by Terry Lovell
It may well have been that by now Ecclestone and his friends were having some difficulty in keeping a straight face. Shortly before Mosley’s arrival the café proprietor had been told by Ecclestone that he and his friends would shortly be joined by someone who had just come out of prison. He was down on his luck and without a penny. ‘Make sure,’ said Ecclestone, ‘that he is given a really good breakfast, with all the trimmings.’ And there was one other thing – because he was a very proud man, he would probably refuse it. ‘Just ignore what he says and make sure he has it, no matter what he says.’ Despite the waitress’s best efforts, the proud ‘old lag’ left the breakfast untouched.
The person Tauranac had found sitting at his desk on returning from his Christmas skiing holiday was the dapper figure of Colin Seeley, British motorcycle sidecar champion in 1962 and 1963, and third in the World Championship in 1964 and 1966. Nine months before retiring in June 1967 he set up Colin Seeley Racing Developments, which, with a 27-strong workforce by 1970, specialised in the production of custom-built 350cc and 500cc racing machines and Seeley’s version of the single-cylinder Matchless G50 engine, which won the British championship in 1968 and 1969 and was runner-up in 1970 and 1971.
In those days Ecclestone and Seeley, whose factory was based at Belvedere, Kent, not far from Ecclestone’s car showrooms in Bexleyheath, had known of each other’s business activities for several years, but knew little else about each other. The beginning of their professional relationship came out of a meeting around the end of 1970 when Seeley, in the market for a car, called at the James Spencer showroom and bought a Ford Capri (‘As it happens, it was a bloody good car’). A casual acquaintanceship developed which led to Ecclestone, after hearing that tobacco manufacturer, John Player & Co, was keen to move into sponsorship of motorcycle racing, offering his services to Seeley. He suggested that he acted on Seeley’s behalf in approaching the tobacco company to negotiate a sponsorship deal. With nothing to lose, Seeley agreed. It turned out that the company was looking, in fact, for a 750cc machine and the sponsorship went to Norton. Seeley, though, was not too disappointed. Given the percentage of the deal Ecclestone had intended to take for himself, he was left wondering whether there would be enough money left to cover his costs. It was Seeley’s first insight into Ecclestone’s entrepreneurial opportunism. And, to his great regret, it wouldn’t be the last.
While Ecclestone was still in the early stages of his negotiations with Tauranac, Seeley received a phone call requesting a meeting. Ecclestone told him of his discussions with Tauranac, of his intention to purchase Motor Racing Developments, and how he believed that Seeley’s company and Motor Racing Developments could operate more efficiently and profitably if their skills, machining and equipment were brought together under one roof for both car and motorcycle production. As Seeley clearly understood it, Ecclestone was proposing a merger of the two companies, which, given the financial circumstances Seeley was in at that time, commanded his immediate interest. With frame-design skills which had attracted the business of major foreign racing teams, he was also producing an expensive road motorbike called the Condor – the first model to cost £1000 – for export only, but its future, not to mention the business itself, was being threatened by severe cashflow problems.
As he continued to listen to Ecclestone’s ambitious plans, which included a joint managing directorship brass plate over his door, and a purpose-built factory to accommodate the two companies on the land he owned in Manor Road, Erith – where Ecclestone had run Mid-Week Auctions – Seeley became increasingly enthusiastic. The clincher was Ecclestone’s proposal to inject the necessary capital into Colin Seeley Racing Developments to resolve its cashflow crisis. Thirty-five-year-old Seeley, an open and affable character, readily agreed, and left the meeting believing that, with Ecclestone’s business acumen and financial backing, he was placing the future of a business he had spent six years building in capable and trustworthy hands.
Two weeks after Ecclestone had bought Motor Racing Developments, Seeley became a director of the company and Ecclestone a director of Colin Seeley Racing Developments. On his first day at the Brabham works, Ecclestone, without a word to the redundant Tauranac, took Seeley to the workshop, where, standing on a wooden box, he tersely announced the presence of their new joint managing director and stepped down. Seeley, totally unprepared, was ordered to stand on the box and deliver a few words.
