Why Baby Bertha remains a racing icon after 50 years

The initials GM and GM became synonymous when Gerry Marshall and General Motors intertwined. The Hertfordshire motor trader started competing in a BMC Mini in 1964 and raced a works Ford Escort-BDA in the 1972 British Saloon Car Championship, having beaten Jody Scheckter to 1971’s inaugural Mexico title.

But Marshall’s prowess in Vauxhalls – from mundane showroom stock cars to bespoke genetically modified tyre fryers – put GM’s European marque on the motorsporting map, earning legions of fans over 40 years.

Victories racked up in Viva GTs and Firenza coupes, often at the expense of Blue Oval rivals, empowered the formation of Dealer Team Vauxhall. This marketing coup saw agents’ modest sporting budget contributions matched by the manufacturer, with publicity generated by race and rally wins working for all.

Marshall spearheaded the track action, driving steeds masterminded by UK-domiciled Dutchman Bill Blydenstein – the genial Borgward Isabella to Vauxhall VX4/90 racer whose hallowed tuning products transformed the latter’s image – and a loyal crew headed by Gerry Johnstone.

Ex-Vauxhall factory man Johnstone was as passionate as Marshall about the Red Griffin emblem. As British club racing’s popular Special Saloon category attracted ever-larger American V8-engined hybrids, championed by Mick Hill’s omnipresent self-built Capris, Marshall’s shrill Firenza upset the form book.

In 1973, with ‘Old Nail’ stunningly presented in Thames Television’s silver and royal blue livery, Marshall challenged Hill’s new six-litre Capri-Chevrolet and vanquished Tony Hazlewood’s DAF-Oldsmobile.

Big Bertha was fast, but tricky and unreliable. It crashed, paving the way for something better

Photo by: Jeff Bloxham

Vauxhall thus commissioned a big banger from Blydenstein’s works at Shepreth, near Royston. The large Ventora FE was not, perhaps, the obvious choice, but Johnstone, Geoff Hall and Dick Waldock toiled away on the project.

The finished machine – with key input from aerodynamicist Frank Costin and GM styling guru John Taylor, a disciple of US-based chief Wayne Cherry – looked fabulous, more design concept than racer, when revealed to the press at The Hilton Hotel in London’s Park Lane on 1 October 1973.

Powered by a Holden V8 from GM’s Australian subsidiary, developed by Repco – Jack Brabham and Ron Tauranac’s three-litre F1 engine partner from 1966 – and proven in Formula 5000 by Frank Matich (McLaren M10B) and Garrie Cooper’s works Elfins, its 465bhp was transmitted by a Borg Warner T10 gearbox.

Reliant on fewer production car underpinnings, a neater, lighter and more practical solution was evolved

Despite winning a Silverstone clubbie on its debut, Big Bertha, as the initially wayward monster became known, was fundamentally flawed. De Dion axle tube breakage at Snetterton and seat mounting collapse at Thruxton preceded further wins at Silverstone, Snetterton and Mallory Park, but a catastrophic front brake failure approaching Woodcote at Silverstone in August 1974 resulted in a heavy impact, from which Marshall was fortunate to escape injury.

“The best thing that ever happened to that car was it getting written-off,” he said in his biography Only Here for the Beer.

With greater attention to detail, its Firenza caricature successor incorporated the undamaged engine and gearbox but was a very different animal. Reliant on fewer production car underpinnings, a neater, lighter and more practical solution was evolved. Little of the smaller coupe was borrowed bar its side elevation, maybe only its window profile.

Marshall and Baby Bertha chalked up 21 wins in 1975

Photo by: Jeff Bloxham

While GM South Africa homologated a five-litre Firenza V8 as the Chevrolet Can-Am – 100 were built, plus a handful of racers – the Anglo-Australian one-off used the facelifted droop-snoot styling to embrace Vauxhall’s marketing plans.

With a tubular central spine to its chassis and wide side pontoons brilliantly crafted by Rawlson’s Barry Sheppard to reflect Taylor’s cues, it looked more like a futuristic offshore powerboat, from chisel prow to open transom overhanging the fuel tank.

Boldly accentuated by Castrol’s red, white and green stripes, ‘Baby Bertha’ hit the track at Snetterton. Johnstone – a handy short oval stock car racer –shook it down before Marshall arrived. After Big Bertha, which he said was undriveable, this was a revelation. With Gerry aboard, the results were incredible. Sub-record in a couple of laps, he walloped it thereafter.

