A 54-FOOT CAR CARRYING MONSTER
You call that a trailer? THIS is a trailer.
It’s nice to stumble on a story by accident. That’s exactly what happened when we were chatting away with Jeff Mercer about the Griffith Corporation IVECO Powerstar 7800 before he mentioned another interesting piece of kit belonging to racer and transport businessman, Mark Griffith.
It’s a custom-built trailer measuring 54 feet long and 4.65 metres high. Yep, there’s no shying away from those dimensions. This is a serious race car trailer.
We’ll let Jeff Mercer tell you all about it.
“It was specifically built for Mark [Griffith] by Vawdrey. Mark and the management at Vawdrey sat down and designed the trailer from top to bottom and front to back. It was about eight months in planning just to get it sorted and ready to run down the production line," he recalled.
"It can carry six full-size cars and the mezzanine floor is completely adjustable from front to rear. You can have two Ferraris at the front and then a H3 Hummer in the back of it. It has locker boxes all the way underneath and each car is dedicated a locker box that they can carry extra equipment in.
The whole thing runs on batteries and the tailgate is powered by solar panels on the roof. It has rechargeable batteries and solar panels all throughout. The rear door is aluminium to save weight. It’ll hold six full-size Ferraris without any problem. I know that because we’ve loaded six into the trailer and sent them to Perth three years ago for the Ferrari Nationals.”
The sheer size of the trailer leads to a few compromises in flexibility, as Jeff explains.
“This setup is very unique to Australia and everything is state-of-the-art. The truck and trailer are a set combination. You can’t chop and change. You have to have that prime mover in front of it because of its overall length. It runs everywhere by permit. Because of its sheer length and height, you need a pre-planned route to avoid bridges."
Image: Jeff Mercer
The Vawdrey-Griffith Corporation partnership made a whole lot of sense given their existing connection in the transport industry.
“Vawdrey is one of the major sponsors on Mark’s Mercedes Benz GT3 car and he purchases a lot of Vawdrey B-Double trailers. It was just a natural thing for them to work together on designing and building a custom trailer for his purposes.”
Another big thank you to Jeff Mercer for his time and insights. For more stories on the trucks and transporters that keep motorsport's wheels turning, keep an eye on our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.