P104 A one-off Ferguson Formula Racing car project that became ‘Sleeping beauty’
Story told and written by Henri Greuter, edited by Chris Maughan.
This article is dedicated to the memory of Bill Munro.
It may be hard to imagine about a company that is best known for its agricultural vehicles, but among all the vehicles built by the company in its history two of them were racing cars! This is a story about one of them, the least successful of the two and for the British people, also almost certainly the least well-known one. Indeed, not many British people will be able to say that they have ever seen this Ferguson built vehicle.
Within the many Ferguson Formula Pnumber projects there are several that were one-offs. P99 and P104 are two such examples. They were both racing cars built for paved tracks and, as such, they are rarities within the Ferguson Products catalogue. P99 was the first one built, according to the then current Formula 1 rules. However, the potential success of the car was massively reduced as the P99 was built with a front-mounted engine just as the rest of the F1 world was transitioning from front to rear-mounted engines. A further problem for the P99 then transpired as the engine formula changed and engine capacity was reduced from 2.5 litre to 1.5 litre. The loss of power was even more pronounced for the P99 due to its more complex 4WD drive line. Nevertheless, P99 gained some creditable results in competition and showed promise when it came to demonstrating how a race car could be made to deal with large amounts of power.
Within their book Traction for Sale Bill Munro and Pat Turner have described the history of P99 and how the driver Stirling Moss got involved with the car. Munro and Turner also described nicely the story of the second built Ferguson racer, the P104. What follows in this paper is a briefer history of the P104 and my involvement in its story.
When in the USA, Stirling Moss met the Granatelli brothers who, at that time, were the owners of the, even by that time, already legendary Novi Indycars. These cars were powered by a brutally powerful centrifugally supercharged 2.8 litre V8 engine of which the first example was built in 1941. The rules then permitted a capacity of 3 litre, but from 1957 on therules reduced it to 2.8 litre swept volume.
Despite stupendous power advantages, success for the Novis had remained limited. The Novi history up till that moment was a chain of mishaps, bad luck, and human tragedies, including the bankruptcy of the first owner of the cars and engines as well as fatal accidents for some of his drivers. Even while active, the cars were said to be cursed one way or another. There was talk about the ‘Novi Jinx’ among Indy fans and railbirds. Since 1959 no Novi had qualified for the 500 miles race, even despite a change of ownership after the original owner, Lew Welch, had gone bankrupt in early 1961. Despite everything, the Novis had been crowd favourites from their very first appearance, not in the least because of its deafening loud screaming engine. (130 dB was possible!). Fans who supported other teams and drivers first did not mind should their favourites be defeated by the Novis and their drivers. Their popularity with Indy fans could be compared with that of the Ferrari cars elsewhere in the world.
In the early 1960’s Stirling Moss felt that 4WD could be a solution to reduce the tyre wear on the Novis so he made such a suggestion to the Granatelli’s. For the full story of this you should read the book by Munro and Turner, but it was late 1963 when the Granatelli’s finally took up the idea, but then they went in deep! The ‘Old P99’ was brought over for some tests at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Despite the fact that the then installed engine wasn’t very healthy, or fresh, P99 surprised the Granatelli’s with being only marginally slower in the corners than on the straights, and its handling was praised by both Jack Fairman, who knew the car, and American driver Bobby Marshman, who knew the track.
The Granatelli’s then ordered the Ferguson Company to build a dedicated 4WD car around their Behemoth powerplant. Time was limited and short, but by late March 1964 Ferguson Formula had completed the construction of what was for them project P104. Late March 1964 the car was sent off to the USA and arrived in time at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for an early test.
It might be seen as strange as of why in late 1963 the Granatelli’s decided to go for a front-engine car while only a few months before, during the Indy 500, Jim Clark and Dan Gurney had clearly shown the longterm potential of rear-engine chassis with their Lotus-Fords. A reason for sticking with a front engine was that the Novi, due to its basic design of the entry of fresh air into the supercharger, was not really suited for a rear engine installation. In addition, several specialists at Indy still felt confident that the front engine lay-out remained as being the way to go. What favoured a front engine lay out was the high-speed stability of the car, just like a dart arrow is way more stable with the mass at the front of the arrow. Finally, remaining with a front engine layout gave Ferguson Formula the opportunity to fall back upon its experience gained with the P99.
However, almost as soon as it had arrived in the USA, P104 had to endure its first hit by the now infamous ‘Novi Jinx’. The first laps for the car at the Indy track were on 30th March 1964, and one of the drivers that day was the team owner, Andy Granatelli, since he wanted to have personal experience with the vehicle he had spent a small fortune on acquiring. Another funny anecdote from that day was that when the car was taken out on the track one of the Granatelli brothers (Vince) was following in a passenger car for some observations. He had a passenger with him, no less than the well-known and popular driver AJ Foyt. Foyt told Vince that he did not like the shape of the rear end of the car. To which Vince Granatelli replied that he better had get used to it because he was going to see it for a much longer time in the race!
Now, was this comment too much temptation for ‘the Jinx’? After being driven for the first tests at the Indianapolis Speedway on March 30th, 1964 it was stored overnight in one of the garages in Gasoline Alley, the area where the teams had their garages and stored their cars and maintained them. Big fires in the Garage Area were a rarity. There had been one shortly before the start of the race in 1941. Another one was in the night from March 30th, 1964, and it took place in the garages of the Granatelli’s! As a result, P104 was reputedly severely damaged and one of their older 2WD cars also needed a major overhaul.
