1965 Brabham BT 8 Sports Racer

This Brabham BT 8 Sports Racer sold for $158,650, including buyer’s premium, at the H&H London auction held May 7, 2003. The car had been privately offered prior to the auction in the $165k range, so the result seems market correct.

My company owned this Brabham BT 8 from late ’92 through early 2000 and sold it for about $125,000 gross to the UK. It’s a glorious, beautiful, great-handling car, clearly the class of the small sports racers. As such, BT 8s sell for half again to twice as much as any of their competitors. A slight anachronism, they were designed as 2-liter sports racers in a world that was very rapidly moving toward American V8 power. BT 8s (and the roughly equivalent Elva Mk 8) had stronger frames, more driver room, a lot more tire and a bit more brake than their predecessors, the Lotus 23s and Elva Mk 7s. They did not, however, have enough frame, tire, etc. to deal with the 5-liter-plus V8s that were suddenly becoming dominant. This made the cars a commercial failure and only 12 were sold. All 12 are well known, so weeding out fakes is relatively easy.

In contemporary vintage racing, BT 8s are generally gridded with the four-cylinder cars rather than the V8s, so a competent driver will have a reasonably easy time running at the front. If you’re serious about this category of car, there are a number of things to watch for. Only two BT 8s raced new with bigger than a 2-liter engine (SC-7-64 and SC-8-64, which ran 2.7-liter engines). Virtually every BT 8 carried a larger-than-2-liter engine before it was put out to pasture, but technically they all should be 2-liter cars. If you want to race in Europe, and the BT 8 you’re looking at has a larger engine, be sure the FIA paperwork is in order or that you have made contact with the FIA about the possibility of getting it. As SC-2-65, born with a 2-liter, has FIA papers allowing it to run the 2.7-liter, it is possible to get the necessary documents.

The correct transaxle is a Hewland HD5. This is the first scratch-designed and -built Hewland; the earlier Mark series were built around VW cases. The HD5 is notoriously fragile, with parts about as available as hen’s teeth. Your options are to live with this hand grenade, convert to an FT transaxle (which the FIA does not consider to be an acceptable configuration) or convert the HD cases to accept FT internal parts. While this is entirely possible, it is neither easy nor cheap because the shaft centers are just slightly different and everything has to be re-machined. I recently had an HD converted to FT and the bill was $12,000.

A properly set-up BT 8 is a joy to drive quickly and is predictable near the limit. The body is somewhere between very pretty and flat-out gorgeous, but it was designed at a time when aerodynamics meant low drag, not high-speed lift control. BT8s with big engines will introduce you to religion at the top end of fifth gear. Just past start/finish at Elkhart, to be exact, when you crest the hill, you keep your fingertips on the wheel, stay in the absolute middle of the track and pray nobody makes you do anything sudden. You drive a loooong way ahead of the car.

It’s not evil-it just doesn’t have much weight on the tires. Adding a selection of chin spoilers, dive planes and rear spoilers that never came from the factory but were most definitely used in the era is recommended, despite the ugly-factor they add. Chassis setup and spring rates are also crucial to keeping the car on the ground. In this case, “factory original” can be very scary.

Overall, this particular Brabham BT 8 has to rank as one of the best. It has period history with Peter Revson, FIA papers for its oversized engine, and has been well-documented all its life.-Thor Thorson