As Johnstone said in his book A History of Winning, “it was something like eight seconds under the lap record!” Beaten only twice in straight fights over two seasons, Marshall loved to showboat, laying rubber in full-blooded powerslides, so far were they ahead.

The combination did not win its debut race, driveshaft failure stopping Marshall on Brands Hatch’s club (Indy) circuit on 25 May 1975. But from Mondello Park in Ireland the following weekend Marshall and Baby Bertha started the ball rolling, winning both Tricentrol Super Saloon Championship heats.

By the end of the season they had notched 21 wins. Only urbane Irishman Alec Poole, in Derek McMahon’s two-litre Skoda-BDG S100R – designed by Ray Jessop around F2 Rondel running gear for Chris Meek – beat them all year, taking the chequer 4.8s clear on Oulton Park’s short Fosters Circuit in June.

Alec Poole’s Skoda was one of the few to get near Marshall

Photo by: Jeff Bloxham

“To be blunt, I could never understand why Vauxhall didn’t take on other manufacturers in the British Saloon Car Championship then, rather than take a sledgehammer to crack a nut,” reckons 1969 champion Poole.

“If that sounds like sour grapes 50 years on it’s not meant to. Gerry could be a bit of a bully, but between us there was a lot of respect on and off track. The nimble Skoda handled well round there and its engine – built by Dick Bennetts [of West Surrey Racing fame] – was really good.”

Having clawed past Nick Whiting’s Escort-FVC, then scrapped with Marshall, Alec and Gerry shared the lap record at 63.6s (93.82mph). 

At the BARC’s Thruxton TV meeting in November Marshall pitted from the lead, chatted with his crew and still won

Marshall won the inaugural championship by a country mile, but thrashing the rest in the British Grand Prix support race at Silverstone, rather than making a race of it, did not help the genre’s wider perception.

“I should have finished closer,” says initial leader Poole, “but lost too much time battling with Nick Whiting and others. We only won once, but I like to think we were a thorn in their side.” 

Not that Gerry was averse to gamesmanship. At the BARC’s Thruxton TV meeting in November he pitted from the lead, chatted with his crew and still won, while spectators at Boxing Day Brands were treated to Baby Bertha finishing a fighting fourth in a Formule Libre race.

Monstering Val Musetti’s March 75B at Brands Hatch on Boxing Day, 1975

Photo by: Jeff Bloxham

Your scribe was there, marshalling with mentor Bob Lentell, and memories of Marshall – who pipped Colin Hawker’s magnificent DFVW in the earlier Special Saloon race – scrapping with winner Val Musetti’s F2-spec March 75B, Richard Lloyd’s Lola T294 sportscar and John Wingfield’s F2 Ralt RT1, all BDG-powered, remain vivid. Combining open and closed-wheel cars was later outlawed by the RACMSA (now Motorsport UK).

Thruxton inspired the creation of the only other car to defeat the combo. “Watching Gerry coming out of the chicane in Baby Bertha was the most exciting thing I’d ever seen,” remembers Jonathan Buncombe.

“My brother-in-law Tony Wadsworth had bought a Chevron B19/21 from Ian Bracey and a [rare surviving] Cosworth FVD engine. We had no money, so moulded a fibreglass Hillman Imp body from a road car to go over it.

“We built it for two and a half grand and debuted it at Thruxton [at the end of 1975]. It still had the Chevron rollcage, which did not comply with Special Saloon regulations, but we were allowed to race for no points by taking the front and rear screens out.

“I was amazed to find that Gerry and I had equal pole, but he set the time first. I was behind him when he spun at the chicane and thought, ‘I’m going to win this’, only to spin at Allard on old tyres that were like concrete…

“The ‘Chimp’s wing was controversial, but we took the car to RAC technical scrutineer Peter Jowitt in Farnborough. He declared it totally legal, signing it off. Second time out on Silverstone’s GP circuit [the 1976 championship opener], I really made Gerry sweat and nipped past a couple of times under braking.”

Marshall with Buncombe, one of only two drivers to beat the V8 monster

Photo by: LAT Images via Getty Images

At Club on the last lap, Buncombe went ahead and staved Marshall off for a rousing victory: “Then the s*** hit the fan. There was a protest [Whiting was nominated to put down the £5 fee], which we fended off with Jowitt’s letter, but then it went legal. This was club racing, and a couple of Somerset boys with straw hanging out of their mouths had never seen a QC.

