Lot 516: 1972 Shadow-Chevrolet DN2 CanAm Sports-Racing Spider

The Advanced Vehicles Systems Inc’s CanAm team, sponsored so faithfully over so many years by Universal Oil Products, established a startlingly charismatic presence for itself upon the CanAm racing scene. For their third Challenge season in 1972, Don Nichols’s black-garbed crewmen appeared for the opening qualifying race at Mosport Park in Canada with an entirely new car…and this time in contrast to their prototype (see lot 518) it was almost entirely conventional in design. Conventional maybe, but beautifully built – certainly.

The Shadow DN2 or ‘Mark III’ had been based by designer Peter Bryant on the self-same monocoque chassis structure as the previous year’s small-wheeled ‘Mark II’ contender. Both front and rear brakes were mounted inboard – an unconventional feature – but overall it was claimed that no fewer than 55 detail design changes aggregated to create the new ‘Mark number’. Bryant had moved the car’s cooling radiators from the nose to the hip-mounted position on each side amidships, just behind the cockpit, while the vacated nose space was given over – as on the rival Gulf-McLaren M20 works team cars – to an adjustable wing surface. This was a much larger aerofoil than the one which had featured within the top of the preceding 1971 Shadow’s radiator duct.

The AVS Shadow team had begun testing this new car with weeks to spare before the new year’s CanAm Championship chase commenced. At Laguna Seca British team driver Jackie Oliver lopped an incredible 0.8-second off the best lap time of the previous year’s Champion Gulf-McLaren M8F. “The handling is much more consistent now too”, he reported, “…regardless of changing fuel load”. These were great steps in the right direction.

The team’s engine specialist, Lee Muir, was working hard to develop a turbocharged version of the Chevrolet V8 CanAm racing engine, and a second car was then built-up in which to test it. This turbocharged Shadow DN2 offered here was supplied direct from Don Nichols to Peter Kaus on August 25, 1987. It is now presented after years of tender care on display in the Rosso Bianco Collection’s halls at Aschaffenburg, Germany. Due to its nature - and as it has been a static exhibit - no attempt has been made to start the engine.

This car’s fuel tankage was enlarged from the prototype’s 76 gallons to 84, to cater for the turbocharged engine’s enormous predicted thirst. Lee Muir believed that up to 1,200-horsepower would be attainable from the forced-induction V8, and the new car’s Weismann-based driveline was accordingly beefed-up to accommodate the entire raging herd!

However, as the test programme and then the CanAm racing season of 1972 developed, so the turbocharged Chevrolet engine failed to achieve race-worthiness. It was powerful, but unreliable, and cooling trouble caused mid-season heartache as the bodywork detailing and aerodynamic cooling duct shape had to be modified. The nose-mounted wing did not perform as well as had been hoped, and during practice at Elkhart Lake a large ‘cowcatcher’ aerofoil rather similar to the rival Lola T260’s was tried. Eventually Peter Bryant decided to discard the whole idea, leaving the central tunnel between the front fenders and behind the now unobstructed top radiator duct to generate downforce unaided.

The DN2 was an exceptionally shapely car, and the crafted, sculptured appearance of its gleaming jet-black body paneling always set it aside – both on track and in the race paddocks – as an audience-grabbing center of attention.

As raced with the naturally-aspirated Chevrolet V8 engine, the works UOP Shadow DN2A driven by Jackie Oliver started from fourth fastest grid position upon its debut at Mosport on June 11, 1972. It was sidelined early with transmission problems and further set-backs followed at Road Atlanta and Watkins Glen. The imperturbable English Formula 1 driver then qualified fourth-fastest again at Mid-Ohio, headed only by George Follmer’s Penske Porsche 917/10 and the two works Gulf-McLaren M20s, and he finished second overall on race day driving the latest DN2 intended for the turbo engine. At Elkhart Lake ‘Ollie’ qualified the Shadow-Chevrolet fifth fastest – only to go out with broken exhausts, while Carlos Pace drove the sister car. Oliver then finished third overall at Donnybrooke – beaten only by Francois Cevert’s McLaren M8F and Minter’s turbocharged Porsche. Pace finished 4th in his DN2 at Edmonton. Laguna Seca saw Oliver again qualify this car in fourth place overall, before an oil leak foiled his chances, and at Riverside, fifth-fastest in qualifying was translated into a popular fourth place finish overall, behind the Porsche 917/10s of Follmer and Mark Donohue, and Peter Revson’s Gulf-McLaren M20. ‘Ollie’ and his jet-black Shadow were right in there, racing with the stars.

The turbocharged Shadow-Chevrolet DN2 was driven by Jackie Oliver at Elkhart Lake in 1973, while the great rally and endurance racing star driver Vic Elford campaigned it at Laguna Seca and Riverside.

This beautifully presented Shadow-Chevrolet is rigged today with the twin-turbocharged potentially 1,200-horspower Chevrolet V8 engine for which it was originally intended. It was prepared to this standard by Don Nichols’s AVS concern specifically for sale to its first owner ex-works, Peter Kaus of the Rosso Bianco Collection, and it is offered here now as a uniquely impressive CanAm car of towering stature – and a classically historic machine which has had only one previous owner “ex-works”.