Ron Tauranac was born and raised in New South Wales, Australia but lived and worked for most of his life in England. He will be known as one of the great race car designers covering the early Brabhams, the Ralts of the 1970s and 1980s, and less-well known the Theodore F1 car. Ron gained his initial experience of engineering with a local company CSR Chemicals, and bought himself an Austin 7. Out for a drive one Sunday, he came across a race meeting at Marsden Park airfield, near Pittown, Sydney. His interest was sparked, and he quickly met up with the Hooper brothers, of motorcycle repairers Hooper & Napier. The brothers were in the process of building their own 500cc car, using a dirt-track JAP in a very simple chassis.

Bitten by the bug, Ron decided to have a go himself, but in his own words “went all theoretical and spent my lunch hours in the library genning up on car design. I designed a more complicated car - and unfortunately it cost me three years’ development time. The Hooper’s approach was better...”

This car was to be the Ralt Mk 1 (seen below at some unknown stage of its development), built with the assistance of his younger brother Austin Lewis - the name being a combination of their initials. The original engine was a 1932 pushrod Norton ES2, and it quickly became clear that it was way down on power. Ron made his own flywheel, rod, barrel and so on, until the engine was as special as the chassis. Again, the Hoopers had done the obvious, by starting with a better engine, but Ron could not afford this, and at least learnt more.

The first event would be at the Hawkesbury hillclimb in 1949. On the first run, Ron clipped a gutter, overturned and went to hospital with facial cuts and a shaking. Once the car had been rebuilt, Ron returned to Hawkesbury for his second event. This time a spring eye broke, a rear wheel collapsed, and he was back in hospital - now with a broken hand and a shaking. Ron persevered, and the RALT Mk 1 would appear in hillclimbs and races around New South Wales about once a month “with the car very much modified each time”. In 1951, Ron set a new Australian record for the 1/4 mile standing start of 17.55s, and by 1952 he was beating the Hoopers in events at Mount Druitt and Paramatta. Legend has it that at one such event he got chatting to a Cooper-Bristol driver, the conversation going along the lines of:

Ron: "How's it going?"
Cooper-Bristol driver: "Not too good, the tail's all over the place"
Ron: "I'm not surprised, your rear roll centre looks to be about 5" under ground".
Cooper-Bristol driver: "huh?”

After some discussion, they took the car to the Ron’s workshop, cut the suspension pick up points off, & welded new ones on, and the car was much improved. The appreciative driver was named Jack Brabham, the car was the famous Redex Special, and a famous partnership was beginning.

Ron continued to use the Ralt Mk 1 until 1954, when he sold it to Merv Ward for £350. Of the other ‘original’ Ralts:
The Mk 2: Built by and for Austin, a sports car with Ford 10 engine, Standard 10 gearbox, and Morris 8 rear axle.
The Mk 3: Was purchased from the Hooper brothers when they retired, and presumably was the Hooper 500. Ron designed a new chassis for it, and the car was primarily driven by Austin. Austin used the Mk 3 to win a race at each Mount Druitt meeting over about 18 months, we presume in 500cc trim.
The Mk 4: Began as a special, using a Vincent-HRD 1,000 and a de Dion rear suspension layout. The car took two years to develop in Ron’s spare time (he was now a works manager at a foundry). After just two events, somebody insisted on buying it, so plans were made for a production run of five replicas.
The Mk 5: Was planned by Austin as a Peugeot-engined car, but abandoned so he could assist Ron with the production Mk 4s.

Only two of the Mk 4 Ralts had been completed when Jack Brabham returned to Australia, now as reigning 1959 World Champion with Cooper. Brabham invited Ron to England to work at his garage in Chessington, fitting Coventry Climax engines into Triumph Heralds. In 1961 he and Brabham decided to build their own cars and Tauranac designed the MRD (Motor Racing Development) Formula Junior car. The following year Brabham left Cooper to form his own marque and he and Tauranac began building cars for a variety of different formulae. The business was a big success and by the mid 1960s Brabhams were winning in all the major categories.

The first RALT as reviewed in Iota.

By the end of the decade, Brabham was struggling, although the customer business continued to be successful. Brabham retired from racing at the end of 1970 and went back to Australia, leaving Ron to run the business but he sold the Brabham  marque to Bernie Ecclestone shortly after. He stayed in England, designing the Trojan T101 Formula 5000 car and being involved with Frank Williams's F1 team.

Ron  retired to Australia but by 1974, he was back in England where he opened a small workshop in Woking and produced the Ralt RT1, which was designed to be raced in Formula 2 and 3 and Formula Atlantic. Victory came in 1975 when Larry Perkins won at Monza. The Australian went on to win the European Formula 3 Championship for Ralt. The following year Bertram Schafer won the German title in a Ralt-Toyota and in 1977 Anders Olofsson almost won Tauranac a second European F3 title while the only championship success was in Italy with Elio de Angelis.

The 1978 season was a great success with Jan Lammers winning the European series, Derek Warwick and Nelson Piquet each winning a British F3 title and Schafer winning a second German title. The F2 version of the RT1 finished second in the 1977 European Championship in the hands of Eddie Cheever.

In 1978 F1 team owner Teddy Yip asked Tauranac to design the Theodore F1 car, but the TR1 was not a great success although Keke Rosberg won the International Trophy in the wet. For 1979, Ron designed two new cars: the RT2 for F2 and the RT3 for F3. The first was supplied exclusively to Ted Toleman and Brian Henton won three times in the car. The RT3 became the dominant F3 design of the early 1980s, winning the 1983 European title for Pierluigi Martini, five consecutive British F3 titles in the hands of Stefan Johansson, Jonathan Palmer, Tommy Byrne, Ayrton Senna and Johnny Dumfries. It won the French title in 1982 with Pierre Petit and a string of German and Italian titles. An alliance with Honda in Formula 2 resulted in the RH6 Formula 2 car in 1980 and this was to proved enormously successful, Ralt Racing winning the European F2 title in 1981, 1984 and 1985. Ralt then entered Formula 3000 and enjoyed more success in the late 1980s although not with the dominance of the Ralt-Honda days.

In Formula 3 the RT3 was followed by the RT30 with which Mauricio Gugelmin won the 1985 British F3 title. Competition from Reynard meant that Ralt began to struggle in F3 and F3000 and in October 1988 Tauranac sold the company to March. Ron has now retired for a second time, back to his native Australia.