1979 Williams FW07 Formula One

According to Sotheby’s, this car sold post-block at their inaugural Collectors Motorcars Auction in Melbourne, Australia, on April 18, 2010, for an amount the auction company would not reveal, but in excess of $465,000 ($500,000 AUD).

Sudden spurts, then periods of constancy

There is a theory in evolutionary biology referred to as “punctuated equilibrium.” It proposes that evolution is not a smooth and constant rate of change, but that it happens in sudden spurts, followed by periods of relative constancy. Whether this is in fact the case in biology is not the point, but it certainly seems to apply to the evolution of F1 design. In the history of F1, every once in a while a car has come along that completely changes the game. The designs that ran before are instantly outdated, and the next seasons are devoted to copying and trying to improve upon the new paradigm.

Lotus has made a lot of them, with the 25 (monocoque chassis), the 49 (Cosworth DFV, engine as stressed chassis component), the 72 (wedge shape, side radiators), and the 78/79 (the first ground effects), but they’re not alone. The Williams FW07 was another iconic game changer; it didn’t invent anything new, but it changed the packaging in ways that made the existing ideas far more efficient in operation. The chassis ground effects were so good that it didn’t even need a front wing.

The FW07 arrived part way through the 1979 season and had teething problems that prevented a championship win that year, but it was a sufficiently dominant design that Williams won both the Driver’s and Manufacturer’s Championships in 1980, the Manufacturer’s Championship in 1981, and remained seriously competitive into 1982. That was over three years, with 15 wins and 300 Championship points, for a single design (with B, C, and D variants)-an amazing run in that notoriously rapidly-evolving world.

The ultimate iteration of the 3-liter F1 car

What makes the FW07 iconic is that it is seen as the ultimate iteration (and effectively the end) of what we think of as the 3-liter F1 era. After the 1980 season, both safety concerns and technology conspired to forever change the face of the sport. The ground effects cars used aerodynamic shapes under the cars (“tunnels”) to generate downforce, and they were extraordinarily effective, but there was a problem in that the downforce wasn’t linear.

The suction from speed pulled the car down onto the track, which in turn caused more suction, etc. This created two issues: First, it was entirely possible to go around a given turn at 140 mph using downforce, but impossible to go around that same turn at 100 mph if you didn’t have enough downforce; and second, if something caused the suction to break (a bump, for instance, causing the side skirts to get stuck up), the downforce could disappear in an instant.

There were some horrific crashes as a result, and the ground effects were severely limited from 1981 and completely banned in 1983. On the motor side, constructors figured out that a turbocharged 1.5-liter engine (allowed under the existing rules as an alternative) could produce far more power for much less weight than an aspirated 3-liter. By 1983, ground effects were gone and the 3-liter V8 cars were effectively obsolete. The FW07 was the last true giant before the end.

I’ve often spoken of the combination of “collector” values and “weapons grade” (have fun playing with it) values in vintage racing cars. In anything open-wheeled, particularly anything newer than about 1960, the collector values are relatively small. People buy these cars to go race them, not to have them sit on display. As it turns out, vintage racing of Formula One effectively ends with the 3-liter cars; there are only sporadic events for anything newer. This means that for those racers with the ego, the wallet, the cojones (and hopefully the talent) to want to be at the absolute front of the fastest grid, the FW07 and a few of its clones are what you have to have.

It’s a very small market at the top, but the supply is also very limited, so values tend to be high. The best FW07s, fully prepared and ready to race, currently sell for close to $1m; the clones (Arrows, Tyrell) are about half that.

Three chassis claim s/n 04

Our subject car, FW0704, sold for roughly $500k, which suggests that there were issues. And issues there were. First of all, there was a considerable amount of confusion about the chassis history. Chassis 04 was arguably the most important of the four 1979 cars in terms of race success, but there are three different chassis that have a claim on that number-this one, one that was given to the Middle Eastern sponsors, and one in the U.S.

Williams has made an attempt to clear this up and has said that this is probably the real one, but after 30 years it’s difficult to say with certainty (and the other owners will argue the point). Second, this car was badly wrecked while testing in 1981 and was sold off as a museum display, so it’s anything but race-ready. The monocoque and suspension will require major repairs or replacement, it will need a new engine and most likely a transaxle, so it will require at least $300,000-$350,000 investment before it sees the track. Third, the car has been in Australia for 30 years and was sold in Melbourne, so it was presented to a limited market. It might have done better if presented in a U.K. auction, but whether it could even be exported from Australia (national treasure and all that) is a bit of an open question.

There is a fourth factor, and it is admittedly subjective. It is my considered opinion that open-wheeled cars do not and never have sold well at auction. I’m not sure why, but I suspect it has to do with the idea that collector values sell well in an auction setting, but weapons values don’t.

Collector values are easy to recognize and define by observation. Utilitarian values like “what’s it going to take before I can race this thing safely?” require lots of inquiry and careful consideration, not easily available in an auction setting. There’s too much uncertainty about this kind of car for real-time competitive bidding, with the result that formula cars always seem to sell cheap (if at all) in an auction environment. Selling post-block, it clearly did not meet the seller’s hopes, but it did sell. Considering the issues discussed above, I’d say it was fairly bought, with the new owner having room to invest what is necessary to make the car a functional plaything, without being hopelessly under water.