The front-engined "s*** beetle" that was born obsolete

In Ancient Egypt, the scarab beetle's likeness was particularly emblematic, and adorned numerous artefacts, jewellery and hieroglyphs in its heyday. But after the Romans invaded and the title of Pharaoh was subsequently dispensed with, the Ancient Egyptian symbolism of scarabs and sarcophagi disappeared between the sands of time.

That was until the 1950s, where Scarabs briefly made an appearance in the lexicon of American motorsport. Resplendent in a metallic baby-blue scheme, the reign of the Scarab was short-lived but successful in the field of sportscars, starting out in the amateur competitions and culminating in victory at the Riverside International Grand Prix, thanks to the efforts of mechanic/racer Chuck Daigh.

But despite that success, the American marque was unable to make a fruitful transition to Formula 1, enjoying nothing more than sporadic appearances at the back of the grid in 1960 before disappearing at the end of the year.

The man behind the Scarab project was Lance Reventlow, an American entrepreneur who had his eyes set on racing grandeur. Setting up a crack team of engineers and technicians well-versed in the demands of the US racing scene, Reventlow hoped to beat the likes of Ferrari and Maserati at their own game and deliver success for an all-American manufacturer.

Reventlow (below) not only bankrolled the Scarab project, he also drove. The son of a Danish nobleman and Barbara Hutton, the granddaughter of retail giant F.W. Woolworth, Reventlow was wealthy - but endured something of a difficult childhood; his parents divorced while he was a child, during which Reventlow suffered from ill health.

His mother remarried to some-time racer Igor Troubetzkoy (having also spent a short time married to Hollywood actor Cary Grant) - which gave Reventlow his first contact with the racing world at the Targa Florio in 1948.

Mesmerised, the young Reventlow put his wealth to forging his own racing career. Having first gone racing in his late teens, Reventlow dabbled in a number of Formula 2 machines and sportcars, but eventually settled on building up his own team - named mockingly after the dung-bothering insects that became revered by the Egyptians.

"There was no budget you see, he had as much money as he needed to throw at the job. That's why it was delayed, he was trying all different things" Julian Bronson on Lance Reventlow

"Everyone was calling their cars by these super-totemistic male figures", said Reventlow back in 1972.

"The Panther, the Lion, the Cheetah - and all a scarab is is a shit beetle. The Scarab name was [a joke] and nobody got it!"

In spite of its name, Scarab tasted success in sportscars, winning the SCCA National Championship in '58, and Reventlow brought the name to the more Euro-centric Formula 1 World Championship two years later.

The Scarab F1 project, aiming to make the grid for the 1959 championship, arrived during a pivotal change to the world of motorsport. Thanks to the exploits of John Cooper, who had put the engine in the back of his F1 cars to resounding success, the rest of the field had begun to follow suit - even Ferrari, whose owner had famously once espoused that the horse did not push the cart...

Clearly not quite with the times, Scarab rocked up with a front-engined car - which immediately put the team on the back foot. That engine was penned by veteran engine designer Leo Goossen, who put together a 2.5-litre straight-four engine with Mercedes-inspired desmodromic valves. Goossen, then working for Offenhauser, then handed the drawings over to Jim Travers and Frank Coons to build and maintain.

Mounted sideways to reduce the overall frontal area, the engine was united with a front-mounted five-speed Corvette-derived transmission and an off-centre differential at the rear. For the car itself, Reventlow's band of American hot-rod and sportscar enthusiasts, led by Phil Remington, were to develop Scarab's first tilt at an F1 package.

"The workmanship on the chassis is beautiful," says historic racer Julian Bronson, a multiple race-winner in his own restored Scarab F1 car (below).

"That's what's lovely about the car, it's all original; it's all done by Remington. [His team] were all hot-rodders; were bloody brilliant and the material they used was fabulous. There was no budget you see, he had as much money as he needed to throw at the job.

"That's why it was delayed, he was trying all different things."

Reventlow wanted to continue the all-American theme throughout the Scarab's technical make-up, but hit a snag when it came to the braking system.

Intending to use an innovative drum-brake system within the car, using ideas sourced from the aviation industry, Reventlow had to swallow his national pride when faced with cooling problems. He allowed his technicians to fit the car with the battle-ready Girling disc brakes, as the British company had a wealth of experience producing F1-grade braking systems.

After a long gestation period, the Scarab team's 1959 target had long since passed, and further delays meant the team elected not to venture to Buenos Aires for the '60 season opener, instead handing a debut to the blue-and-white machines at Monaco. There, Reventlow's patriotism was dented further, as American rubber manufacturer Goodyear had supplied the team with a particularly hard construction of tyre.

A late switch to Dunlop gave Scarab a tyre that was up to the task, but it soon emerged that the cars were overwhelmingly slow in comparison to the competition.

The change in weight distribution that resulted from mounting the engine at the rear of the car meant that the rear-driven wheels could benefit from greater traction. Other benefits were reduced overall weight, stronger aerodynamics and improved handling - and the outdated Scarabs were left in the wake of its competitors.

