It’s me, Mark Stone, and in this episode of the Backseat Driver Podcast, I explore the fascinating world of Southern African motorsport with Rob Young, author of Special Brew: The Story of the Southern African Formula One and Libra Specials.

Rob shares the inspiration behind his book and explains how his passion for racing history led him to uncover the often-overlooked stories of drivers, engineers, and builders across Southern Africa. Despite modest resources, these individuals created competitive racing cars through ingenuity, determination, and sheer mechanical talent.

We discuss how many of these home-built machines not only reflected the craftsmanship of established European manufacturers but, in some cases, outperformed them on track. The conversation highlights a remarkable period of innovation and resourcefulness, where creativity often mattered more than budget.

This episode shines a light on an underappreciated chapter of motorsport history and celebrates the resilience, ambition, and engineering brilliance of those who refused to let limitations stand in their way.

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The other week, Rebecca Leopard, who represents Everall Publishing, sent me another unusual book in this instance and I'll explain why in a moment.

It's written by a man, Rob Young, who claims he's not a writer.

So he's written a book.

Apparently it's his second book, but.

Special Brew, the story of the Southern African Formula One and Libra specials.

It's a subject I'll hold my hand up and say I know very little about.

Apart from Kyalami and the East African safari rallies, I knew very little about racing in Africa, which is why I'm delighted to welcome Rob Young to the backseat.

Driver.

Rob, welcome.

Thank you.

Pleased to be with you.

Mark, how did this book come about?

Because, I mean, it's like I said, people like yourself who know about the racing in South Africa must be very thin on the ground.

There are a few dedicated historians about, not many left, but we have a rich racing history here.

Before World War II, the Italian teams, Maseretti and Strong privateers came to Africa and raced as well as the Auto Union cars driven by Rosemeyer and Von Delius.

Yeah, so I've always been interested in racing since I was a little boy.

Fortunately, my father took me to some of the Grand Prix and I don't know, I must have been a bit of a collector programs and whatever.

And these particular cars, when our local chaps were unable to buy a racing car because they were too expensive or the factories didn't want to sell them, they had to build their own.

And over the years I collected all this information and as I had got to know a lot of these drivers and builders, I put it all together and then one day I decided to compile this book.

Fortunately, Gordon Murray, the famous designer, was a good friend of mine and he encouraged me to go ahead and have it published.

So that's where we are now.

The one thing, and you mentioned it is the factories, the manufacturers, racing cars didn't seem at times overly keen to supply cars to South Africa or they made them so expensive that, I mean, it really is, as the name suggests, special brew.

The South Africans ability to build successful racing cars in the good old Ken Tyrrell tradition of in their garage round the back.

I mean, as you say in the book, when some of the cars like the Brabhams appeared and the Lotuses came over to race with people like Stirling Moss, etc, behind the wheels, the Africans, South Africans with no compunction whatsoever, got the tape measures out, measured them and more or less built replicas of some of the famous racing cars.

Didn't they?

Yes, that's partly true.

The thing is people don't understand the rudimentary facilities and lack of, what should I say, equipment that these fellows had to create what they did.

And some of these cars were very, very good.

During that era, the works teams used to visit at year end for the Grand Prix.

We had about three or four Grand Prix in different parts of the country within like a month.

And a lot of the teams seek, seek to sell their, what can I say, last year's model to the local drivers in some cases.

Yeah.

But then of course there was money involved.

You know it.

Some of the chaps obviously did not have that money so they decided to build their own.

Now the interesting thing is, I mean you look at one and one guy who, absolutely unbelievable, decided at a young age to hike his way over to England via Marseilles and everything else, just knocked on Colin Chapman's door, Peter de Klerk, and suddenly got a job.

I mean it took him God knows how long to get from South Africa to England, as I heard via my say, working on the ship.

And he was absolutely brilliant, wasn't he?

Yep.

I knew Peter very well and he was brilliant.

His ideas were fantastic.

The things he did were very clever and his attention to detail, unbelievable.

He had no money to speak of.

