laps each and a maximum fuel allowance of 37 gallons, there was no longer any need for the Shadow to carry a huge, heavy fuel load.\u00a0 Southgate laid out a car that was two inches longer than the DN3 (better high-speed stability), lighter and featured a lower, more aerodynamic frontal area by decreasing the front wheel diameters from 15 inches, to 13-inches. Whether due to economy, design or both, Southgate also carried over much of the suspension components from the F1 car to the new DN4, with unequal length A-arms at the front and a lower wishbone at the rear, located by two trailing radius rods and a pair of parallel lower links.<\/p>\n

With the rules now dictating a minimum fuel economy of 3 mpg, many thought that teams would have to revert back to the smaller displacement engines seen in the early days of the series. However, Shadow\u2019s engine master, Lee Muir, had other ideas. He stuck with the tried-and-true 495-cid Chevrolet V8, but instead focused on the precision calibration of the engine\u2019s Lucas mechanical fuel injection unit. Muir was so successful in this regard that not only was he able to procure the required fuel economy, but he also raised the power output at the same time! While the team claimed 735 bhp from Muir\u2019s units, it is widely held that they were making closer to 800 bhp\u2026and this in a much lighter car!<\/p>\n

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With \u201cthe call\u201d made by team boss Don Nichols, Oliver won the first four Can-Ams of the \u201974 season before both cars hit trouble at Road America.
Photo: Dan R. Boyd<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During the off-season, there were more shakeups than just the rules. On the driver front, friction on the F1 team between George Follmer and Jackie Oliver saw Follmer depart and Nichols bring in 1971 Can-Am champion Peter Revson. Revson and Oliver were to team up both in F1 and the Can-Am, with the new DN4.<\/p>\n

The new DN4 prototype (DN4-1P) was finished in early March and was immediately subjected to a rigorous pre-season testing program\u2014reliability was not going to be an issue this year. However, Oliver and the team had to take a brief break at the end of the month to compete in the third round of the F1 championship at Kyalami, in South Africa. Sadly, during a March 22 test session, Revson\u2019s Shadow DN3 suffered a catastrophic front suspension failure that put him hard into the Armco and he succumbed to his injuries.<\/p>\n

Pyrrhic Victory<\/b><\/p>\n

With the sudden loss of Revson, a deal was soon put in place that returned Follmer to the Shadow team to partner Oliver in the Can-Am. More than 1,800 test miles were put on the prototype chassis before it was tucked onto a trailer and sent to Mosport for the opening round on June 16.<\/p>\n

At Mosport, Follmer took over the prototype and climbed aboard, 10 days before the race, for a test session. However, coming down the steep hill toward Moss Hairpin, the throttle stuck open and a violent crash ensued. Follmer recalls, \u201cThe crash was a result of a little seam on the tub next to where the throttle went down and when I let off the gas, it got caught up on the seam and it didn\u2019t close the throttle. So I hit with\u2026basically, about three-quarters of the throttle open. I ended up sideswiping the Armco, but it broke a couple of ribs and that didn\u2019t help the season at all for me!\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The damage was comprehensive enough that the team had to strip the chassis and build up another car in time for the season opener. Chassis DN4-1P was sent back to Illinois, where it was rebuilt as a spare for later in the season.<\/p>\n

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Rains dampened the opening heat at Mid-Ohio, but both Shadows curiously started on slicks, forcing Follmer to keep all that horsepower under control.
Photo: Dan R. Boyd<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On race day, Oliver claimed the pole with Follmer in his just finished DN4 a mere second off. In the first heat, the antagonistic duo took off for the first turn, with Follmer diving up the inside and barging his way through\u2014clearly, no love lost and no quarter given. Follmer would go on to claim victory in that heat, despite the fact that he was having to drive with a Lidocaine spinal block in order to control the pain from his broken ribs! But Machiavelli\u2019s long shadow soon cast itself again over the team.<\/p>\n

