Memories
Graham Gauld recalls some of the unpublished stories about Ecurie Ecosse.
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When people talk about Ecurie Ecosse they normally think solely of the motor racing team but forget that Ecurie Ecosse was the byproduct of a small, but remarkable, garage business founded by David Murray and "Wilkie" Wilkinson called Merchiston Motors.
The motor racing was one thing but it was Merchiston Motors that provided the bread when the motor racing team was short of money and I was reminded of this recently when I received the attached photographs sent by Euan McGlynn.
Euan's father, Donald "Dan" McGlynn , now a sprightly, 84, was originally employed by Merchiston Motors in Merchiston Mews but was later transferred to the motor racing team and was also one of the first Scots to race a Mini back in 1960.
Dan was recruited to Merchiston Motors by David Murray as they were at Edinburgh's Royal High school and both were keen rugby players.
Thanks to Wilkie Wilkinson, Merchiston Motors became a magnet for people with interesting cars who couldn’t get specialist service around Edinburgh, and indeed around Scotland as a whole. For Dan McGlynn the car he did a lot of work on was the Vauxhall 30/98 owned and raced by Ronnie Millar who was Chairman of Motherwell Bridge engineering works. Millar and his good friend Pat Melville of Glasgow engineers Melville Dundas and Whitson both had Vauxhall 30/98's and when the pair of them decided to build their own racing car, the Saltire, it was Dan McGlynn who built it with its Lea Francis engine. " I always felt that Ronnies Vauxhall was better prepared than Pat Melville's one but then I was biased. I redesigned one or two things including the clutch then bringing the exhaust out and along the bonnet and went to a few races with Ronnie.
"Then when I built the Saltire I got landed with doing all the test runs with it. I remember we went to Snetterton, I think it was, with Wilkie and he suggested that I took the Saltire round the track first. I thought what a crafty bastard because if anything had gone wrong he could blame me.
" Not many people know that Ecurie Ecosse built a test bed at Motherwell Bridge to test our engines and Ronnie used to loan me his beautiful Lagonda at the weekends."
At the time the main business was Merchiston Motors with Wilkie Wilkinson, Pat Meehan, Ron Gaudion and Stan Sproat being the mainstay mechanics on Ecurie Ecosse. However, Dan would get pulled in to help out from time to time before joining the team full time. " I used to drive one of the team buses down to the circuits before we got our new transporter and then after the second Le Mans win David Murray opened his small showroom and wine shop in Bruntsfield and I went there with Bob Clephane to run the showroom. It was while I was there that I was head hunted by the BMC dealers Westfield and that's when I started with the Minis. I had my one modified by Downtown Engineering and raced it.
" I got on well with David Murray because I had known him for years and at the time I got the telegram from him offering the job at Merchiston Motors I was studying engineering.
I was also very friendly with Ninian Sanderson and used to race with him on his yacht. I remember Ninian taking me over to the Paris Motor Show when he had the Citroen dealership. One night we went to racing driver Harry Schell's restaurant and when we sat down Ninian looked over and saw Fangio at another table so he rushed over and Ninian introduced me to him."
Donald McGlynn, like Stan Sproat who was also one of the earliest members of the Ecurie Ecosse team has many memories of Merchiston Motors and is still interested in racing even though it has changed so much from his day.
