" VALE CHARLIE STANTON.
103 is a pretty fair age but that’s the milestone Charlie Stanton reached before he quietly slipped away earlier this week.
As the famous Stanton Brothers, Charlie was the thinker and the engineer, Morrie was the courage and the driving skills as well as also an engineer.
Charlie let Morrie do all of the public racing driving, he was content to create, to contemplate and take the proverbial back seat.
Together they ran a garage in Sydenham in Christchurch.
In the mid-sixties, Charlie went overseas and spent 1967 working for Jack Brabham on his Formula One team, building the engines for Denis Hulme to win the F1 title with.
Charlie served in the Middle East in WW2 fighting mainly in Italy, returned home in peacetime and bought a 1927 Speed Bentley.
The Christchurch-based brothers were early on the motor racing scene when they took a three wheel BSA sports car, gave it two wheels at the rear and then went racing.
That was followed by the legendary “Cropduster” with its rear-engined Gypsy Major aero engine and crudely styled body.
It had an impact on motor racing circuits, but they fitted a more aerodynamic modified Mistral body to set a NZ Land Speed record for cars at circa 174mph.
Importantly for Stanton tradition — it was chain driven.
Their next car was a mistake. It was the first Stanton Corvette — a front engined, V8 powered single seater that looked like an enlarged speedway midget or modified Indycar. It was a design that was outdated even before they began building it.
They realised it, scrapped it and built a chain driven, rear engined car with extraordinarily homely looks.
But it was fast and Morrie drove it bravely while Charlie continued to stand in the background watching.
In the mid sixties the Stanton Corvette was reconfigured as a sports car. The chassis had outriggers and a widened body and the centre steering was offset by chain drive to the new driving position.
At first it had a huge open maw of a mouth, but then it was given a streamlined nose.
Morrie had a serious accident at Waimate and retired from driving, his role being taken over by Geoff Mardon who was fantastically sucessful in the car — still called “the Stanton Corvette”.
The Stantons retired, the “Corvette” was sold to Jim Boyd, then John Monehan and it’s been in the ownership of Russell Greer for many years.
Charlie Stanton switched direction, designed, built and flew a glider which is in the wonderful Ashburton Aircraft Museum.
Morrie died several years back but Charlie lived in a retirement village in Nelson, for many years.
He has a street named after him in Christchurch. "
Saw the Stanton Corvette raced many times in the 1960's into the 1970's and Stanton Special - Cropduster at Dunedin in 1984.
My own photos of the two famous cars, built by the Stanton Brothers.
