In recent years the car is nominally on display at the Heritage Motor Centre, Gaydon.
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A crucial step in this plan was a chance meeting between William Martin-Hurst, MD of Rover, and Sir Alfred Owen of Rover's component supplier Rubery Owen, but more relevantly also of the Formula 1 constructors BRM.
Although both Jack Brabham and his team mate, New Zealander Denny Hulme both retired from the season opening Monaco Grand Prix (won by Jackie Stewart in his BRM), Brabham with their Oldsmobile based Repco engine caught the rest of the teams on the hop with its speed and reliability.
Robert Lamplough and Bernd Terbeck were driving old BRMs recently bought from the factory, and although Lamplough qualified his P133 relatively well, Terbeck's even older P126 blew its engine and he was unable to start the race.
The Bottom-blown Oxygen Converter or BBOCTM is a smelting furnace developed by the staff at Britannia Refined Metals Limited (“BRM”), a British subsidiary of MIM Holdings Limited (which is now part of the Glencore Xstrata group of companies).
With BRM in financial troubles after the V16 experiment, Alfred Owen purchased the team and set work on a new car.
The BRM P261, also known as the BRM P61 Mark II, is a Formula One motor racing car, designed and built by the British Racing Motors team in Bourne, Lincolnshire, England.
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BRM had experimented with a four-valve-per-cylinder version of the engine, but this was abandoned in favour of the tried and trusted, oversquare (68.5 x 50.8 mm), fuel-injected, two-valve, quad-cam configuration.
The subframe housed BRM's type 56 engine, a 1.5 liter V8 and a Colotti gearbox.
Well-established European manufacturers like Ferrari and BRM appeared at various times with little success, March tried to get a share of the lucrative market in 1970-1 but couldn't establish themselves, and Ford flitted across the scene with a number of unsuccessful cars based on the GT40 and its successors.
This success led to his joining the BRM team as a works driver, and later successes at Le Mans and elsewhere.
Starting the season, former Ferrari work's driver Pedro Rodríguez had been lost to Porsche's JWA Gulf Racing of John Wyer, and to BRM in F1, while another former work's racer, Chris Amon was now involved in F1 with March, just like Mario Andretti.
In 1985 de Joux bought the remains of a 1964 Formula One BRP chassis and damaged V8 BRM engine, and over the phone to England, a BRM transaxle.
Engines were mostly by Cosworth (based on Ford blocks) and Honda, though some other units appeared, including various Fiat based units and dedicated racing engines from BMC and BRM.
The resulting car consisted of the chassis of a BRM P261, the suspension of a P57, a 1.5-litre BRM P56 engine mounted back-to-front and Ferguson's transmission system, all put together by BRM apprentice Mike Pilbeam who was later to find fame as a constructor of hillclimb cars.
The Mk.XVI was used by Bob Gerard Racing on Cooper T71/73 for John Taylor at 1964 British Grand Prix, but was no match against Coventry Climax FWMV and BRM P56 V8s, which were generating about 200 bhp.
Fitted with a 1.9-litre version of the BRM Formula One V8 engine, four cars were built, but were mostly used as developmental cars.
Fortunately a good run in the McLaren during the winter Tasman series, including a fine win at the last race, resulted in Tim Parnell offering a drive in his works-supported Reg Parnell Racing BRM team for 1968.
Tim Parnell managed the BRM Formula One team from 1970–74, and is the son of Reg Parnell, another racing driver and team boss.
Though one of the first financial backers of BRM, Vandervell rapidly became disenchanted at the way in which Raymond Mays was running the team and in 1951, after the second Ferrari-based Thinwall Special had been evaluated, he decided to go his own way.