A single seater Lotus racing car for the Australian Tasman racing series. The car was originally intended as a Formula 1 car and to feature the Coventry Climax flat 16 engine and the car had a truncated aluminum alloy monocoque chassis to fit it. However the engine had many problems and the engine project was abandoned. So it was decided that the car should be use for the Tasman series instead and should run the Coventry Climax FPF 2495cc engine. The car was renamed the 39B for the Tasman series and raced by Jim Clark and finished 3rd in the series

The ex-Jim Clark/Team Lotus 1966 Tasman Championship car also has a profoundly important Australian racing history to its name, since it is the car subsequently owned and campaigned over several seasons by the great Australian owner/driver, Leo Geoghegan.

Driving this car the legendary Jim Clark won Sydney’s 1966 Warwick Farm International ‘100’, and completed that year’s international Tasman Championship series with a preliminary Heat victory at Teretonga, New Zealand, plus second places at Levin, Wigram, Lakeside and Sandown Park, and third place finishes in the Australian Grand Prix and in the Examiner ‘45’ at Longford, Tasmania. However, the Lotus Type 39 had never been intended as a bespoke 2.5-litre Tasman Championship contender to be driven by Jimmy Clark. In fact it had been devised originally during the winter of 1964-65 as a very special Formula 1 chassis, intended to accommodate the entirely extraordinary 1.5-litre flat-16 cylinder Coventry Climax engine which was under development for the 1965 Formula 1 World Championship racing season. In fact the 16-cylinder engine project remained still-born, and the Type 33-derived monocoque chassis intended for it spent months on stand-by in storage. The Lotus Type 39 Tasman car based upon this monocoque tub then became the first project assigned by Colin Chapman to his newly-recruited Chief Designer, engineer Maurice Phillippe, freshly arrived from the De Havilland Aeroplane Company at Hatfield, Hertfordshire. In effect Maurice adapted this Type 33-derived monocoque chassis, with its rear engine-bay horns amputated to accommodate the flat-16 engine as a stressed chassis member, by building in perforated metal subframe sections at the rear to accept a more conventional 2.5-litre 4-cylinder Coventry Climax FPF power unit. And it was in this form that Jimmy Clark had taken it to Tasman Championship war, only to find himself confronted by the latest 2-litre V8-engined monocoque BRM P261s, driven by Graham Hill, Jackie Stewart and Richard Attwood – which provided near-unbeatable competition.

Upon completion of that 1966 Tasman tour, Lotus agent Leo Geoghegan then bought this unique ex-works car to campaign it under his banner in both Australian national Championship races and the annual international Tasman Championship. He had previously campaigned a 1.5-litre Lotus Type 32 single-seater, powered by a 4-cylinder twin-cam Ford engine, and was now stepping up to the full 2.5-litre ‘big car’ class with the Type 39. He finished fifth in the 1967 Australian Grand Prix at Warwick Farm before an outstanding second place finish – beaten only by that year’s Tasman Champion Jim Clark in the works team’s latest 2-litre Climax V8-powered Lotus 33 - at Sandown Park, Melbourne. The car became a regular contender in Australian national CAMS Gold Star Championship competition, but Leo Geoghegan maintained its international stature in an heroic programme, often as Australia’s leading competitor against the touring stars of World Championship Formula 1.

For 1968 Leo Geoghegan replaced the veteran 4-cylinder Coventry Climax FPF engine with a much more modern 2.5-litre Repco V8 power unit, and the Type 39 chassis was updated in various ways. It finished in just one of that season’s international Tasman Championship events, at Surfers’ Paradise, in which this all-Australian racing hero placed fourth overall, right behind the dominant latest Lotus 49T cars of Jim Clark and Graham Hill – which finished 1-2 powered by their Formula 1-based 2.5-litre Cosworth-Ford DFW V8 engines – with Piers Courage third in a Formula 2-based McLaren-Cosworth M4A. At Warwick Farm the car developed a terminal oil leak, and in the Australian Grand Prix at Sandown Park, Geoghegan finished seventh.