While sitting on the pole for the final heat, Follmer was in for a jab of pain not generated by his aching ribs. \u201cSo, I\u2019m sitting on the grid,\u201d recalls Follmer, \u201cand Don came up and told me I had to let Oliver win.\u201d When asked recently why he agreed to return to the Shadow Can-Am program, after having such a difficult experience the previous year in F1, Follmer replied, \u201cI was coming back as a teammate to Oliver, but I wasn\u2019t told that I had to let Oliver win. I knew I could beat Oliver, but they were going to give Oliver that championship whether he earned it or not. I\u2019m going to be really blunt\u2026Jackie was not a teammate. As far as he was concerned it was always Jackie. Jackie was a good race driver\u2026he just had a little, shitty attitude.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether pre-ordained as Follmer describes, or perhaps a response to the possibility of his two drivers taking each other out of the championship, Oliver did indeed go on to the overall victory at Mosport, over Follmer. But what of the other teams? With no factory efforts other than the Shadows, the rest of the field was made up entirely of independents running older machinery, so\u2014good, bad or indifferent\u2014the 1974 season would become the \u201cGeorge and Ollie Show.\u201d With fewer competitors in old equipment and a global oil crisis, however, race organizers began abandoning their Can-Am dates for fear of financial disaster. Of the eight races announced for the 1974 season, only five would end up being run.<\/p>\n

At Road Atlanta, Oliver would win with Follmer 2nd, while the results would be the same at Watkins Glen 14 days later, on July 14. At Mid-Ohio, the Shadow duo was in for a shock when Brian Redman turned up with Penske\u2019s Porsche 917\/30 and put it on the pole. Of all the tracks that the 917\/30 ran, Mid-Ohio was the one that yielded the best fuel economy, so the Penske team felt they had a solid chance there. In the final, both Shadows managed to get by Redman, only to battle each other to the point that they made contact and Follmer spun off. Follmer made his way back to the pits, but got out of his car and stormed off(!), leaving Oliver to win and Redman to finish 2nd.<\/p>\n

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Follmer leads Oliver during the Watkins Glen round, on July 14. Between the OPEC Oil Crisis and the SCCA\u2019s changing of the rules, Shadow was the only factory team left in the series. Oliver would go to win, followed by Follmer.\u00a0Photo: Dan R. Boyd<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At Elkhart Lake on August 25, the Shadows once again dominated the front row with Follmer on the pole. In the first race, Follmer led until he eventually let Oliver by for the victory and then in Sunday\u2019s final, Follmer had a halfshaft break on the opening lap, while Oliver\u2019s engine uncharacteristically blew up with just four laps to go, handing the victory to Scooter Patrick in his McLaren M20. Perhaps it should have come as no surprise that the day after Elkhart Lake, the SCCA announced that the season\u2019s final race at Riverside was to be cancelled, thus annointing Jackie Oliver that year\u2019s\u2014and ultimately the final\u2014Can-Am champion. After many years and much intrigue, Don Nichols finally had his Can-Am championship, albeit in a somewhat anemic series that was suffering from both mismanagement and world events.<\/p>\n

On winning the \u201974 championship Nichols commented, \u201cI think that was a great experience. The fuel capacity rule change didn\u2019t suit Porsche, and Brian Redman drove Penske\u2019s 917\/30 at Mid-Ohio and got pole position, but he didn\u2019t win the race, Jackie Oliver won it for us. What I really wanted was a championship, and it was much more difficult than Formula One.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

With the season prematurely cut short, Nichols had concerns about sponsor UOP not getting sufficient publicity from the team\u2019s success. As a way of maximizing their exposure, he arranged for a pair of All-Shadow match races\u2014or rather \u201cgrudge races\u201d to be held. The first was a 15-lapper held prior to the USGP at Watkins Glen, the first week of October. Three DN4s were turned out for Follmer, Oliver and F1 driver Jean-Pierre Jarier. Based on contemporary reports from the event, it looks likely that the rebuilt prototype chassis was one of the three cars used, though it is unknown who drove which car in the race. What is known is that Follmer won, with Oliver 2nd and Jarier 3rd. A week later at the Laguna Seca F5000 round, Jarier and James Hunt fielded Shadow DN3 F1 cars, against the DN4 Can-Am machines of Oliver and Follmer. There it was no contest, as the nimbler F1 machines ran circles around the Can-Am cars on Laguna\u2019s twisty circuit, with Jarier easily winning over Hunt, followed by Follmer.<\/p>\n