The Granatelli’s and their crew got the job done in time and a revamped version of the P104 was rolled out early May. The bodywork on the car had been changed from how it had arrived in the USA and that’s why pictures of the still unpainted car during the March test session make the car look very different from later versions. As for the driver who didn’t like the shape of the rear end of the P104, his prayers were answered because the rebuilt car had a much different, more boxy, shaped rear end.
What has been relayed as opinions about the car depends on the year when the statement was printed. Shortly after its construction the car was praised by the most vocal and prominent member of the Granatelli family, Andy. In later years he was less positive about it. When the author met Andy in 1989 for an interview, he said with a voice that expressed near disbelief, “A tank! A tank! I ordered a racing car and they built me a tank!”.
Not all crew members were permitted to know certain details of the car they were working upon. When the car was inspected and had to be weighed all crew members who had nothing to do at that moment were instructed to leave the garage when the car went up on the scales. In any event, no-one believed the press kit information about the car actually being lighter than the older 2WD chassis the team fielded that year as well.
Now there had been a good reason to build a study, solid chassis for Ferguson. A Novi V8 weighed in at about 240 (!) kg and in 1963 the three 2WD cars that had started the race had engines with a power output of a reputed 742hp. From what appeared in print, the Ferguson P104 supposedly got less of a torture to endure with the power, said to have been some 640hp.
The team had hired two drivers; Jim McElreath was the primary driver and Bobby Unser the second. Both drivers had normally been assigned to 2WD roadsters.
At this stage in the story, it needs to be pointed out that practice and qualifying at Indy at that time were unlike anywhere else in the world. Practicing started at the beginning of May, and there were four days allocated for qualifying. In 1964, the first two were the weekend of May 16th and 17th, the next and final two the following weekend, May 23rd and 24th. The race itself was held on May 30th.
Jim McElreath got the first shot with the P104 in practice, but he felt the car to be ‘heavy like a Cadillac’ and he had more faith in a tried and tested Novi Roadster than the innovative heavyweight. P104 was then tried by veteran driver Duane Carter who really liked the car and was willing to drive it. Regrettably for everyone involved, Carter had strong connections with Champion spark plugs while the Novi team used Autolite plugs, and a compromise wasn’t possible.
Bobby Unser was then offered the opportunity to try P104 and he eventually decided to make it his primary car, but again the ‘Novi Jinx’ hit big time during the first weekend of qualifying. An innovation that had worked on other engines had been put on the Novi engines for the pole weekend; sodium filled valves. For whatever reasons, they didn’t work on the Novis and the chance to qualify the cars high up in the field was lost for both Unser and McElreath. Now if that had been the only setback resulting from this mishap!
The following weekend all went well for Bobby Unser and the P104 and Unser qualified with an impressive 5th fastest qualifying time for the race! But due to the regulations, his spot in the field had to be behind the slowest qualifier of the first qualifying weekend, Bobby eventually ended up on the 22nd starting spot. As for Jim McElreath’s faith in the older 2WD cars, his original car (the Blue #3) failed on him during two qualifying attempts and eventually Jim took over the other 2WD Roadster (the White #28, initially Bobby Unser’s primary car) and qualified that car.
The failure to qualify in the first weekend became even more of a definitive factor in the outcome of the race for Bobby Unser. Starting in the back of the field, Unser had the misfortune to be behind a fiery accident at turn four during lap two and the beginning of the front straight. Approaching the inferno, Bobby instantly decided to use the large mass of the Novi and its momentum when at speed, stood on the gas to get through the fiery mess in front of him, hoping that the momentum would keep him moving and would save him from coming to a standstill within the fire as well. It worked, but in the process, he ran into a few cars in front of him and others ran into him as well. Still, Unser and the P104 got through the sea of fire, though his car was damaged beyond repair with a broken front suspension when eventually P104 did come to a standstill, parked against the outside wall. More importantly for Bobby, apart from a slight burn in his neck he had escaped alive and virtually unhurt. His race was over, but at least he was still alive. Racing drivers Dave MacDonald and Eddie Sachs had been killed in what has been one of the biggest infernos ever in the history of Indianapolis. Sadly, P104 had been denied to prove its Race Day potential on the one, if not the only, occasion that could have been its best chance ever for a decent result.
Including photographic images taken at Indy in 1964 is difficult due to availability and copyright issues, together with the fees charged for their use. How P104 looked in May 1964 is shown with this picture below of a 1:24 scale model, released as a kit in the mid 80’s by a little company named Garage 97. It required a skilled and patient builder to get a decent result. My kit ended up in good hands and the result was worth waiting a few years for.
The car was rebuilt and prepared for duty one year later, but by then it had been degraded to backup status. Because the Granatelli brothers, a bit incensed about the tremendous weight of the P104, had built their own chassis although still for a front engine car. Ferguson Formula had offered to build a new chassis themselves, but that suggestion was turned down by the Granatelli’s. But they did order the components of a 4WD driveline for their new car and that became Ferguson Formula Project P120.
The new, lighter car became the primary entry for the Novi team in 1965. But yet again the Novi Jinx hit the team. The Friday before Pole day poor Unser could not avoid a spinning car in front of him and hit it hard. Unser was sent to the hospital for examination but released as fit for driving. However, his new ‘lightweight 4WD Novi’ was damaged beyond repair.
The Granatelli’s and their men then hurriedly prepared the P104 for active duty on the next day (May 15th) when the Pole was up for grabs. Unser amazed many with a splendid qualifying attempt with a car he had little to no actual experience with that year. He ended up 8th fastest of the day and fastest of all the front engine cars that had managed to gain a qualifying spot that year.
Part 2 next issue.
Published in Journal No. 112, Spring 2025.
Henri Greuter, edited by Chris Maughan.
This article is dedicated to the memory of Bill Munro.