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This mystery car was sent to us by Mr. Hawkes in the UK. He found the photo above here, which claims that the car is a 1952 Allard Special. If you squint, the car looks kind of like an edgier representation of a M2 or P2 with the inset headlamps. The car bears the registration number "MYP 515" in both photos. If you know anything about this car or what it is, please click here to send us a note or leave a comment.
The photos you see here were sent to us by Bryan who owned this car back in the late 50's. He'd love to find out what happened to it...and we'd love to find out what chassis it is.
Bryan writes, "Here's a couple of photos of the old dear, known (naturally!) as Sabrina, although these days she could just as well be known as Dolly! She had a 3.5 litre flathead Ford V8, the weight of which made her a bit lazy where cornering was concerned but one didn’t worry too much. Acceleration out of corners, helped by the Ballamy front suspension, was scorching as you can imagine. In any case she had colossal braking power.
I bought her from a friend in about 1957 for £50 and ran her happily for about eighteen months until coming past Newmarket towards Six Mile Bottom the revs suddenly went sky high, without a noticeable increase in speed. Not surprising this. My co-driver told me we were doing fractionally over one ton at the time. I had her towed to my uncle’s farm at Hemingford. About three months later he told me he had sold her, minus any drive from the busted half-shaft, to an American airman from Basingbourne. This man was eager for her and paid me £150 for the privilege. I would surely say she didn’t owe me a penny then, but what would she be worth now?
Apart from this note I have no information about her. She was surely the strangest design of bodywork I have ever seen, almost but not quite an estate car and you could stuff an extra ordinary amount of luggage in through the tailgates. As her driving her, she was a joy and filled in the blank in my life just after I had had a bust at Paddock Bend and decided I wasn’t as good as Stirling and had better quit while I could.
As for her rudimentary silencers – what a lovely noise. I still adore the sound of a V-8!"
If you know anything about the car, please send us a note. This was likely one of the many M types that was sold without a body. It's like a hatchback shooting brake with a roll-top roof. Nice.
Daniel Rapley is seeking help in finding the true identity of his Allard J2. Here's what is known:
If you known anything about this car, please click here to email Daniel. Click here to view the extensive photo gallery.
We found this photo of Sydney racing at the Poole Speed Trials in 1947 where he took the fastest sports car time (Motor Sport, October '47). The number plate isn't shown in our chassis registry. Know anything about it? Leave a comment.
Cheers!
The Styer often receives most of the attention as Sydney's special, but he also built a special road-going car around the same time, JGP 473. According to the Lush book, the chassis was based on a J1 with much of the cross bracing and boxinig removed to save weight. The chassis was lowered using flattened springs (similar to the Steyr) and the 2-seat body was made of aluminum stretched over the chassis with no doors. Power for the car came from Sydney's previous special HLF 601 which featured a set of Allard OHV heads (pre-Ardun, but copied from an American design). The heads proved to be very troublesome and the car was later converted to a conventional Mercury V8, then supercharged. As page 88 reveals, JGP was the pre-cursor to the J2. I wonder what happened to it?
Have you ever seen or heard anything about this custom bodied K2? Our build records don't note any K2's being shipped with partial bodywork so we must assume the car was rebodied at some time, likely after an accident. We're going to make a wild assumption that the car was rebodied in the mid to late fifties due to noticeable tail fins and 'continental kit' spare tire mount. If you know anything about this unique K2, please leave a comment or click here to email us.
From Lindsey Parsons...
"Back in the early 1950's the "Giant's Despair" hill climb near Wilkes Barre was associated with a road race event for under 2 liter cars at near by "Brynfan Tyddyn". This latter course was a short 3.5 mile road surrounding the lake estate of N Y State Senator T. Newell Wood. Senator Wood had a very "fancy" red K2 Allard in those days. I attended the race as a spectator one year, possibly in 1953 when I ran the hill climb in my new J2X (#3147) or perhaps the summer before, I simply don't recall. I do remember seeing the Senator's car there and was impressed with the shiny wire wheels it had in contrast to the normal ones. I vaguely remember how custom it appeared and I thought at the time it was very garish but, sadly, the details of its exact configuration have totally faded. It definitely could be this car however."
Do you know anything about this unique sports racer that's likely Allard based? The car appears to be 100% Allard between the front and rear wheels, but the front and rear are very unique. These screen shots are from the video below which was shot at the Palm Springs Road Race of March 26, -27, 1955. The car, number 192 must have been a late entrant because it wasn't listed as an entrant. To our knowledge, no formal race results were published.