Following Tauranac’s departure a few months later, Seeley became responsible for Formula Two, Formula Three and Formula B production cars. Ecclestone used media interest in the amalgamation of the two companies to declare his intention to launch a ‘major assault’ on Formula One and motorcycle racing. ‘Although we are a car-racing stable, we are certainly not neglecting our interests in two-wheel sports,’ he said.5 A priority would be the production of a four-cylinder motorcycle to compete against the best in the World Championship. He added: ‘I intend to make a major assault on both the two- and four-wheel arenas next year.’ Motor Racing Developments also intended, it was announced, to sponsor bike racers and give financial support to promising private entrants.
Seeley began to regularly work an 18-hour day to oversee both car and motorcycle production, including the transition from tubular space-frame chassis to monocoque construction. His working day began at 6.30 a.m. with a call to his factory in Belvedere, before frequently meeting Ecclestone at his offices in Bexleyheath, from where he would drive across south London to the Brabham works at Byfleet, Surrey, invariably leaving at about 9 p.m. Such was the pressure of meeting production deadlines that it was not unusual for Seeley, a self-taught welder, to find himself working until 2 a.m. in his frame shop at Belvedere, welding a racing-car instrument dash hoop so that it could be coated later that morning to meet a delivery time. Along with the punishing work pressure, which included a short-lived cost-cutting venture of servicing Brabham’s Cosworth DFV 3-litre engines, Seeley found himself under ever greater financial strain.
For, as the weeks turned to months, it became increasingly clear that Ecclestone’s grand plans of bringing the two companies together under the same roof were not going to materialise. The factory on the site at Erith had been built – Pat Mahoney, a top racer friend of Seeley’s, dug the footings for the foundations to save costs – but by then, it seems, Ecclestone had lost interest in production cars, a highly profitable section under Ron Tauranac, because of poor profit margins. Instead, he decided to concentrate his resources on Formula One. It was a decision that sounded the death knell for the much-vaunted merger of Motor Racing Developments and Colin Seeley Racing Developments, and, with it, Seeley’s hopes of the necessary capital Ecclestone had promised to pump into his motorcycle production. According to the accounts of Motor Racing Developments, a one-off payment of £4252 was made to Colin Seeley Racing Developments in 1972 – a ‘very limited’ amount of the agreed funding, said Seeley.
Seeley, who had held great expectations of Ecclestone’s plans, was stunned. By now he was in even deeper financial trouble. He had not only been financing his own salary as joint managing director of Motor Racing Developments Ltd, but, he claims, suffered a serious financial blow when the company failed to pay a considerable sum of money owing for work carried out by Colin Seeley Racing Developments Ltd. In early May 1973, about 17 months after he agreed to the proposed merger that promised so much, Seeley’s company, now in dire trouble, was forced into liquidation. It was a bitter blow for someone whose personal reputation was no less respected than the quality of his bikes. The closure of his factory happened at a time when the legendary Barry Sheene, who in 1973 won the British 500 Championship and European 750 Championship on Seeley-Suzukis, was testing the first Seeley monocoque motorcycle with a newly imported Suzuki TR50011 and Seeley’s own custom-built magnesium-alloy wheels. The closure of the factory meant the bike’s potential was never realised.
Seeley suffered not only the collapse of his company but also the indignity of seeing some expensive machiner
y, which was auctioned off on the instructions of a Receiver appointed to wind up the company, ending up on the premises of Motor Racing Developments. Defeated and depressed, the placid Seeley made no complaint to Ecclestone about their unfulfilled agreement which had cost him so dearly, financially and professionally. In fact, he continued to do ‘jobs’ for Ecclestone to bring in some income. But now that he was no longer important to Ecclestone’s plans, Seeley noticed a dramatic change in their relationship to the point of offensive indifference. It was typically expressed, he said, by a comment made after he and two mechanics worked on the engine of a BT37 – a revised version of the one-off 1971 ‘lobster claw’ design by Tauranac for Graham Hill – for the 1973 Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder.