And as I said in the book, in those days they bought cigarettes in ones instead of a packet of 20.

But somehow they did it and Peter ended up.

He drove for Porsche at Lamar, came sixth, drove for the Aston Martin Lola team with, with, I think Chris Irwin was his partner.

John Surtees was in the other thing.

So he was a top class driver in his own right.

And the one thing as you mentioned in the book, when he eventually, after a full season working for Colin Chapman and Lotus, when he returned to Africa and started to build, I mean it was where they saw people like Peter source their parts from.

I mean he even used some of the airframe from an old Tiger Moth.

I get the feeling no scrapyard and no scrap car was safe from the attentions of the race car builders.

That's right.

They often couldn't get the parts they required so they made them.

And in fact the one car that as a guy he couldn't come across or afford rear uprights, so they fabricated themselves.

And that car still races quite successfully in historics in Europe.

Yeah, because that's one question that has to be asked before we carry on.

How many of these homebuilt specials still survive?

Right.

One of the cars, the N that was built by a real enthusiast in his garage that races in Europe and in fact I heard it had a big crash at Goodwood on Easter Monday.

Assegai has participated at Monaco and several other international circuits.

The LDS cars, of which probably 10 or so were built, at least two are running in Britain.

The Porsche of Bill Jennings Porsche Special which looks like a 718.

Yeah, that is being revived at the moment, it's not a running car.

And the Heron that is being.

That's a well known historic competitor.

That's just off the top of my head.

Yeah, the Alfa Special, the Klux famous car I know was at hall and hall at one time.

Whether they finished it I don't know.

And the Cooper Special of Van der Favor, which was what they call a T43 today, that is in Norway or Sweden or Denmark somewhere there.

So a lot of these cars are around still.

Sadly some of them have were converted to sports cars or got obsolete when the 3 litre formula came about.

Now one thing you mentioned then was the Alfa Specials.

How did the South Africans latch onto the fact that a standard Alfa Romeo road car engine could be turned into a good single seater engine?

Who first came up with this idea?

I think it was Sid van der Favor.

Now he was a marvelous mechanic.

He'd been in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve during the war in the engine rooms of ships that were being escorted, you know, on up to Russia and that sort of thing.

Yeah, there was an Alfa Romeo factory in East London and in those days, unlike today, there weren't many sheer performance cars.

Alfas and Volvos you bought if you wanted something really quick, Sunbeam, Rapier.

And Sid modified this Alfa engine and the clerk, funny enough worked for him at the time and it became very quick.

There used to be British privateers that used to visit during the summer season and sell their old Coopers and Sid was able to beat these.

It was Dick Gibson and Keith Balaset and Derek Edwards, fellows like that.

With his Alpha engined car it got so good that he was taken to Italy a couple of times for presentations, you know, for his achievements.

Yeah, and they were even Sterling Moss and Rob Walker.

Yeah, yeah.

So these chaps were clever engineers.

And the other thing, the Alpha was in those days you were recovering from the war years so there was austerity around and import duty on a Climax engine was prohibitive.

Where you could buy A crashed Alpha.

There were plenty of them around.

There were fast cars, poor roads at.

The top.

And rob parts of it.

Yeah.

So the cost was.

Was the thing.

So.

And I mean some of.

I mean, one of them.

There's a picture of it and I must confess, I can't find it at the moment.

Some of the exhaust systems they fit to these cars were incredible.

Yeah, that was a distinctive thing.

You know, those engines were pretty robust in standard form and reliable in.

Yeah, the race trim.

Yes.

That exhaust was a thing of van der Favors and it must have done something, otherwise he wouldn't have made it.

So.

Yeah, but it also added an interesting aspect to the race.

Well, you put it this way, you wouldn't not be able to see it, would you?

I mean, it was.

Yeah, that's exactly what I tried to put over here.

And I notice at one section of the book, Jack Brabham was there and he was extremely intrigued by looking at cars that at first he thought were his and they weren't.

They were copy Brabhams built by the guys in South Africa.

That's right.

