Early days
Born in Perth on October 12, 1936, Jaime lived in the Victoria Park area, his need-for-speed initially sated, aged 17/18 as a cyclist (below). Jaime recalls, “I trained a lot but didn’t win many races, although I did set an endurance record for riding continuously for five days, 122 hours! I got a trophy and sash for my efforts.”
“Dad was in the RAAF and away much of the time. His Standard 9 was my responsibility when he was away. My first experience of problem solving was repairing the diff after it failed when I got the car bogged on one of my local unlicensed adventures!”
Apprenticed to Harris Scarfe & Sandovers as a motor mechanic at 15 in 1951, he was soon helping local racer Frank Cecchele prepare his Fiat 1100 for the upcoming round-the-houses Northam Flying 50 meeting.
“It was my first racing leg-in-the-door,” Jaime says. “Soon I was looking after racing boats and speedway cars, including my ex-brother in-law’s Dodge six-cylinder powered speedcar.”
“Claremont Speedway was great to me for about 15 years. I prepared their car which was raced by Ray Clarke to 12 successive state titles. I looked after some of the interstate visitors, especially memorable were the home-built Holden Grey Six powered speedcars of Murray Hoffman and Johnny Stewart.”
“I drove Clarke’s car and fitted it with McGee fuel injection after learning about the system’s tricks on Stewart’s car in Perth and the following summer when I prepared it back-east that Christmas.”
Car constructor
At 19, while working for John Mott Motors, Jaime started road-racing a self-built Appendix J Holden 48-215 with help from local Holden dealer, Youngs.
“I didn’t win in it at Caversham but had plenty of placings and won a hillclimb championship one year. We were running well in the Caversham 6-Hour Le Mans in 1964, I’d fitted a really tall diff, but blew the head-gasket. We still finished 18th after a trackside repair.”
By that stage Jaime felt he knew enough to tackle the design and construction of a single-seater and built a Formula Junior.
“The BMC FJ was powered by a modified BMC A-Series engine, it had a nice, stiff, tubular steel spaceframe chassis. A panel beater did the body for me in the shark-nose style of the Ferrari 156s that were winning everything in Grand Prix racing.
“While building it I was scrutineering at Caversham during the 1962 Australian Grand Prix meeting and got talking to Bruce McLaren. He was interested to have a look at my car and swung past home that evening.
“He said, ‘You’ve done a fantastic job with the front suspension but looking at it, I think it will tend to roll-oversteer, so lower the inner mounting point of the top rear wishbone 30mm and that’ll fix the problem. You should find the car will handle very well.’ I got some good advice there and was pretty happy when Bruce’s Cooper T62 Climax won the GP that weekend!
