Forever England
The idea was typically blunt: build a car to blow away the foreign competition. Doug Nye tells the story of the BRM brute that captured the heart of a nation
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Taken from Motor Sport, February 2021, V16 BRM P15: the sensational GP car that’s forever England
This is far more than just another Grand Prix car. Back in period, ‘The BRM’ was as much part of British national awareness as today’s news of a Covid vaccine. Through the later 1940s, even my mum had heard of ‘The BRM’ – the ‘British Racing Motor’. The relentless publicity promoting it made millions motor racing conscious. It was tipped to win Grands Prix for Britain, smash Johnny Foreigner’s racing stranglehold and build national prestige worldwide…
In fact the British Motor Racing Research Trust’s public relations office was probably the most effective department of the entire industrial co-operative building the BRM through 1948-51. Seldom have such an inflated reputation and naive expectations been publicly promoted for an as-yet-unbuilt Grand Prix car… But such massive PR backfired badly upon the organisation striving to become a British Mercedes-Benz Rennabteilung.