Doug Saruria was a.

He was probably the most important builder, the man of the lds.

Yeah.

And at one time he bought a Cooper Mark 3T45 but was unable to pay for it in the end.

Yeah.

And so he sold it to fund a favor.

But later Doug bought his own Cooper and he found that he could build a better car.

Yeah, you know he did.

And then while he was assembling it, Doug was there with a tape measure.

Now, Doug knew the Cooper family quite well, so he was able to get corners and wheels and parts like that.

Yeah, so that's what he did there.

So his first cars were sort of Cooper copies.

When they went to the 3 liter formula, Brabham came out with a car and Doug copied that.

But it had Cooper corners on it.

Now, many years later, there was a big story that Brabham threw his toys out the box and was furious with Doug.

But when we did the book on lds, I needed to get a forward and Graham Gould kindly got me in touch with Jack Brabham.

And Brabham wrote quite a nice forward about that.

And he admired the skill of Doug in building a copy Brabham.

Yeah,.

Because one thing that seems to come across is a lot of the manufacturers like Brabham, Lotus Cooper, when they saw the reproductions.

Want a better term.

Were actually highly Impressed.

And in many instances the South African copy was better than the original.

I, I can't say anything about that but it was a good, you know, performed well.

Yeah.

If, if Siruria could have got or afforded up to date engines by that time I'm sure his cars would have been even quicker.

Yeah but I mean the other thing that's absolutely fascinating is the variety of at the time front engined and rear engine cars all racing together because they haven't seemed to have decided which was the better of the two formats.

Yes, the rear engine revolution obviously that came about with a Cooper family in Syria.

What would it have been?

58,59.

Yeah the local chaps had just after that as soon as the first real Cooper was imported the chaps who were racing like sports cars like D type Jaguars.

Jaguars, the various Lotus 15s and Lotus 11s they all mixed in.

That's why it was formula lieber.

But the rear engine car, a single seater soon just made them all obsolete.

Yeah, I mean there's an interesting photograph on page 118 and it shows a Cooper rear engine Cooper racing against a triumph TR2.

So the Libra series must have been incredibly varied over the time.

Yes, just to make fields and they were real enthusiasts in those days.

So unfortunately or fortunately, I don't know, technological progress had marched forward and those days of having TR2s and Austin Elis and yeah whatever competing with upgraded 500cc cars which had then been fitted with Porsche engines or Climax engines or whatever.

Yeah that sort of came to an end and you had these purer specials, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

So a lot of the sports cars that were out there were they mainly British sports cars that were in Africa at the time?

Yes, mainly British, yeah.

I'm just trying to think you had quite unique cars like Faithorpes of course the Heelys and TR2s and 3s and in fact that Austin Healey 1/ hundreds, you know the very rare.

Yeah.

Lightweight racing one.

There was one or two of those about.

You had the odd Italian car.

Yeah.

And then there was a reputedly ex Maria de Philippus Maserati A6 GCS that found its way here.

Now that was quite interesting because when it got to South Africa it had the Maserati engine in and the chaps decided to go and race in Rhodesia, a trip of probably 6 or 700 miles.

And they towed it on a tow rope all the way.

Unfortunately, it blew its engine and the car that they towed it with was an Austin Healey that had a Chevy engine in it.

Yeah.

So they whipped out the Chevy engine, put it into the Maserati and then raced that for a while, a couple of important races and then eventually on a very tight circuit, it met its end.

Now, another man you cover and I have spoken to him, I spoke to him just over 12 months ago because he'd been in France at an event, his Brausch Niemann and one of his Lotus cars that he raced had made an appearance in France and he was invited over to be reunited with it.

He sat in it, but I don't think he drove it.

But I mean he became quite a famous name in Africa, didn't he?

Oh, yes.

Now, Brash is still doing amazing things.

He's about in his early 80s or mid-80s and a year or two ago he took his motorcycle and drove from the north of South America to the South America.

Yeah.

In bracing, he started off as a mechanic in a highly specialized tuning workshop and the boss loaned him a Lotus 7, a very early Mark 1 Lotus 7.

