Valerian 'Val' Dare-Bryan 1937 - 2026
Very recently I received the sad news that Valerian ‘Val’ Dare-Bryan had passed away on Saturday 17th Oct, peacefully at his home after a long illness. Val was born May 1937.
Val was the young engineering designer who Ernie Unger approached around 1962 to design his concept, the Unipower GT. Later Val joined Universal Power Drives (UPD) in 1965 when Tim Powell’s company took on the manufacturing rights to the car and began its production in 1966.
Interestingly it was also around this time that Val was engaged to re-design the bobsleigh of Tony Nash & Robin Dixon, in which they would go on to win the World title that year.
During 1964-65 Val had been designing as a free-lance designer, the Attila series of race cars whilst working for Racing Developments and by the late 60’s he was running Roy Pierpoint’s race cars. The Attila 5 was to become the basis of the Unipower GT.
When the first Unipower GT was ordered at the 1966 Racing Car Show, it was to be for Competition. However no such version had been designed at that time, so Val was tasked with quickly designing the changes necessary to construct one. The hastily designed result turned out to be less than ideal, resulting in considerable development needed during 1966 before this version was considered to be effective inn competition. Val would later go on to design the two lightweight Competition cars that would go on to compete in the early rounds of the World Sports Car Championship in 1969. The first being very similar to the first Competition car but had very lightweight carbon-fibre strengthened bodywork. The second had Formula 2 suspension, a radical deviation from the cars original production based suspension design.
Val left UPD in late 1968 when UWF Automotive took over Unipower GT production and before these lightweight designs would compete, joining Palliser Racing Cars to work on their successful single seaters. Leaving Palliser Racing in 1970, he joined Think Automotive who raced Touring Cars at the time.
Later Val’s work took him into design consulting, carrying out work for AC Cars on a diverse number of projects including the design of aero efficient HGV’s to reduce fuel consumption. Probably his experimentation in the early wind-tunnels, including discovering the Air-Dam, helped him understand the challenges involved.
Val’s design consultancy then went on to develop highly effective and innovative designs for the UK Military on high performance battlefield vehicles.
I will remember Val as being a friend and incredibly enthusiastic over the years about what the Club was doing as well as being a constant source of information and inspiration when I was writing my book on the history of the Unipower GT cars.
Val RIP
Gerry
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