The car was for Andreas de Adamich, a young Italian driver, who had brought in some sponsorship money to finance five races. Ecclestone, though, didn’t want it to interfere with the preparation of his two lead cars, so he brought Seeley in to get the car ready in time. Oil-pressure problems meant two engine changes on which Seeley worked through the night to emerge from the garage in the early morning sunlight ‘covered in oil and absolutely knackered’. At that moment, the immaculately dressed Ecclestone was passing by, and, noting Seeley’s dishevelled state, ordered: ‘Get yourself cleaned up!’ Seeley, still, at least technically, joint managing director, said nothing. His consolation was that de Adamich came in fourth, the Brabham team’s best position.
A few months later, after nearly two years with Brabham, during which time he had had been responsible for the production of a total of 105 Formula Two, Formula Three and Formula B production cars, Seeley finally quit. Surprisingly in the circumstances, his decision was prompted not by anything that he had endured, but by Ecclestone’s reaction when he asked a favour on behalf of a friend, former Swiss hill-climbing motorcycle champion Ernst Weiss, who was to be hired to drive the Brabham race truck to European events. On arriving in England Weiss’s tractor unit broke down. He phoned Seeley requesting the use of one to move his trailer. When Seeley put the request to Ecclestone, he refused. ‘That was the last straw,’ said Seeley. ‘Ernst was a good mate and he needed a bit of help. That really upset me.’ The deep disappointment that Seeley felt on his friend’s behalf was in keeping with an obliging and good-natured personality that could never be compatible with Ecclestone’s.
Reflecting on their business partnership, Seeley, now a wiser 67-year-old, believed he allowed his enthusiasm to cloud his judgement: ‘I get into projects and I get enthusiastic. It’s always been one of my faults – or advantages, I don’t know. When I look back at the hours I worked I must have been totally bonkers. But I was so fit and young and enthusiastic, and it was a tremendous opportunity at the time, with plans for a new factory and all that. I had been running my own business and I knew how to deal with people. I am very good at getting things done. He needed someone like me to get people motivated. It was a hell of a challenge. When Bernie asked me take it on, I didn’t falter at all. My attitude was: right, let’s go. He knew the [financial] situation I was in, and looking back, because I was so committed to making things work, I was just thinking, “Well, tomorrow Bernie’s going to do what he said he was going to do.” Then we finally reached a point when he didn’t, of course, and then it was all too late.’
Seeley placed so much trust in Ecclestone’s commitment to the merger that he agreed to Ecclestone’s solicitor drawing up the agreement between them – and even then he failed to insist on receiving a copy. He finally received a copy, he said, following a dispute over a National Insurance stamps bill of £1200 in respect of former employees. Ecclestone was attempting to pass the entire bill over to Seeley, who, without a copy of the agreement, had no proof of Ecclestone’s liability as a partner in their joint business activities. For several months, said Seeley, he was told that no such agreement existed, until a copy was inadvertently faxed by a junior to the office of Seeley’s solicitor. Ecclestone, said Seeley, then agreed to pay his half of the bill.
Ecclestone’s reputation as an ill-tempered taskmaster, he added, caused ‘a lot of people to be frightened of him, but I think I was intrigued by him. I was intrigued by how he operated … it was unbelievable … you never knew what was going to happen next. You were in awe of him.’
Ecclestone denied that he had owed Seeley or his company any money. ‘Anything he was owed he would always have been paid for.’ But he admitted it was ‘probably true’ that the money he was to put into Seeley’s business didn’t take place. ‘Probably that was what the intention was, but when I realised it wasn’t going to work like that, I closed it down. He was more full of enthusiasm for the bikes, being a racer … and he built the motorbike [the first monocoque] at Brabham, actually. It was his baby. I wasn’t so enthusiastic about the whole thing. He was going to productionise them but it didn’t happen.
‘Eventually he went into liquidation. I think he got a bit bitter in the end. Expecting something to happen and it didn’t. But it was nothing to do with me that it [Seeley’s company] folded. It was already in trouble before. That’s why he came to us. He didn’t come to me because he had a thriving business. I gave him a job, basically. People like to think of these things differently. But we built the bloody bikes and everything for him. Things that never had been done, with magnesium wheels and things. So it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a rethink about what he’s said.’
