The pit garages on the Saturday of the Formula Ford Festival weekend at Brands Hatch in late October were occupied by cars from the Modified Ford Series, a wonderful collection of bewinged and fat ’arched Escorts and other Blue Oval favourites, all supporting the main event. Except for one garage, that is, within which sat a racecar that could not be further from a flame-spitting Sierra Cosworth in looks, concept and certainly sound. That car was the Formula Foundation FF-E1 electric racer, which was to complete a few demonstration laps in the lunchbreak.
Regular readers will be familiar with Formula Foundation, because Racecar featured its proposed entry-level racer, the RSR 001, in the V32N6 issue. For those that missed it, this was a car designed to be cheap and easy to run, the sort of thing – to use a term favoured by its builder, RSR Technology – a dad and lad could campaign successfully throughout a season of racing.
The car featured a standard, transversely-mounted, 1.6-litre Ford Sigma SE engine and gearbox, which could be picked up very cheaply, even from a scrapyard, and simple, cost-effective outboard suspension. Many of the other components could be sourced at a reasonable price from local motor factors. The wheels and brake discs, for example, were from a Mini, while the single radiator was Vauxhall Corsa in origin.
The only really hi-tech element was the spaceframe, designed on CAD and constructed from T45 and ROPT CDS aerospace-spec steel, incorporating Diolen side-impact panels for extra protection.
Interest in the RSR 001 was initially very high, yet it proved difficult to sell the car in the UK. This led to a bit of an epiphany at RSR, a recognition that perhaps the days of parent/child running a car might be over.
‘We realised that things have changed, and people don’t seem to want to buy cars and run them themselves any more,’ says Richard Huddart, who is a partner in RSR with former Formula
