The Anson A2 on its announcement.
   
Anson was founded by Gary Anderson and Bob Simpson and for nearly 10 years tried to establish a foothold in F3 racing, despite producing a number of competitive cars they were never perceived as being a serious rival to companies such as Ralt or March. Their greatest success was winning the German F3 Championship in 1983 with Franz Konrad whilst Tommy Byrne came 6th in the 1984 European Championship. Of course a few years further down the road Gary Anderson would achieve fame as a F1 designer, most notably with Jordan.
   
  
The SA1 with its unusual full width nose.
The original SA1 was built in 1975 and was based on a Brabham BT38, it was raced initially in formule libre by Anderson. It's F3 debut came in an end of September BP round at Silverstone. A new SA1 was constructed for 1976 and was raced initially by Tiff Needell and then by Dick Parsons. The car was sponsored by Unipart but ran without any great success. It had a distinctive shape with its low full-width nose and slab sided monocoque.
   
   
Gary Anderson in the rain with the SA2.
The SA2 was designed for a mooted Unipart F3 Team (which would eventually appear with March), the chassis was again very square in shape with full width nose. It had a narrow track with twin caliper brakes and inboard rockers at the front. There was an unusual springing arrangement at the rear with conventional coils and dampers plus an additional set of springs over the rear brakes. The theory was that the auxiliary springs would take up the body roll. Gary Anderson was the driver but a lack of resources saw the withdrawal of the car part way through the season.
   
Drivers  
1975 Gary Anderson.
   
1976 Tiff Needell, Dick Parsons.
   
1977 Gary Anderson.