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ROYALE RP27-9 FF2000
The Royale RP27 Formula Ford 2000 was a Pat Symonds design, built in 1980 for the FF2000 racing series. A total of 20 cars were built by the factory with chassis No.9 sold in 1980 to Michael Eastick, manager of Scorpion Racing. I had initially narrowed down the history of #9 to Kenny Gray under the Scorpion colors but some help from Colin Cummings, who has the Richard Dutton chassis #15, revealed that #9 was the Mike Taylor car. And there were two Mike Taylors racing in FF2000. Mike "Fulmar" Taylor and Mike "Jersey" Taylor. The Fulmar car was chassis #2 and the Jersey car chassis #9. The RP27 had its chassis work carried out by Arch Motors with body by Tony Waterman at Harley Plastics.
Chassis No.9 eventually ended up as a race school in the Philippines (at Batangas) before being restored by Barry Forth's Road & Track Motorsport in Hong Kong. The car then ended at Barry Leitch's place in Invercargill, New Zealand, having seen a single season of Southern Festival racing with Chris Skinner in 2002 (with an outing by Gerry Kipling). I purchased the car from Chris in 2004 and had Rick Michels sort out the engine. Sources: Eli Solomon – Snakes & Devil’s – Racing In the Far East (unpublished) Paul Lawrence. Nowhere to Hide - The story of Royale Racing Cars Mark Kahn – Down The Hatch – The Life & Fast Times of Tony Lanfranchi
Links: 2 -Racing in New Zealand 2005 3 -Photos from SFOS 2002
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RP27-9 at the 2002 Southern Festival of Speed Photo credit: Euan Cameron via Chris Skinner |
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Ruapuna 2005 - parc ferme before one of the races Waiting to head out for a race - clear skies and sunshine. So much fun, I managed to spin twice in a space of 50 yards - once at Pothole and the other at Kelford Camtech Corner. Photo by Angie Solomon -Nikon CoolPix 8800 f/5.6 at 50ASA |
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Note the red No 20 car ahead of the No 81 Royale of the left of the grid. That's Kerry Anderson in his 1978 Argo JM6 F3. The car to the right of the Argo is the No 11 Van Dieman (1983) of Dave Arrowsmith, with the No 75 Titan Mk6 (1972) of Brian Blain behind the Van Dieman. Photo by Angie Solomon - Nikon CoolPix 8800 1/1000, f/5.2 at 50ASA |
