Update: With Joe Ward out of action for Donington, the Baby Bertha anniversary races will now take place on Sunday 31st August, at Brands Hatch Britannia.
She’s the most famous and recognisable of all the 1970’s Supersaloon race cars, from a golden era of UK motorsport. That iconic Vauxhall Firenza V8 known simply as `Baby Bertha’ is 50 years old this year! In celebration of this, the CSCC are taking the unusual step of dedicating its pair of JMC Racing Special Saloons and Modsports races at Brands Hatch (Sun. 31st August) to this famous car. Trophies awarded in this pair of races will have a special plaque to commemorate this. The club have previously dedicated races to drivers and to a car marque, but this is a first for an individual car.
Entries will open in June.
Baby Bertha was so named because she was built up using the mechanical parts from Dealer Team Vauxhall’s monster ‘Big Bertha’. This Vauxhall Ventora V8 raced just 6 times, before Gerry's severe crash at Silverstone, on August 4th 1974, ended its career. The DTV team headed by Bill Blydenstein and with mechanics Gerry Johnstone, Dick Waldock and Geoff Hall, built up a more competitive replacement based on the compact Firenza coupe, with its distinctive styling by John Taylor. The same Chevrolet-Holden V8 was used, but the overall car, dubbed ‘Baby Bertha’, was some 356kgs lighter than Big Bertha had been.
In the skilled hands of Gerry Marshall, power sliding and tire smoking to new lap records across the country, Baby Bertha was almost unbeatable. The combination won 20 races from its debut in May 1975 to 1977 and took Marshall to the 1975 and 76 Supersaloon titles.
These days the old girl is still raced with verve by its long standing custodian Joe Ward, who fondly remembers watching Marshall racing the car back in the 70’s. Joe’s been a great supporter of the CSCC series for over 10 years with Baby Bertha, though not without an incident or two over the years, but remains very much the flagship car to grace any grid.
This April marks, by coincidence, the 20th anniversary of the passing of Gerry Marshall. The legendary and larger than life figure passed away doing what he loved most, behind the wheel of a V8, on this occasion testing at Silverstone in the ex-Richard Petty IROC Camaro after pulling off the track. That sad day being April 21st 2005.
Thus the two CSCC Special Saloon races at Brands Hatch are also in recognition of the passing of the man who made Baby Bertha the iconic super saloon racer, still so fondly remembered by everyone who saw this iconic pairing.
