A couple of years ago I came across this old Elva Porsche Mk VII in need of TLC at Race Retro.
Despite being a British company Elva had a much better reputation in the United States than in the UK because their cars was raced by privateers against privateers while in the UK Elva cars tended to be raced by privateers against works supported teams particularly from Lotus.
Elva’s founder Frank Nichols is said to have favoured selling his creations over racing them, letting his customers do the talking for his products on the track.
Unusually in the absence of having a suitable model for sports car racing of their own Porsche supplied Elva with engines which were particularly favoured by Elva’s US customers, Porsche were even involoved in setting up the design of the Porsche powered Mk VII’s sending Porsche employee Herbert Linge to help with the motor installation.
Porsche even bought two of the 19 Elva Porsche Mk VII’s for their own use and Herbert Müller used one fitted with a 2 litre / 122 cui flat 8 to secure second place in the 1963 European Hillclimb Championship.
The vendor of this particular car claimed that it was originally sent to the United States with a quad cam 4 cylinder Porsche motor which was latter replaced by a 6 cylinder Porsche motor that drove the rear wheels through a 5 speed gearbox.
It is two years since this car appeared in urgent need of TLC at Race Retro and I shall look forward to seeing if this car reappears in restored form again in the near future.
Thanks for joining me on this “Awaiting TLC #4” edition of “Gettin a li’l psycho on tyres”, I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !
