1964 BRM P67

This is a photograph that I took at the Donington Park Museum in October 1989.

It's the 1964 BRM P67 and was BRM's attempt to build a competitive four-wheel drive F1 car, as did several other teams in the 1960s. This is what the book 'Great Racing Cars of the Donington Collection' has to say about the car.

'During the 1964 season a youthful BRM engineer named Mike Pilbeam was allotted a four-wheel drive research project. He took an obsolete P56 spaceframe chassis, turned the V8 engine about-face to place the flywheel and clutch assembly just behind the driver's seat, and then mated to it a Ferguson centre differential and four-wheel drive system.

The result was a simple, relatively inexpensive test vehicle, and Richard Attwood drove it in practice for the British GP at Brands Hatch, after which it completed its programme in private. BRM decided that the all-wheel drive was not the way to go and the P67 research vehicle was retired, subsequently finding its way into the British Hill-Climb Championship which it won in Peter Lawson's private hands in 1968.'

BRM P67

This is one of the cars in the Donington Collection that I photographed on my last visit in September 2014.

It's the 1964 BRM P67 and was BRM's attempt to build a competitive four-wheel drive F1 car, as did several other teams in the 1960s. It only made one racing appearance, in practice for the 1964 British Grand Prix, but after qualifying in last position the car was withdrawn from the race. The project was then shelved as BRM concentrated their efforts on developing the H16 engine, although the P67 had some success in hillclimbs in the hands of David Good and Peter Lawson, the latter winning the British hillclimb championship in 1968 with the car.