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Sparton
Sparton
Sparton was founded by Norman Pierce and Paul Jackson in 1977 in Lingfield, Surrey and the company began producing cars for the F Ford 1600 and F Ford 2000 market. They soon gained a reputation for building well made competitive cars and as a result they entered F3 in 1983 but they only lasted for two years without any success to show for it.
1983
For 1983 Sparton introduced the SE420 which was based on the company’s FF2000 car. It first appeared in the summer and by the end of the season it was starting to show reasonably well. A young Ayrton Senna tested it and was complimentary about its track behaviour.
1984
Sparton lightly modified the SE420 for 1984 building a new car in the process, the most noticeable change was fitting revised bodywork. Entered by Valour Racing Paul Jackson did the first five races of the year without any success and then switched to a Ralt for the rest of the year. In 1985 one of the cars was entered in the B class for year old cars.
Drivers:
1983
Mario Hytten, Paul Jackson, Jeff Ward.
1984
Paul Jackson.
1985
Skoda
Skoda
Czechoslovakia’s famous car company has had a long competition history usually based on rallying but they have also competed in sports car and single seater racing. First appearing in 1965, they had some success winning a race at Most and taking other top 6 placings. In 1966 they produced ten cars powered by their own 1000MB engine, the cars used a spaceframe chassis with inboard suspension. Unfortunately their engines were some 25bhp down on a good Cosworth Ford unit so they would always struggle against Western European opposition but they were reasonably competitive against their Eastern European brethren in the handful of German races they took part in.
Drivers:
1966 Vaclav Bobek Snr.
1966 Jaroslav Bobek, Vaclav Bobek Snr., Miroslav Fousek.
1967 Jaroslav Bobek, Miroslav Fousek.
1968
1969 Jaroslav Bobek, Miroslav Fousek.
Sirmac
Sirmac
Sirmac was the brainchild of Bernard Boyer who would later find fame as the designer of a number of cars for Matra including their F1 models, notably the F1 Championship winning MS80 (with Gérard Ducarouge), as well as their F2 cars and Le Mans winning sports cars. In the 1960s Boyer built a very neat looking F Junior car, it had a tubular chassis with cast light-alloy wheels and was powered by a 1100cc Renault Dauphine engine, and although the car was underpowered it gained a reputation for good handling. It is almost certain that the cars that appeared in F3 where converted F Junior chassis.
The Renault-powered Sirmac appeared at the beginning of the 1964 season taking 5th (3 laps down) at Pau and then seemed to vanish. There seems to have been at least two 1965 Sirmacs, the Ruata car was a Simca powered device whilst the Cassas model used a Renault engine. Both took part in a couple of early season Italian and French races in 1965, Frenchman Ruata failing to qualify for his two events, his compatriot scoring a DNF on his lone outing.
Drivers:
1965
Denis Cassas.
1965
Denis Cassas, Frank Ruata.
Simca
Simca
No details about this car except that it raced in a number of very minor German events albeit doing quite well in the small fields. It had a Simca engine, hence the name presumably and whether it counts as French or German I don’t know. Its best result was a second place at Ulm-Laupheim in 1968 amongst a field of eight.
Drivers:
1966 Antal Nemel.
1967 Antal Nemel.
1968 Antal Nemel, Dieter Schäfenacker.
1969 Dieter Schäfenacker.
Silva
Silva
The Silva was announced in July 1969, it was to be designed to the new 1970 1600cc regulations and would comprise a monocoque chassis with conventional suspension. The experienced Giovanni Salvati was listed as the driver and once the prototype had been tested customer cars would be built. To date there is no evidence that the Silva was ever built or raced.
Silani
Silani
The one-off Silani SJ96 was designed and built in 1996 by former AGS race engineer Jean Silani. Based around a carbon-fibre monocoque that was built by Duqueine (q.v.) in Villeurbanne it employed some advanced aerodynamic thinking in its design, it was very slim with a high nose and low sidepods and used an Alfa Romeo engine which mated to a Hewland gearbox via a Silani designed, AGS built, combined oil tank and bellhousing. Sadly the Silani was funded by Jean Silani’s savings and despite much needed non-financial help from AGS there was insufficient funds to develop the car and Jean Silani decided it was better to quit before the car bankrupted him and other than Cyrille Sauvage taking ninth in an end of season race at Paul Ricard results were poor.
The chassis is currently being rebuilt be Jean Silani for display in Henri Julien’s AGS museum.
Thanks to Peter Wyss for information and picture.
Drivers:
1996
Olivier Fiorucci, Cyrille Sauvage.
Sibre
Shannon
Shannon
The Shannon was the creation of Hugh Aiden-Jones and Paul Emery, of Emeryson (q.v.) fame, it began life as a F1 car fitted with a 3-litre version of the previously unraced 2.5 litre Coventry Climax FPE V8, it lasted for one lap of the 1966 British GP driven by Trevor Taylor. It was then converted to F3 spec, called the Mk1 and powered by an EMC-tuned engine it appeared only very rarely driven by Keith Jupp and Australian John Wilson. The Mk1 consisted of a very slim aluminium monocoque with conventional suspension, observers were convinced neither of the quality of workmanship nor of the rigidity of the tub.
Drivers:
1967 Keith Jupp.
1969 John Wilson.
1970 John Wilson.
Seymaz
Seymaz
No other details about this French car, the SW30 appeared for one race (Nogaro) at the end of 1982, finished 13th and was never seen again. Presumably it was built by the same Seymaz who are famous for building racing sidecars and at the end of the decade they were running a Dallara in the French series.
Drivers:
1982 Eric Vaugnat.