Vintage Thing No.107 - Nimbus

Nimbus was, and is, low. Note the great scallop cut out of the bonnet to allow hot air from the front mounted radiator to escape. I'm not into personal plates but TOY711 seems quite appropriate.

Nimbus is a very low hillclimber built by Don Parker and powered by a supercharged 1293cc Mini engine and gearbox mounted at the back. The bodyshell is a much modified moulding originally intended for a GSM Delta, a rare breed of kit car that came to Blighty from South Africa in 1960.

However, Nimbus pre-dates the GSM Delta by some years (nobody is now sure by how many). As built in the fifties, it had aluminium bodywork to clothe its spaceframe chassis and a front mounted Riley engine, which was subsequently replaced by a transverse Ford sidevalve engine. This drove through a Norton gearbox and chain to a rigid rear axle and apparently was a pig to handle. Must've been that rigid rear axle, I guess.

Anyway, by the time I saw this curiosity at Prescott Hillclimb in 1984 (incidentally where I also spotted the speedway Allard Atom (VT No.56) in the paddock) Nimbus had a conspicuosly blown Mini powertrain. At the time, it was campaigned by Mike Hentall and I heard mutterings around the paddock that it ate pistons but with that massive Wade blower (reputedly off a truck and dwarfing the engine it fed) as much as 150 bhp was available in something that weighed hardly anything (450kg).

Nimbus was something of an obscure enigma but I registered the name when I saw an H&H auction back in 2007 and had the presence of mind to note some of the details. At the time, it didn't sell but I was able to understand what strange origins this car had.

Apparently Don Parker had connections with Willy Meisner and Bob Van Niskirk in the design of the GSM Dart or Delta and had first dibs on the first moulding. This car was often referred to subsequently as the Nimbus DP and in the Formula Junior newsletter there is a description of Don Parker crawling through the grass to collect shattered remnants of GRP after a crash at Paddock Bend at Brand's Hatch. At that time the nearest body moulds were in South Africa....

The original bodywork was on the heavy side and in 1961 Nimbus ran as "Nimbus Unadorned" for a spell with doped fabric stretched over its spaceframe. It wasn't very competitive in Formula 1172 but when Don Parker saw the Warwick special, a mid-engined flathead racer that used a Mini transmission, he radically re-constructed Nimbus in 1965 into the form I saw at Prescott.

Anyway, in trying to verify these notes on the net I find that Nimbus is featured in Jeroen Booij's Maximum Mini - a book that is about to be added to my bookshelves.

Better still, here's a recent update on his research findings for the book - it seems that everyone assumed Nimbus had been built by another Don Parker, the one who very successfully raced Formula 500 cars in the early fifties. The Don Parker who built Nimbus seems to have been an equally distinguished gentleman and one of the few surviving tail gunners from a WW2 bomber - he's still with us and 92 years old.

Have a poke around Jeroen's blog - there's loads of weird and wonderful Mini based cars on it - Stimson  Mini Bug anyone?

Here you can see just how big that Wade supercharger was and also the little tail fins that were a feature of the South African GSM bodyshell

Nowadays Nimbus rubs shoulders with the great and the good at events like the Goodwood Revival and in red paint looks in better fettle than ever.