Brabham is back

While the big two are in serious peril and likely to go through mind warping change, Australia’s legendary marques appear to be entering a renaissance. Elfin's future looks bright under the directorship of Tom Walkinshaw, Bolwell started taking orders again last week and recently Brabham announced it is going to launch a new range of highly tuned and modified BMW's.

Three models are in development, the BT92, based on an M3 and the BT60 and BT70 using the M5 and X6 as their base. Initially the re-emergence of Brabham as a tuner company might seem a bit odd but the tie in with BMW makes sense. BMW was one of the major engine partners in Brabham's illustrious history. The other significant suppliers being Coventry Climax,  Alfa and Repco.

The cars are not your run of the mill bolt-on tuner packaging, they comprise extensive body and mechanical changes including new panels manufactured to race car specs in an autoclave. There has been no word of future plans past the initial three models. Nor has there been an announcement from BMW, which already has a plethora of tuning companies enhancing or degrading its cars. However while there are a few high profile names such as Schnitzer and the internal M-sport division doing their bit to Bimmer's, they have started loosing ground recently to the surging Mercedes tuner market. Mercedes, with its AMG division and partnerships with Brabus and McLaren is grabbing all the limelight.

It is unfortunate that the road car side of the McLaren Mercedes partnership is waning as a new MacMerc supercar up against a Brabham-BMW supercar would be just so much fun. Given that Gordon Murray was the principal designer for Brabham in the 70's and 80’s and used the BMW engine for the F1 supercar while at McLaren, the tie ins are just so tantalising. Imagine if a BMW Brabham partnership could entice Murray to come on board and develop a true successor to the F1.

Whether Brabham ties itself with BMW completely, or operates as an independent tuning/manufacturing company, the possibilities are exciting. No matter what the future plans are for Brabham, having such a fantastic Australian name back in the mix of performance cars is fantastic.

Rod Halligan

Add CarsGuide as a preferred source in Google Search