From Follmer\u2019s perspective, he ranks the Shadow DN4 as one of the very best all-around Can-Am cars, \u201cIt was a good car. It was a really good car. It was fast, it was nice to drive, it stopped well, it had good adhesion off the corners, it was predictable. In fact, I was actually faster than Mark\u2019s (Donohue) 917\/30 in a lot of cases. I think the Shadow was a better car than the Porsche\u2026still one of the best I ever sat in.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Oliver (101) and Follmer running neck and neck at the front, during the series-ending round at Road America\u2014both would retire.\u00a0Photo: Dan R. Boyd<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Driving the Shadow<\/b><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not proud of it, but I\u2019m going to have to come clean, right from the start, and declare that the prospect of test-driving the Shadow DN4 scared the shit out of me. So much so in fact, that I found myself looking for convenient excuses why I couldn\u2019t travel to Brian Redman\u2019s Targa 66 event in Florida to drive the car. In the past, I\u2019ve driven cars with more horsepower\u2014the Eagle-Toyota GTP (VR, April 2007) had over 1,000 on full boost\u2014but never anything with that much torque (800-lbs-ft!) available right at the crack of the throttle! Between the thought of pressing the throttle and having the car side-step into a wall and images of Follmer smacking the Armco with a stuck throttle, I was more than a little apprehensive as I pulled into Palm Beach International Raceway this past February to have my crack at this beast.<\/p>\n

As a result of Follmer\u2019s crash at Mosport, Chassis DN4-1P was rebuilt and served as a backup car later in the season at Elkhart Lake, as well as presumably the third chassis for the Watkins Glen \u201cgrudge race.\u201d After the two exhibition races in October, DN4-1P went back to Nichols\u2019 shop in Salinas, California, where it sat covered up for the next 26 years. Then, in 2000, the car was restored and sold to Andrew Simpson of Texas, who campaigned it in vintage races for the next seven years before he sold it to Rudy Junco of Monterey, Mexico. Junco raced the car off and on until 2012, when he sold the Shadow to its current owner James Bartel. With the help of his son-in-law Craig Bennett at RM Motorsports, the Shadow has been meticulously prepared and raced since then, and has won the SVRA class championship in both 2013 and 2014.<\/p>\n

I circled the Shadow warily for some time\u2014never taking my eyes off it for fear it might bite me even in the paddock! When the time finally came to get ready, Craig Bennett asked me if I thought I\u2019d need the seat changed out. \u201cNah, you\u2019d be amazed at the cockpits I\u2019ve been able to squeeze myself into,\u201d was my cavalier reply, hoping that my voice wouldn\u2019t quiver and give away my false bravado.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
With the season prematurely ended, Nichols organized an All-Shadow \u201cgrudge match\u201d prior to the 1974 USGP\u2008at Watkins Glen. All three DN4s\u2014including presumably the prototype\u2014were fielded for Jackie Oliver (#101), George Follmer (#1)\u2008and Jean-Pierre Jarier (#102). Follmer would go to win.
Photo: Dan R. Boyd<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I stepped over the massively wide sills of the Shadow and then proceeded to lower myself into Bennett\u2019s custom seat when I felt a sharp pain on either side of my butt\u2026damn, it was already trying to hurt me! No, instead I learned that no matter what I thought, there was no way my birthing hips were going to smash down into the jockey-like Bennett\u2019s seat! Once everyone realized the same, there was a momentary look of panic from Bennett\u2019s crew, when they realized the amount of work required to prepare a makeshift seat for me and get everything changed over.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust pull the seat out and I\u2019ll sit in the bare tub,\u201d was my response to their anxious looks. With a look of pure relief, they pulled the seat out and we were all pleasantly surprised that I now fit well in the cockpit, could just cinch up the straps and had the perfect amount of leg room for my freakishly long legs. The bad news, however, was that I had just given up my last viable excuse\u2026I was past the point of no return.<\/p>\n

Now well ensconced in the cockpit, I first flick on the ignition switch, then the mechanical fuel pump, look for the thumbs up from the guy with the battery jumper and then, with a lump in my throat, I crack the throttle open and push in the black rubber-covered starter button\u2026and that\u2019s when all hell broke loose. No words can ever adequately describe the explosion of sound that comes from a fuel-injected Big Block V8 attempting to vaporize the planet from six inches behind your head. It is at once the most ferocious, startling and addictive aural bombardment you will ever experience in the automotive world\u2026ever. BLAT!-BLAT!-BLAT! It was like each poke of the throttle was directly wired to my adrenal glands, forcing me to poke it again for another dose of adrenalin.<\/p>\n