East Coast vintage racer E. B. Odom needed an MGB parts car so he could properly restore his MGB racecar. He located a worthy candidate in Alabama, but the car’s owner said, “You can have the MGB only if you clean out the rest of the barn.” The owner had recently sold his farm and was being pressured by the real estate agent to vacate the “junk” from the barn.
Besides the MGB, that junk included a 1957 Elva MK II sports racer. And that’s where fellow vintage racer Paul Wilson enters the story. Wilson is never one to shy away from interesting sports and racecar restoration projects. He learned about the Elva after it had been moved to Tim Handy’s race shop in Virginia.
When he got the Elva home and was sorting through the parts, this is what it looked like. The Elva was part of an MGB package deal: “If you want the MGB, you must take the Elva!” PAUL WILSON
“It had been crashed, then disassembled,” says the retired English professor from Fairfield, Virginia. “Thankfully the engine was complete and assembled, because the last Coventry Climax engine I bought was totally apart and stored in old boxes. I had to pick up parts with a shovel. It was so bad, I picked through the dirt and found an engine main bearing cap.”
Thankfully, that was not the case with this engine.
Elva Cars was a UK-based racecar manufacturer founded in 1955 by Frank Nichols. Nichols noticed that fellow cottage manufacturer Colin Chapman was selling so many Lotus 11s to American racers that he decided to follow Chapman’s lead. Elva’s first US importer was Continental Motors, in Washington. Elva produced sports racers, sports cars, and formula racecars until 1968.
Wilson believes his Elva—#100-35—was the second MK II built of a production run of probably 12 to 15. “This car was likely driven by racer Frank Baptista at the 1957 Nassau Speed Weeks,” Wilson says. “And it was track-tested by Charlie Kolb for a Sports Car Illustrated story. This car won the Mid-West SCCA Regional Championship in 1961 or 1962, driven by Frank Opalka.”
Like the Lotus 11, Wilson’s Elva is powered by an 1100 cc Coventry Climax engine. Despite the car’s sloppy disassembly and storage in the Alabama barn, Wilson says his car was remarkably complete. “It still has the original frame, body, De Dion rear suspension, engine, gearbox, brakes, and suspension, which is so rare for an old racecar.”
Wilson completed the Elva’s restoration in 2002. He restored all the car’s aluminum bodywork, fabrication, paint, and engine himself. Since then, he has raced the car on Southwestern road circuits a couple of times each season.
“The car is a very friendly car to race,” he says. “It has light understeer and is very forgiving. But the brakes do tend to fade. Back in the day, these Elvas won their fair share of races, even against those hormone-induced Lotus 11s.”
What started out as a pile of junk became a competitive and beautiful vintage racecar. The car is one of just a few with mostly original drivetrain and suspension components. PAUL WILSON