And Brush did a lot of things to that.

He didn't have a limited slip diff, so he put on two handbrakes, one on each side.

Yeah.

He also narrowed the car and did various other things.

And in fact There's a legendary driver's 62, the Rand Grand Prix.

He qualified that car in a Grand Prix and about a dozen proper racing cars.

When I say proper, you know, Formula one type cars failed to make the grid.

Yeah.

So he was a legend and he would put on mudguards and lights for the sports car race and then take them off for the Formula one race.

Yeah.

Yes.

He was a very clever and very competent driver.

He drove for Wilmond in the UK in Lotus Cortinas at one time.

Yeah.

Now the one thing that does come across is a lot of the drivers or the special builders when they were up and running and the car had been sorted out when some of the big names, big racing names like Moss and Jim Clark etc, came out to race there.

I think these guys were absolutely stunned that something that had been built at home was nearly as fast or at times faster than they were in a works car.

Yeah, I don't, I wouldn't say they were quicker than their works cars or the top line drivers, but at times these guys could be pretty competitive.

But bear in mind they never had the up to date tires.

Yeah.

You know, in those days compounds were something newer.

A works team could run half the season on one set of tyres.

Do you know that?

Yeah.

Anyway, the locals would buy the second end tyre, the, what can I say, used tyres at the end of the season.

Yeah.

But the engines, like the Alfa engines of de Klerken van der 5 were pretty competitive.

I don't know if you know Des Hamill, he writes books on engines, a wonderful book, Coventry Climax Racing engines.

And he in fact gave me a bit of information for the book, very kindly.

So the claims of horsepower that the locals made, they didn't have dynos and things like that, but they would take a car quietly in the early hours of the morning onto a public road and give it a blast to find out what jets to use and whatever.

So those engines were pretty good in it, you know, the top locals.

Yeah,.

Because there's one section where two guys building cars.

The only power tool that they actually had was a quarter inch drill run from an extension cable from the house.

I mean their ingenuity was absolutely incredible, wasn't it?

Yeah.

That was the clerk.

They stayed in a seedy hotel, him and his friend who built the car, Pat Phillips, in a heavy drinking hotel bar for the mining plant, Teal nearby.

And just four 44 gallon drums and a slab of wood over that.

That's how they built the Alpha special.

Yeah.

Of course they welded the things themselves.

They would borrow welding equipment from Doug Saruria or anyone.

Yeah.

And it's like you said, excuse me, when a car, if a car blew its engine, they thought nothing about putting a completely unrelated engine into the vehicle.

And at many times the unrelated engine will fare better than the engine it should have had in.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

Just innovation or something like that.

But then again, there were a lot of.

While there were successful cars, there were some dreadful, easy to say now, but dreams of builders.

And what they built was a terrifying machine.

So you had the success and you had the failures, but if we didn't have the, what can I say, the failures, you wouldn't have the winners making the grits.

And it's like you said, these guys, once they built something, they were out there, nothing held them back, did it?

They went out there, they went.

They worked on the theory that they probably wouldn't win, but they'd have a damn good try at doing it and if not, get a decent finish.

And these cars managed to last for two and three seasons.

Didn't they, yes, that was an interesting thing, the long levity of some of these cars and interesting thing when the, the builder, builder driver, he got a newer car, he, you know, he would sell the old car and the chap who bought it would either break it or compete quite well with it.

Yeah.

Now just out of interest, I mean as I said, most people who are keen on racing have heard of Kormi, but I get the feeling there were a lot of circuits that are probably long gone in Africa at the time.

Yeah.

Down our way before Kyalami, there was a circuit called Grand Central.

It was an old airport.

Yeah, a small little airport, but that they converted to a circuit.

It wasn't very safe.

So then that's the reason Kyalami was built.

Yeah.

Before that era racing was like on public roads around the early industrial estates or even on beachfront esplanades which was very dangerous.

