Saturday, July 1, 2017

Chamberlain 8.

It's hard to come up with a more significant piece of Australian motorsport history I reckon. The Chamberlain brothers were extraordinary engineers and farmers all over the country celebrated their massive tractors. So their Grand Prix car was nothing like your ordinary Australian Special, as innovative as most of them were. Australian Specials were predominatly clever match ups of available bits to produce powerful cars that could run with the mainly European racing cars that rich blokes were able to import. The Chamberlain 8 was not a collection of bits but something built from scratch, each part cleverly engineered. The "8" represents the 8 pistons that ran in 4 cylinders. The Tasmanian restorer recently put it up for auction and it was passed in. Now the National Motor Museum is campaigning to purchase the car to put it in pride of place where we can all see it and marvel at it. They are doing this by crowd funding. The minister of Arts has tossed in $40,000.00 but, as my dad would have said, "that's a bit like pissing in the sea". Check this out at www.chamberlain8.com.au
Just looking at the photos I'm wondering if the engine comes with it.

If it all comes off the Chamberlain will be sharing pride of place with another icon, the WM special, with its Waggott twin cam Holden.

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