Brabham Automotive planning a reboot

The Brabham BT62 supercar has survived COVID-19 but is headed for a significant re-set later in 2023.

Only a handful of cars have been produced since the BT62 was unveiled in 2019, one racing successfully in the UK and another delivered to New Zealand.

Now the founder of Brabham Automotive is closing on plans to resume production of the $1.8 million BT62 following earlier ambitions to certify it for road use and to create a second, more affordable, model.

“We’re looking at a re-boot,” David Brabham revealed to CarExpert.

The Brabham BT62 program began with a bang in 2019 when the first car, driven by Bathurst 1000 winner Luke Youlden, clocked the first lap at Mount Panorama quicker than two minutes with a 1:58.68.

It followed a long legal battle by Brabham to reclaim the rights to the Brabham name used by his father, Sir Jack Brabham, in Formula One and for a series of low-key road car projects.

The early plan for the car, which has a Ford Coyote V8 engine and a chassis designed by Paul Ceprnich at Pace Innovations in Queensland, was to produce a series of BT62s painted with historic Brabham racing liveries from Formula One.

The first car was green and gold, the Australian racing colours used by Sir Jack Brabham in the 1960s.

The second production car was white with a blue stripe, colours used in the 1980s when grand prix ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone owned Brabham.

David Brabham told CarExpert there is work underway on the future of Brabham Automotive, which has been operating from a factory in Adelaide.

But he said it is too early to go into details, or answer any detailed questions.

“Some of the answers are points of discussion at the moment so we prefer to wait till these have been sorted,” he said.

Brabham, the youngest son of triple world champion Sir Jack Brabham, has retired from professional race driving but still keeps very busy.

He travelled to Australia earlier in the year for the Adelaide Motorsport Festival, where he and his son Sam drove an historic Brabham BT19 F1 car, before visiting the 100th anniversary running of the Le Mans 24 Hour race and then the Goodwood Festival of Speed in Britain.

The highlight of his trip to Le Mans – a race he won with Peugeot in 2009, repeating a similar success for his older brother Geoff in 1993 – included a flight in the iconic Goodyear Blimp over the French circuit.

“The Blimp ride was pretty cool. I’ve always seen it above race tracks most of my life and always wondered what it was like,” Brabham said.

He was driving again at Goodwood.

“I’m driving dad’s 1966 F1 Brabham BT20 and the Jaguar XJR14 I raced in the 1991 World Endurance Championship,” he said.

He is still coy about plans for Brabham Automotive, but confirmed the company is continuing.

“I’ll tell you when we’re ready,” he said.