Although the front-engined nature of the car hardly helped, the engine itself was considerably less powerful compared to the others on the grid. Cooper and Lotus, then leading the way in F1's technical stakes, both had the Coventry Climax engines at their disposal, which churned out around 50bhp more than the Offy-derived Scarab unit.

The problems snowballed - or perhaps, dungballed - as the car was barely ready when it was shipped off to Europe for the Monaco Grand Prix. Perhaps taken in by the metallic baby-blue paint scheme, Stirling Moss - then driving for Rob Walker's privateer team - was rather intrigued by the Scarab and a couple of weeks before the Monaco Grand Prix, Reventlow let Moss take the wheel around Monte-Carlo.

"For a front-engined car built in America, it was pretty damn good. But to come to Europe and expect to beat the rear-engined ones, it just wasn't on" Stirling Moss on the Scarab

Some of the car's design was familiar to Moss, then about to embark upon his first race with Lotus, as the Scarab also used a Colin Chapman-designed suspension package.

"Chapman did all the suspension designs," explains Bronson, "and he ended up with a transporter in lieu of payment. If you look at it the way the rear suspension is, it's got the Chapman struts in there except it's got wishbones, which is much better [than the original design]."

According to accounts, Moss's times around Monte-Carlo seemed to suggest that the Scarab would happily make it to the grid in the real qualifying session. Reflecting on it some years later, Moss enthused that "for a front-engined car built in America, it was pretty damn good. But to come to Europe and expect to beat the rear-engined ones, it just wasn't on".

Neither Reventlow or Daigh could be classified in the same echelon as Moss (below), who took pole with a 1m36.3s, and both set times deep into the 1m40s - Daigh on a 1m47s and Reventlow on a 1m48.5s. As a result, neither car qualified, and Scarab would have to wait for its first race.

Both cars qualified for the following Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort a week later, but neither Daigh nor Reventlow took to the grid over a dispute over the non-payment of starting money - and so the team's wait to race was extended.

The baby-blue beetles finally made their long overdue debuts at Spa-Francorchamps, and the cars were significantly more competitive than on their Monaco appearances after some fine fettling at base. Still, Reventlow and Daigh couldn't transcend the back of the field, and ultimately the troublesome desmodromic-valve engines pulled themselves apart - Reventlow's expiring after just a solitary lap when a piston broke through the engine block.

The engines did the same again during the following round at Reims, albeit with Ferrari driver Richie Ginther (pictured at Reims in 1961) taking over from Reventlow for the round. Although the desmodromic valves would in theory allow the engines to rev higher, they couldn't cope with the load on the long straights and further failures meant that the team elected to withdraw before the race - although Ginther had set a time good enough to wedge himself in between the privateer Coopers at the rear of the grid.

Scarab was tempted back for one more tilt at the season closer at Riverside, on the team's home California turf. While Reventlow decided not to drive, Daigh spent a vast amount of time with his technicians in preparation, attempting to fix the engine issues that had plagued the car. He took the car to 10th place, a lap down, while attempting to nurse the engine to the finish to avoid the problems that it had suffered in the previous rounds.

But having poured a significant amount of money into the project for little reward, Reventlow decided not to follow F1's switch to 1.5-litre engines in 1960, allegedly starting to lose interest in his racing project.

An enigmatic character, Reventlow was almost reluctantly wealthy - or, as Daigh put it following his death, "a loner because of his background, a poor little rich boy". As reported by The Day, a Connecticut local newspaper, Daigh added that Reventlow was "a good driver, but he wasn't great. He had the skill, but he didn't have the confidence".

"They would have been in a much better place if they'd run in Monaco two years previously, you know they'd have been there or thereabouts against the Dinos, the 250Fs and the D50s" Julian Bronson

The Scarab lives on in competitive historic racing today with Bronson behind the wheel, who contends that the car could have been competitive had it arrived when it was expected to, and had it opted for a conventional Offenhauser engine (which sits in Bronson's Scarab) rather than Scarab's own adaptation.

"[The desmodromic engine] was a disaster really, they would have been okay otherwise," he says. "But he went down that road, there was no need, you know, they had a brilliant engine in the Offy anyway. It didn't need to be desmo, that's just crazy; they went down such strange routes that it delayed it for two years.

"It was too late. They would have been in a much better place if they'd run in Monaco two years previously, you know they'd have been there or thereabouts against the Dinos, the 250Fs and the D50s. They'd have been there, because I've proved that the car will compete with the best front-engined cars out there."

Scarab continued to race with its F1 car in other series in '61, building a rear-engined variant for the following year with a 3.5-litre Buick V8 in the back. But with an FIA rule-change, it was only permitted to start in Formula Libre events, and Scarab signed off at the end of 1962 with a sportscar bearing the same engine before Reventlow swore off racing for good.

Specifications

Chassis Steel spaceframe with aluminium bodywork
Suspension Double wishbones, coil springs/shock absorbers
Engine Scarab-Offenhauser desmodromic naturally aspirated inline-four
Engine Capacity 2441cc
Power 220bhp @ 7,500rpm
Gearbox Five-speed manual gearbox
Tyres Dunlop
Weight 550kg