Pre-Unipower GT launch Motoring News front page article from January 1966

Recently added to my Archives is this article from the January 6th 1966 edition of the weekly Motoring News publication, published before the Unipower GT launch at the Olympia Racing Car Show on the 19th January.

Understandably perhaps as being pre-Show, the picture used was a Universal Power Drives photograph taken of the only Prototype produced, with a side-stripe painted onto the photograph. Other photos of Prototype taken at the same time, were 'doctored' in the same way to illustrate the other potential variants that were being considered at that time, such as a Targa and Roadster version, both of which never made it even into pre-production, due to the complexity of construction and the need to focus their efforts on producing cars.

The article was most probably written with the benefit of the factory Show documentation, detailing the price of the two versions, 998cc Cooper or 1275cc Cooper 'S', but which briefly mentioned at the bottom of the page that a Competition GT version would be made available, which this article also mentions.

As history shows and is chronicled in my Book on the History of the Unipower GT, the very first car car sold at the Show was in fact a Competition GT version, putting even more load onto its designer Val Dare-Bryan's shoulders, as at that moment in time, a design was not finalised. Thankfully the Unipower GT was one of his series of race car designs, so making all the necessary changes including Rose-jointed suspension, was not difficult. The biggest problem was that this impacted on the factory production line as new non-road version components had to be fabricated and as you will read in my Book, the result was not without its challenges that year.

GH