DOWN THE WORKSHOP

GUYSON SANDBLASTER SPECIAL

Andrew Hepworth looks after it “It’s a very special car and was built at the end of 1968 by our late father David. He ran it in 1969 and won the British Hillclimb Championship straight off. It was based very loosely on a Brabham chassis. He’d hoped to build a four-wheel-drive system into Jack Brabham’s BT19 Formula 1 car but the chassis was too small.”

It has a Ferguson 4WD system “So he had to build a bespoke chassis to do it. It was built for comfort and speed as he wasn’t a small guy. It used the Ferguson four-wheel-drive system first used on the Felday 5 hillclimb car of Peter Westbury. It did race at the Oulton Park Gold Cup and at Brands Hatch with Bev Bond and Tony Lanfranchi before 4WD was banned in Formula 5000.”

The car had a lot of success “Instead, David switched to the hills where it absolutely flew and he ran it for several seasons before moving on to the BRM Can-am cars. It was powered by a Traco V8 engine and was first known as the Ferguson Four. After winning the 1969 title, Hepworth only missed the 1970 title by two points to Sir Nick Williamson. It was also the first car to break the 30s barrier at Shelsley Walsh. Sponsorship from Guyson led to the name change.”

It was stored for 34 years “Its last season on the hills was in 1971. But the Sandblaster always remained in the family and was tucked away in a corner for many years. It didn’t run between 1972 and the Shelsley centenary meeting in 2006. We totally restored it for that event and it is the sort of car that should be out being seen and heard. It’s great to get it out and everyone appreciates it. Dad died in 1992 so he last saw it in a million bits.”

Rebuilding the gearbox was a challenge “When it went into store, the gearbox was in bits and everything was in boxes. We had to figure out how to put it back together and it took about three months to build the gearbox. We’re now in the process of building a replica gearbox for the Felday we’re restoring. Motorsport has always been in the family and we’ve raced and run our own teams, so we’ve always had the engineering side of things.”