English Racing Automobiles

English Racing Automobiles (ERA) was a British racing car manufacturer active from 1933 to 1954.

Related Topics:
British - Racing car - 1933 - 1954

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ERA was founded towards the end of 1933 in Bourne, Lincolnshire by Humphrey Cook, a young man who was irritated that no British car had won a major continental race since Henry Segrave a decade earlier, and who hoped to produce a British car with the ability to win Grands Prix. However, by 1933 Grand Prix racing was becoming much more expensive thanks to the very large sums being spent by wealthy and government-backed works teams such as Auto Union and Alfa Romeo.

Related Topics:
Bourne - Lincolnshire - Henry Segrave - Grands Prix - Works - Auto Union - Alfa Romeo

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Because of this, ERA instead aimed its first efforts at the smaller voiturette class of car. Raymond Mays was both a company director and driver, and the company's works were established in a yard behind his house. Their first race was at Brooklands on 22 May 1934. By the end of the year ERAs had scored several victories in fields containing many more established marques, and through the mid- and late 1930s ERA came to dominate voiturette racing, with drivers of the calibre of Dick Seaman driving for the team. As soon as 1935, in a major race at Nürburgring, ERAs took first, third, fourth and fifth places. The two Siamese princes, Chula and Bira, whose pair of ERAs became famous as "Romulus and Remus" drove for their own team, with the white mouse logo. They were not works drivers.

Related Topics:
Voiturette - Raymond Mays - Brooklands - 22 May - 1934 - 1930s - Dick Seaman - 1935 - Nürburgring - Siam - Bira - Romulus and Remus

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The Second World War brought a halt to motor racing in Europe, and the team's Bourne site was used to produce aircraft components; when things got underway again in the late 1940s the team restarted operations in Dunstable, and a 1.5-litre Grand Prix car was built, which raced in the first two years of the Formula One World Championship without ever living up to its potential. For 1952, when Formula 2 teams contested the Championship, the team used a Bristol unit. Stirling Moss became the driver, but results were disappointing; Moss himself was later to say:

Related Topics:
Second World War - Europe - 1940s - Dunstable - Litre - Formula One - Formula 2 - Bristol - Stirling Moss

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:It was, above all, a project which made an awful lot of fuss about doing very little. By this time I was very disillusioned by the Clever Professor approach to racing car design. I would eventually learn that even the most brilliant concept could fail if the team concerned lacks the manpower and organization and money to develop the inevitable bugs out of it.

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The cars were sold to Bristol, who used them as the basis for an assault on Le Mans that would bring them several class wins in the mid-1950s. Meanwhile, the company itself was sold to Zenith Carburettor Ltd, which itself was then purchased by Solex, another carburettor firm, and was renamed Engineering Research and Application Ltd. ERA became primarily a research and development operation, although it still did a small amount of race preparation, and in the 1980s put its name to the ERA Mini Turbo, a turbocharged version of the Mini Cooper S capable of 115mph.

Related Topics:
Le Mans - 1950s - Carburettor - Research and development - 1980s - Turbocharged - Mini Cooper S

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Today, the pre-WW2 ERAs are still often driven competitively, and they are particularly associated with the Shelsley Walsh hillclimb thanks in large part to Mays, who won the first two British Hill Climb Championships in 1947 and 1948; indeed an ERA has for many years held the hill record for a pre-war car.

Related Topics:
Shelsley Walsh hillclimb - British Hill Climb Championship - 1947 - 1948

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