He continued to develop the now elderly but still extremely competitive Lotus-Repco, and in the 1969 international Tasman Championship series he planned to contest every round from the opening New Zealand Grand Prix forward. The Type 39 would sprout contemporary aerodynamic aids in the form of strutted wings and in the NZ GP at Pukekohe, Auckland, Leo finished fifth behind the Ferrari Dino 246Ts of Chris Amon and Derek Bell, the Lotus-Cosworth 49T of new works team star Jochen Rindt, and the Frank Williams-entered Brabham-Cosworth BT26 of Piers Courage. The combination of Leo Geoghegan and the Lotus-Repco 39 were thus the leading Antipodean-based contenders, and although Leo lost this place to compatriot Frank Gardner (driving the custom-made Mildren-Alfa Romeo) at the following Levin Championship round, he still finished a fine fourth overall in a results table headed by Amon, Courage and Gardner.

His luck was then out in the Lady Wigram Trophy event at Christchurch on New Zealand’s South Island, with an engine problem, and he missed the concluding Kiwi round at Teretonga, in preparation for the Australian half of this international Championship series. The Australian Grand Prix was held at Lakeside, Brisbane, where the Geoghegan Lotus-Repco 39 finished a rousing third overall – headed only by the works Ferrari Dino 246Ts of Amon and Bell, and beating Graham Hill’s works Lotus-Cosworth 49T. At Warwick Farm he finished fifth, but at Sandown Park – on the Repco company’s home circuit – he was unable to start the Championship race due to a leaking fuel cell discovered too late for it to be repaired or replaced in time.

The car’s most significant success in Leo Geoghegan’s long ownership was then outright victory in the 1969 International JAF Japanese Grand Prix race on the magnificent Honda-owned race circuit at Suzuka. By 1970 the latest-design 5-litre Formula 5000 cars were accepted as Tasman Championship contenders. Even though the Lotus-Repco 39 was by that time in its fifth season of competition, Leo Geoghegan reappeared in the old war-horse for the opening Australian round of the series at Surfers’ Paradise, finishing seventh. He matched this result at Warwick Farm before suffering an engine problem at Sandown Park.

Leo Geoghegan finally replaced this long-faithful Lotus 39 with a Formula 2-derived Type 59 powered by a Waggott engine for 1971. He sold the ex-Jim Clark chassis to Queenslander Brian Power, who fitted a Lotus-Ford twin-cam engine driving through a lightweight Hewland gearbox. He in turn sold the car in 1973 to Darryl Pearsall of Albury, who retained the twin-cam engine and campaigned the Type 39 in seven minor-league events. It was then acquired by John Dawson-Damer, who recalled:“I bought it without an engine and gearbox and managed to get them later. I put it back to the original 2.5-litre Climax engine and correct Hewland HD5 gearbox. When I put it all together there were a few bits missing. I knew the engine was canted over in the chassis, but had no idea how far…

“I was trying to find the engine cover which I thought might still be in Sydney somewhere in one of the old mechanics’ workshops so I dropped in on this guy near the airport and he told me if I could find anything stowed up in his rafters, I could have it. I saw this Y-frame which looked the right colour and very Chapman, so I brought it down. It was the top Y-frame from my car and there was a cut-out that had been scalloped out to miss the water pump. So I now had something that would tell me how far the engine was canted over in the tub and I could make the engine mountings. It’s staggering where you can suddenly find something that can answer an amazing number of questions!” He was then put in contact with former Team Lotus mechanic (and driver) Ray Parsons, living in Cairns, who provided photographs of the car with its bodywork removed during its frontline Tasman Championship programme in 1966. “Now I had every detail I wanted to know about the car. The Type 39 is now exactly how it was for Jim Clark and Team Lotus in the 1966 Tasman Series…”