ONE of the most famous manufacturing brands in Australian motorsport history has new ownership.
Melbourne-based Young Timers Garage (YTG) has recently acquired Elfin Sports Cars Pty Ltd from the Walkinshaw Group.
YTG’s Shaun Baker told V8 Sleuth this week that he’s open to manufacturing Elfins in the future, however the first job at hand is to simply return the brand to front of mind.
“It’s such an iconic brand, it was sad for it to be sitting there and doing nothing,” Baker told V8 Sleuth.
“Our first plan is to remind people of the brand and get people to remember the iconic racing heritage. Elfin was the second largest race car builder in the world in the 1960s, which was an incredible achievement.
“It’s been dormant for a long time, hopefully we can put all the ducks in a row and look at some small-scale production.
“We’re not in a position to manufacture as of yet, but I believe there’s an opportunity to do something on a small scale in the future that suits our brand perfectly.
“Keeping the brand boutique is important to us, it suits our brand. Being able to retain it in Australia is important to us too and we’ll work from here on building it up.
“We want people to realise that Elfin has so much racing heritage, with all of those championship wins and the legends who drove the cars.”
The historically significant Aussie racing marque was founded by the late Garrie Cooper in South Australia in 1959 and produced a range of famous sports and open-wheeler racing cars in its time.
Its cars have won no less than 29 championships as well as a range of other significant victories including two Australian Drivers’ Championships, four Australian Sports Car Championships, three Australian Tourist Trophies and four Australian Formula Ford titles.
Cooper died suddenly in 1982 and Elfin went through a few ownership changes before the Walkinshaw Group bought the business in late 2006 after Elfin collaborated with GM Holden on the MS8 Streamliner.
There has been no production of any Elfin cars in just over a decade.