Once Ecclestone had completed his acquisition of Motor Racing Developments, he began assembling a new team of mechanics. With the headhunting assistance of Herbie Blash, a mechanic at Lotus who began as an apprentice with wealthy private entrant Rob Walker, of the Johnnie Walker whisky company, he brought together four or five mechanics from various teams for a meeting at a hotel in central London. The new boss of Brabham introduced himself and spoke of his ambitious plans. Bob Dance, a young mechanic with Lotus, who agreed to join Brabham as a senior mechanic, was impressed by what he heard: ‘He came over as a very sharp fellow.’
Some months later Ecclestone sacked four of the five-man design team. A much earlier, self-imposed casualty was Blash, who had been appointed team manager. Unable to get on with Tauranac, and to the alarm of the mechanics he had recruited, he had quit by lunchtime on his first day. The only survivor of the much-reduced design team was Gordon Murray, a long-haired, 24-year-old South African who had joined Brabham just a couple of years earlier as a draughtsman.
Ecclestone then turned his organisational talents to restructuring the haphazard layout of the works, which offended his acute sense of orderliness. First on his list was the large open-plan production-car workshop, which also accommodated the machine, fabrication, fibre-glass and assembly areas, and the spares store. The sight of men working on different activities in the same area was more than he could stand. It was put right by the unannounced arrival one morning of a bricklayer, a cement mixer, several bags of cement and enough breeze blocks to transform the area into units. Once doors had been fitted, every poster and non-essential decoration that had adorned the grime-stained walls for years was removed. Along with the woodwork, the walls and ceiling were all painted white. A white surface, said Ecclestone, was easier to keep clean.
To ensure the mechanics clearly understood the discipline of the new order, he marched into the workshop one evening to announce that that night all toolboxes would be emptied, painted dark blue and kept at precise areas of the bench, which he would mark out. ‘Anybody got a problem with that?’ he asked sharply of his silent audience, before marching out. He also disliked the habit of mechanics casually leaning on a hatch counter in the motor vehicle spares store while waiting for a part. He forced a change of posture by having the hatch lowered to a level that made it impossible to lean on.
However, the sight of the haphazard movement of human traffic constantly criss-crossing between the company offices, the production-car workshop and, on the other side of a narrow gravel roadway, the Formula One workshop, called for more radical action. Ecclestone issued i
nstructions for the two doors at the front of the production-car workshop to be bricked up and replaced by one door at the rear. A high wire-mesh fence was then constructed along the frontage of the workshop and just beyond the adjacent company offices, around which employees would have to walk in order to cross the roadway. It succeeded in creating an orderly single-line flow between all three buildings.
Ecclestone’s keen preference for the colour white manifested itself in the most obvious canvas of all – the Brabham cars, which were immediately repainted from racing green to virgin white. When he clinched his first major sponsorship deal with Martini Rossi in 1975, after the success of Carlos Reutemann’s three Grand Prix wins the previous season, his pleasure was diminished by the sight of the Brabham cars in the company’s eye-catching but garish red livery stripes. The team’s race transporter, an articulated lorry formerly used by Trusthouse Forte as a training vehicle and the first of its kind in Formula One, was also painted white. Its conversion was carried out by mechanics Bob Dance and Gary Anderson, who went on to become chief designer at Jordan. A third trailer even had its own plush hospitality unit, another first. It was also the scene of an angry outburst by Ecclestone when he spotted a trumpet and injector on the sink in the eating compartment, which, moments later, he hurled out of the trailer.
But for all Ecclestone’s aggressive and obsessive style of management, with all the tension it caused, there were some who could understand the need for changes in working practices. Nick Goozée, who left Brabham in 1974 to join Penske Cars in Poole, Dorset, where he later became managing director, said: ‘We found some of the changes, which were introduced quickly, a little over the top, but, in fact, we were not an efficient company. We were very basic in some of our methods, which had been fine in the sixties and seventies, but once Bernie bought Brabham change was both inevitable and necessary.’