Lot 226: 1972 Lola T310 CanAm 'London Motor Show Car 1972'

Some of the most exciting competition cars ever built were made for the CanAm Championship which was inaugurated in 1966. Sometimes the racing is remembered more or less as a private battle between Lola, McLaren and Chaparral but a lot of constructors built CanAm cars and failed to crack the series. Ferrari was one, BRM another, Lotus a third; March and Shadow, both F1 constructors, tried CanAm and were unsuccessful. Eventually the works McLarens were to dominate utterly but in the opening seasons there was a three-way battle. Lola in particular was known in America because in 1966 it had won the Indianapolis 500 and John Surtees had become the first CanAm Champion driving a Lola Spyder T70 Mk 2. Lola followed that with a Mk 3 version, and then 1968 saw the arrival of the T160, a brand new design with a stiffer monocoque developed to take the much greater stresses being engendered by more powerful engines and wider tyres, and particularly aimed at Group 7 and CanAm events. T160s were driven by John Surtees, Mario Andretti, Dan Gurney, Swede Savage and Sam Posey but their highest place all season was a fourth for Savage at Bridgehampton. There were a lot of problems with engines that year; progress had been rapid and some builders were over-extending themselves. That did not help, but there is no way that one can pretend that Lola was a match for McLaren or Chaparral in 1968 though it was still clear of the rest of the field. The T163 and T165 Lolas that followed were also well to the fore, including scoring several podium positions. For 1970 the company fielded the new T220 and the following year it upped the ante with the altogether more advanced, wind-tunnel developed T260. On the car's debut Jackie Stewart took pole position for the opening round of the 1971 CanAm season but poor reliability saw the car retire from the race; at the next round, however, he won, giving Lola its first CanAm victory since 1967 and the Scotsman would finish the season in third place in the standings. Encouraged by this, Lola again set out to take on the dominance of McLaren with another brand new car, the design of which took many cues form the T260 and with which it was hoped Lola could push for overall victory. Long and very wide, again using an aluminium monocoque and fibreglass body, but this time with a distinctive centralised cockpit and shovel-nose, two examples of the Chevrolet V8 powered T310 were produced. Chassis HU01, the first of these, run by Carl Hass, made its race debut at Road Atlanta on July 9 1972 in the hands of reigning SCCA F5000 champion David Hobbs. With only a mere 100 miles or so of testing in England under its belt, the T310 finished in a respectable 7th place after Hobbs, who was driving the car for the first time, decided to treat the race as a test session following rear suspension failure at 180mph in qualifying. Two weeks later the Englishman finished in a strong 4th place at Watkins Glen and during the rest of the CanAm season he would take a 6th place, two 5th places, an 8th, an unrepresentative 29th after front tyre/axle failure, and fail to finish once due to fuel pick-up problems. The potential of the T310 was clear but it had simply lacked enough development due to Lola's commitments in other racing categories and the car would not run during the 1973 season. It was entered one last time, at Mosport in June 1974, to be driven by Sieg Glage but the car did not start the race. Later it made several appearances in the late 1970s and more recently HU01 has been a regular entrant in historic races in America. Meanwhile, the second T310, chassis HU02, the car that had been on display on Lola's stand at the 1972 Earls Court Show, was sold directly from the London venue to its first owner in Australia. Little, however, is known of its racing history prior to it being acquired by historic Lola racer Nigel Hulme. Subsequently HU02 also travelled to America after being purchased by Chuck Haines of CanAm Cars and it was from him that Peter Kaus purchased the car in 1997, at a price of $250,000, for his famous Rosso Bianco Museum in Germany. Between 2002 and 2003 the Lola was completely restored and, following a successful test session during an Orwell Supersports race meeting at Nurburgring, the T310 ran at the 2003 Goodwood Festival of Speed. It was following the disbandment of the Rosso Bianco Museum's collection last year that HU02 was acquired by the vendor. Recently the subject of a comprehensive inspection by Group C and sports-prototype specialist Phil Stott Motorsport, and resplendent in period white and red livery, this fabulous Lola, complete with Lucas fuel-injected 8.1 litre alloy block Chevrolet V8, producing some 800bhp, mated to a Hewland LG500 Mk 2 transaxle, is offered in race ready condition. As the very last CanAm car produced by the British marque, and one of only two T310s built, this highly potent machine could be a very competitive proposition for historic sportscar events on both sides of the Atlantic. A real piece of Lola and CanAm history that is eminently useable and collectable.