1969 Merlyn Mk11a

The 1969 Merlyn Mk11A Formula Ford represents one of the defining cars from the earliest and most important years of Formula Ford. The Mk11A was among the cars that established the category as a true proving ground for future champions, with Merlyn Formula Fords helping launch the careers of Emerson Fittipaldi, Jody Scheckter, Tim Schenken, and James Hunt. The Mk11A’s reputation in period was such that one example became known as the “Magic Merlyn,” after its success in the hands of Fittipaldi, Colin Vandervell, and Scheckter.

This car is an especially evocative example of the late-1960s “cigar-shaped” formula car: lightweight, simple, mechanical, and entirely driver-focused. Powered by the classic Ford Kent engine and using the period Formula Ford layout of a spaceframe chassis, outboard suspension, and Hewland gearbox, it captures the purity of the category at the moment Formula Ford was becoming one of the most influential training formulas in the world.

Formula Ford was a major part of SCCA racing in the Northeast during the late 1960s and 1970s, and cars like this would have been exactly the sort of machinery seen at Bridgehampton during the circuit’s glory years.