The Aston Martin Nimrod is a tale of what might have been | Frankel’s Insight

And between its pages you’ll find a rather curious photograph splashed across a double page spread. It was taken, I think, in 1982 (though the caption says 1983) at a very rundown Goodwood. Parked at the exit of the Chicane were two cars, one an Aston Martin DBR1/300 occupied by Roy Salvadori and Jack Fairman in jacket and tie who raced for the factory in the 1950s, the other a low-slung modern sports racer with gullwing doors with none other than Stirling Moss and James Hunt posing in their racing duds and helmets. The car is the Nimrod NRA/C2 but thanks to its powertrain and help from the factory, is and was known as the Aston Martin Nimrod.

The picture was taken for promotional reasons, and I have no idea whether James or Stirling ever so much as sat in it let alone drove it, but its story has fascinated me ever since I first saw it all those years ago.

These days the car is, I think, regarded as a failure, and for understandable reasons. It was the brainchild of Aston dealer Robin Hamilton who commissioned Lola-founder Eric Broadley to design an Aston-powered racer to compete in the new Group C era of sportscar racing. Of course, Broadley was the man who’d installed an Aston V8 in a Lola T70 Mk III in 1967 with initially spectacular results, posting the third fastest time at the Le Mans test weekend, beaten by just two factory Ferraris and ahead of the 7.0-litre Ford Mk IVs. Sadly, its potential was never realised.

Debate continues to this day about how closely related was the T70 to the Nimrod, though my sense is that relationship was so distant as to be essentially meaningless. One person in an online forum claimed all they shared were the mounts for the pedal box which wouldn’t surprise me.

Three cars were made, two ‘works’ machines and one private car for John Dawney who ran Viscount Downe’s racing team. One of the works cars and the privateer made their debut at the Silverstone 1,000km race, the same race in which Porsche’s all-new (and soon to be all-conquering) 956 made its first appearance. The privateer came home in sixth place driven by Ray Mallock and my old friend the late Michael Salmon. Incidentally I was delighted to catch up with Ray at the Revival and where he proved quick enough aged 74 for pole position and second place in the Chichester Cup, driving the U2 designed by his dad Arthur Mallock.

Then came Le Mans, during the course of which the factory car was eliminated in a crash on Mulsanne, probably due to a blowout. ‘I’ve always wondered what happens when you turn left at 200mph,’ said an unscathed and ever-laconic Tiff Needell, ‘and now I know.’ But the private car, driven by Mallock, Salmon and Simon Phillips held an astonishing fourth place right through the night, bested only by three brand new works Porsche 956s before a partially burned-out distributor relegated them to seventh at the flag. I was told that when they tested the engine afterwards they found meaningful compression on just five of its eight cylinders.

But other than a fifth place at Sebring the following spring, results were hard to come by and at Le Mans the sole entry was Viscount Downe’s car which, while fast, proved troublesome and retired on Sunday morning when a conrod ventilated its engine block.

Worse was to come the following year. In a final enormous effort two private Nimrods were entered by Viscount Downe and Salmon was able to coax his friend Richard Attwood out of long-term retirement to share a car with him and the American Drake Olsen. The other car was driven by Mallock and dentist-turned-racer John Sheldon. And it was the latter driving when, just as it had for Tiff, a burst tyre pitched the Nimrod into the barriers at maximum speed. But there was to be no lucky escape this time. The car hit a marshal’s post, killing one and badly injuring another, and exploded.

Then, to add insult to tragedy, Olsen drove straight into the wreckage, eliminating the second car on the spot. Sheldon was airlifted to hospital, and thence back to the UK where he’d spend many months recovering from extensive burns, though he races on in historics to this day. For Attwood and Salmon, whose Le Mans careers had started in 1963 and 1962 respectively, it was the last time they drove there in anger.

I’ve always had a soft spot for this heroic and most unlikely of projects. Ultimately I guess Nimrod must be seen to be a failure, but it took on the might of the factory Porsches, not knowing that the car they were up against would become the most successful sports racing prototype of all time, and for many hours at Le Mans in 1982, was absolutely the best of the rest.

I have a small, personal connection too. There was a road going Aston Martin V8 Vantage which was used as a development hack for the engine and when it was no longer needed, my father bought it. It had around 500bhp – which doesn’t sound like much these days when electric Hyundai hatchbacks have that and more – but over 40 years ago and if, as I had, you’d just stepped out of a Metro, it felt like the wildest thing on wheels. And the best sounding too.

The team made a great video about the 1982 Le Mans 24 Hours. I’d not seen it for years but watching it again I was struck by how valiantly this tiny team battled the odds and came so close to causing major upset.

It was bittersweet to see Michael Salmon again, himself a highly accomplished racer and winner at Goodwood in period. He and his wife Jean (also a fine racing driver) were childless and when I was a teenager I’d cycle over the garage in Jersey where we lived and he sold Ferraris, Alfas and, bizarrely, Daihatsus for a living. I’d sit in his office and he’d regale me with all his old racing stories. When I became Editor of MotorSport he asked me to write his biography which I was sadly in no position to do. But I owe much of my passion for racing in general and Le Mans in particular to him. A born raconteur, his tales of trying to take the Mulsanne kink flat in weathers fair and foul over more than 20 years of racing there are some of my most precious memories of him. And I miss him to this day.