East London for instance, they raced around the city streets along the esplanade and the sea at high tide waves would crash over the onto the track and cause some interesting accidents.

And they developed, it was a Killarney in the Cape that became a decent track after they'd been racing once again at old airports or on the access roads of old airports.

They had before that run through Alexandra park which was just a city park.

Very dangerous, you'll see in a book, curbing and whatever.

And then Westmead was built which was a top class circuit.

Unfortunately it failed after two years because of attendance.

There was too many tracks close by, you know, cannibalizing the market.

So I mean what, what is the state of motor racing in Africa now?

Because I must say I don't see many reports of it.

As I said.

Apart from the, the rallies, is there still racing in Africa?

Yes, there's still circuits.

Killarney exists, Kyalami, which has been completely changed, but still in the same location that hosts an international nine hour for sports cars.

There's a lot of historic racing which is quite popular, plus various classes for modern saloon cars.

Yeah, there's obviously nothing like Formula one that would be just too expensive now.

Yeah.

And just to go back to the book, where did you find all these photographs?

I mean, most of which have never been seen.

I big borrowed and stole.

Fortunately the people I got to know very well, some of them had scrapbooks with photos that they gave me.

I would be a bit of a detective.

I would look for people of families of People who raced and found out what they had before.

People gave me things.

I knew a couple of top class photographers.

Yeah.

And one of them gave me his archive and another gave me books of negatives.

Of course I had to then identify things and it just went on like that.

So I still get people coming to me and saying, yes, we're clearing out the house, father's died and here's some books.

We don't want to put them on the tip.

Are you interested?

Yeah.

So, I mean, it truly is fascinating is this, I mean, what inspired you to write it in the first place?

Was it to make sure the memories of these people and these cars, there was a permanent record of them?

Yeah, that's precisely it.

Yeah.

You know, the story had to be told.

Graham Gould is a wonderful friend of mine, you know, the Scottish author.

Yeah.

And he once told me, you know, if you don't diligently record all this, it'll be lost forever.

Yeah.

And what's the reaction been to the people whose family members are mentioned in the cars?

Has.

Have they.

Have they been as fascinated as I am?

So far I've had very good reception on the book.

Yeah.

People who.

I obviously know the families of some of the car builders in that and I've given them a copy of the book and they really liked it.

And other people have thought it very good.

One of my, quite a well known.

Author,.

I gave one to, he said it had the accuracy of an auditor, it was a good history lesson and it read like a thriller.

Yeah.

Which I thought was quite good because.

It is a bit different.

You know Mrs. Henning, the lady builder, I thought I got to know her quite well.

Yeah.

And she was a wonderful mechanic.

Designer.

Yeah.

I mean, just out of interest, where did the little colour plates come from?

Who.

Who did these?

I mean, they are.

They look like little watercolors.

Oh, that's a good friend of mine, Andrew Embleton.

He is now in Devon.

Living in Devon.

Yeah.

And an amazing collector.

He had a collection of about 3,000 motor books, racing books.

Yeah.

He had autographed photos of, I don't know, 800 or so drivers from all over the world and pre war drivers, whatever.

And he used to do these lovely little watercolors and get.

Send them to the drivers to autograph and then they loved those and would ask him for another one.

So that was something unique.

And Andrew was one of the chaps who encouraged me to do this book.

Yeah.

So are there any more books within Rob Young?

Let's get this one out.

Of the way.

Two other interesting ones that have been that I've drafted still need to be finished off properly.

Yeah.

But for the moment, the sword.

Let's just get this one out the way.

Rob Young, all the best.

I hope many people go and get this.

I said it's called Special Brew, the Story of the Southern African Formula 1 Libra Specials forward by Gordon Murray.

It's from EVRO Publishing.

It's absolutely fascinating.

This covers an aspect of motorsport I knew nothing about and the determination and the resilience of people to go racing with next to absolutely nothing to go.

And do it with.

And the end results were phenomenal.

So, Rob Young, thanks very much for joining me on the backseat driver and thanks very much for having written this book.

Thanks, Mark.

Great talking to you.