BUCKLER - SPORTS CARS, SPECIALS AND KARTS

Although they were born 18 years apart, Derek Buckler and Colin Chapman were contemporaries when it came to designing and building ground-breaking sports cars in the late 1940s and early ’50s. They had much in common. Both were innovators, especially in the areas of chassis design and improving the handling characteristics of their cars.

Both founded successful companies and both died relatively young, but while Chapman’s Lotus went on to achieve worldwide fame, the name Buckler remains comparatively little known.

Special building was popular in the 1950s, and Buckler offered a multi-tubular space frame which was both stronger and lighter and, moreover, available in different models to suit different applications. He was also always ready to adapt his products to his customers’ requirements. 

Buckler also made a range of complete cars starting with the versatile Mk5 and 6 and going on to encompass DD1 and DD2 with De Dion rear ends and the BB100 with backbone chassis introduced considerably before Lotus’s Elan and their other similarly based models.

When karting became popular in the early 1960s, Buckler’s space frame technology found another application for which it was ideal, and it became a major player in this burgeoning branch of motor sport. Buckler was also successful with its range of accessories including engine and transmission components and most notably its much admired close-ratio gears.

The fourteen chapters begin with "Buckler and the Company", cover the production and racing cars with some individual histories, the Buckler accessories including one chapter on the badges alone, overseas distribution - New Zealand was a particularly strong market for Buckler - and a fascinating section on the car advertisements before going on to cover the kart story in similar detail.

Trere are reproductions of road tests, articles written by Derek Buckler, specifications of close-ratio gears and Buckler-tuned Ford engines, kart track tests and even one on Buckler letterheads.

The hundreds of illustrations range from reproductions of high quality contemporary and recent photographs to some admittedly lower quality originals, some of them obviously retouched to improve clarity, whose inclusion is well justified for their essential contribution to the Buckler story.

Buckler - Sports Cars, Specials and Karts is truly encyclopaedic, with 310 pages, copiously illustrated in colour and b/w.