“We lost on a technicality and I only raced the car once more, without the wing bits, on Silverstone’s Club circuit. It was undriveable and the gearbox broke. It was decided that the Imp’s silhouette above the wheel centres was OK, but the [stretched] wheelbase was not.”       

Without Baby Bertha’s unexpected opposition, tacitly welcome until it proved a game-changer, Marshall’s silverwash continued and back-to-back Super Saloon crowns were secured. The writing was already on the wall, though.

“By then it had been to the moon and back. It was horrendous. No way was I racing it” Graham Goode

In 1975 the V8 running costs-to-reward ratio had refocused car-builders John Turner and Mick Hill – very capable drivers both – on F5000, leaving a one-horse race. While Irishman Arthur Collier in the ex-Turner Skoda-Chevrolet beat Gerry’s Mondello lap record, few were enthused to become also-rans against what was perceived to be a big-budget works effort.

Marshall and Baby Bertha competed occasionally in late 1977, but for 1979 a new, more liberally ruled silhouette category emerged: the Donington GT Championship. Cars such as the BMW M1 clones of local stalwart Hill and Geordie Jeff Wilson – built on the ex-Richard Scott/Bob Evans F5000 Durex Lola-Chevrolet T400 and ex-David Purley Chevron-Ford GAA V6 B30 respectively – drew competitors and spectators to Tom Wheatcroft’s superb new circuit. 

Nottingham Imp graduate Paul Haywood-Halfpenny had acquired BB for £8500 in October 1977 and changed its livery to black and bronze, but it proved woefully unreliable. With the surviving Holden/Repco engine (of the pair supplied to DTV in 1973) replaced by a more sustainable Chevrolet V8 it played cameo roles thereafter.

Livery change and natty trousers brought Paul Haywood-Halfpenny no luck

Photo by: Ray Green

American car specialist Martin Dilks (DB Motors of Leicester) took it on next. He did not race Bertha, but – now plain white – Bruce Peers did once in July 1980, substituting for the programmed Graham Goode, who had driven it on a test day.

“By then it had been to the moon and back,” says Goode. “It was horrendous. No way was I racing it.”

Gosforth’s Phil Barak – now MSUK’s oldest race licence holder at 91 – subsequently bought BB and raced it in white, then blue in the north from 1981 through 1983. When George ‘Welly’ Potter’s Lotus Esprit-Chevolet superseded it, Marshall took the Firenza back. Gerry raced his old girlfriend, silver once more, to second at Thruxton in November 1983.

Lincolnshire farmer Joe Ward – who had owned, but not raced, the ex-works CC Racing-built Vauxhall Carlton TS6000 – became Bertha’s current custodian unexpectedly in 1986.

“I’d started racing in Thundersaloons with the ex-Tony Lanfranchi Opel Monza in 1984, but it wasn’t anything like quick enough,” says Joe.

“I converted it to V8 power at the end of 1985, but needed a stronger Muncie ‘Rock Crusher’ gearbox. I was told that Gerry had one, but he said I’d have to buy the car it was in.

Baby Bertha had sprouted a huge wing by the time Barak raced it in 1981

Photo by: Thomas Salkeld

“Bertha was in a state, had a ‘cooking’ 5.7 Chevrolet and did little for 14 years. When Vauxhall offered to pay for MASS to rebuild the engine, and a new set of BBS wheels, it came out of hibernation.”   

Painstakingly prepared by Neil Howe, 14 miles from its birthplace, and with its cockpit workload transformed by electric power steering from a Vauxhall Corsa – “Gerry must have been bloody strong, but we kept the mods in the family,” says Ward, now 74 – BB has been used sparingly since the Classic Sports Car Club rekindled Special Saloons and Modsports racing’s embers in 2011.

Joe won at Silverstone in May 2012, and spread Bertha’s fanbase to Phillip Island, Australia, in 2015. In May 2021, an inspired class-winning second at Donington, in Malcolm Harding’s Escort’s slipstream, proved there was still life in the old girl!

This article is one of many in the monthly Autosport magazine. For more premium content, take a look at the December 2025 issue and subscribe today. 

Joe Ward, Baby Bertha’s proud custodian for 39 years, last saddled the old warhorse at Brands Hatch in August

Photo by: Gary Hawkins