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Once addressed, a period of intensive testing commenced. This involved rolling road testing to refine the setup for best fuel mixture and HP, followed by track testing to ensure reliability and endurance. This year we were delighted to have partners and sponsors onboard, although it did, of course, add to the stress and pressure of having to deliver on the day. Weeks leading up to the Revival encompassed little, if any, sleep and intensive testing resulted in a car capable of reliably delivering 200HP with 14 lbs boost. All the family and sponsors attended this year, adding a new dimension to the day and we arrived with the bad weather again! Friday was qualifying day. We prepped the car and all was good so we set off to qualify at midday.
Like a bad omen the weather closed in and the heavens opened deluging the event in heavy rain; however as we were called to the holding bay the rain stopped and it remained clear until the race was over.
 Suddenly the race was on and they were off! At this point I could not watch the race, although I could hear my family screaming as the car went by lap after lap. At this point I realised we had a reliable car and Gareth was frequently overtaking other drivers. The race was definitely on! At one point we were 10th, then dropped to 12th. On the final lap the battle was on with the Alfa Romeo for 11th position. Gareth was in his element and floored the car overtaking the Alfa just at the finish line securing 11th position.
Needless to say we all erupted in cheers and tears of joy, everyone hugging everyone! The Vanguard was the first NZ car to compete and complete a race at Goodwood. It took a long time for this success to sink in and looking back it still seems unreal! Based on this achievement, the car will return in 2026 for more success we hope. 
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Written by Allan Dick
Because of its geographic isolation and economic policies that often saw New Zealand described as the “Albania of the South Pacific”, when motor racing was being established in New Zealand after WW2 importing new racing machinery was both too difficult and too expensive. But we were still a young country and had a strong Do-it-Yourself thread running through the national psyche, so many people built their own competition cars. The most popular contributors to this home-grown industry were pre-war Ford V8s and Ford 10s. Largely the cars were not sophisticated and some could be accurately described as crude. In some cases they were basically pre-war saloons, stripped of bodies. Two Christchurch engineers, Hec Green and Jack Brewer had other ideas and by mid 1949 they had designed and built three customer cars, RA1, RA2 and RA3 which are still extant in New Zealand. Beside customer cars they also had a notion to build an advanced car for themselves to share as they were both more than competent behind the wheel. The basis for this car, RA4, was a bundle of technical papers they bought from the British government which had been seized as part of the war reparations programme. These papers looked at the prewar Auto Union Grand Prix programme and became the inspiration for RA4 — it would be rear engined and far more advanced than anything that had been built in New Zealand at that time. In fact it could be claimed that in terms of “concept” it was almost a world leader when you look at European Grand Prix cars of 1949. While there had been the pre-war Auto Unions, it really was 1960 before “rear engined” became the standard for Grand Prix cars. Although New Zealand had race meetings from one end of the country to the other Green and Brewer confined most of their competition outings in the car to events close to their hometown of Christchurch. They seemed to have been pleased enough known their design worked and the car was competitive and really raced infrequently. I saw the car for the first time at the Dunedin Festival Road Race in 1958 — it was then eight years old! Green had already started to design and build a smaller and lighter version of RA4 and both he and Brewer had decided they really needed another driver for Dunedin and employed the services of noted speedway rider, Geoff Mardon who was back home in Christchurch from the cinder tracks of England for a holiday. In 1958 my passion for motor racing had well and truly ignited which, in 1966, developed into a professional career writing about the sport, something I, in fact, still do. I remember than day I 1958 very clearly with this radical looking car that looked so much like the rear engined Auto Unions of the mid thirties, thundering around the narrow, rough, road circuit in third place behind Ross Jensen in the ex Stirling Moss 250F and Bruce McLaren, who would leave for the UK in a couple of week’s time, in a Cooper Climax. It was a drive of heroic proportions but unfortunately the RA4 shed a wheel just four laps from the finish and that was that. The partnership of Brewer and Green dissolved, the latter continuing part-time with the development of RA5 while RA4 was laid up until 1962 until it was sold to Les Moore, father of another speedway ace, Ronnie Moore. Sadly, Les Moore died when he rolled RA4 at a race meeting at Timaru in 1963 and then, the car, not badly damaged at all, virtually disappeared. I often wondered what had happened to that car that was so radical, so advanced, so unusual and so fast that had captured my attention in 1958. I got my answer in 1994 or so when I went to a firm of Auckland engineers to look at a replica Ford GT40 and, in a corner of the workshop, I saw a car I recognised immediately as the long missing RA4. From here the car went to Richard Anderson who took several years restoring it before it was bought by some “investors” and sent to the UK where it was bought by Ian Jones. So, how important is the car in terms of New Zealand motor racing history?. Well, as a motor racing journalist I have long held the view that in a country of home-made racers RA4 is the most important. It was certainly the most creative and, in its time, was light years ahead of anything else that was built. Simply the best and most advanced New Zealand race car of all time. It is fantastic to see it being recognised at an event such as Goodwood. The innovative efforts of Hec Green and Jack Brewer foreshadowed the achievements of Bruce McLaren.  I had the privilege of joining Ian Jones and his team for the running of the RA Vanguard at the recent Goodwood Trophy race. I must admit to a personal bias regarding this remarkable car which, when first developed by Hec Green and Jack Brewer in the early 1950s, was a revolutionary departure from normal race car design. All the more so, since it was designed and built on a shoestring budget, in a tiny workshop in New Zealand, by a couple of clever enthusiasts who just wanted to go racing.
Following a morale destroying failure in qualifying and a late night engine rebuild, the car started the race from the back of the field, of some of the periods most valuable and successful racing cars from the worlds leading manufacturers.
To finish well up the field depicts the beginning of much more to come, and will hopefully start to shine a spotlight, both, on the talent and ingenuity of its two builders, Hec Green and Jack Brewer, and on the sympathetic restoration undertaken by Ian and his team. |
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