MORE FROM BILL HARRIS’
PHOTO ALBUM

Here’s a bit of an experiment in presentation for us, the following being some of the pages of Bill’s 50 page photo album which starts at Bathurst in 1939 (it says so on the back of the pic below) and follows him to England as a speedway rider post-war.

Born in 1915, Bill raced at Maroubra (concrete oval) and Penrith (1 mile dirt track) in New South Wales before World War 2. In 1947 he sailed to England to ride for Tamworth and when speedway lost its lustre he went to work for Ken Wharton as a race mechanic for 1953.

Next he joined Sheffield steelmaker Denis Flather looking after his 1897 Benz and his 1951 Flather Vincent known as the Camel (car in front below). Bill raced the Camel during 1954 while building a new Norton-engined car to his own design with wishbone and coil suspension at the front and De Dion at the rear.

Bill entered the Flather Special in 6 meetings in 1955, 8 in 1957, 12 in 1958 and nine in 1959 often finishing in the top 5 which was pretty good when you consider how strong the competition was.

Then,  in 1959, he teamed up with Alex Francis to build ‘Alexis’ cars for the new Formula Junior. For 1960 a second car with independent rear suspension was produced for what was obviously turning into a professional rather than an amateur class.

Two new rear-engined cars were built for 1961 and eventually three cars were fielded in races all over Europe and there was a successful venture into F2 as well as Formula Ford and Formula 3 ; cars continued to be built into the 1970s. Number 36 below is Australian driver Paul Hawkins and maybe somebody can say where and when it is?

Bill and his wife Reimer and daughter returned to Australia at the end of 1965 and Bill was later active in historic racing with his Lea Francis powered Harris Special. He died in 1995 and his album was given to Loose Fillings‘ Garry Simkin.

PS  Along with miscellaneous material collected by the Loose Fillings team the Bill Harris album  will probably become an adjunct to the Graham Howard Collection which is now at the Australian Motor Heritage Foundation at Eastern Creek west of Sydney.  TW