Immediate Delivery of Allard Chassis!

In the past we've highlighted a few "mystery cars" that were built on Allard chassis, but they featured a bespoke body on the rear. We knew very little about these cars until we came across this Allard advertisement the other day. It describes exactly what you received when your ordered your Allard chassis.

“Here is an exceptional opportunity. Immediate delivery can be given of a limited number of fully road tested Allard chassis, either left- or right-hand drive. Chassis specification includes: independent front wheel suspension, Ford V8 engine, Lockheed brakes, Dunlop tyres, front wings, cowl, grille, bumpers, spare wheel, full Lucas electrical equipment including lamps, horns, indicators, wind-screen wiper, instrument panel with all instruments and smith’s Side Jacking system. Coupe chassis wheel base 9’ 4” -£670.

In addition to the above two-seater 8’10” chassis and open four-seater 9’4” chassis at £670 include bonnet, bonnet sides and fittings, not mounted.

As the number of chassis available is limited, immediate application is advised either to the Allard Motor Company or your local accredited Agent.”

Old Magazine Covers, Part 12

Today's cover is from the August, 1938 issue of Motor Sport...and it's probably the oldest magazine featuring an Allard on the cover. The cover caption reads, “The 3-hour sports car race…K. Hutchinson (Allard Special) takes the last curve leading to the finishing straight on the Campbell Circuit.” The Campbell Circuit at Brooklands was first raced in 1937, but the land was soon pressed into war service in 1939. The Lincoln V-12 powered ELX 50 was built for Ken Hutchinson. According to Tom Lush’s book, Hutchinson and Sydney co-drove the car ran “faultlessly” except for a broken fan belt that was fixed within five minutes. The team finished 9^th overall, completing 74 laps at an average speed of 56.5 mph. Not bad for the Allards first real road race.

Special thanks to Kerry Horan for sharing this with us.

The Moss Files, Delivery Day.

Along with the paper records that the late Al Moss donated to our archives, he also shared with us a number of rare color slides. The first batch of slides presented today give us a look at what it was like to take delivery of a new Allard in the US. These are the "skeleton" crates that all exported Allard cars were shipped in. Additionally, we get to see the joy of a new owner, in this case Basil Panzer receiving his new car. What an exciting day it must have been! The cars were delivered to Al's first shop, which he shared with Jack Gilchrist on 3200 W Olympic Blvd. Both cars were shipped from the Allard factory in late April of 1950. The black J2 of Bazil Panzer is chassis #1571 and the silver/grey L-type is chassis #1701 was ordered by Morgan Sinclair. We should note that the J2 was soon raced by young Phil Hill up Pikes Peak, more on that coming soon...

Site Updates...

We're pleased to announce that we've updated our Web Links with two new buttons on the top tool bar. The first button, 'Allard Links' is for interesting Allard links. The second button, 'Allard Technical Links' is for everything tech related...parts, manuals, suppliers, etc. If you'd like to recommend a site that we missed, please click here to let us know. We hope you find them useful!

Mystery Allard...

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.

Zora's Notes

The image below is from Zora Arkus Duntov's technical report on the 1953 Le Mans race. This is the race that almost got Zora fired from GM, which means the Corvette as we know and love today...almost never was.

Reminder: The car that Zora raced to help create this report is up auction this Friday at RM in Scottsdale, lot #115.

Old Magazine Covers, Part 11

This is another one of our favorite Allard covers. It features Editor John Bond (doing his best Fidel Castro impression) at the wheel of a J2X in the dirt. Additionally, this issue features a 2-page spread on the Allard company. As usual, you can find these issues on Ebay for $5-10.

Correction: The driver was actually Richard Losee. A correction that R&T published 15 years later!

Happy New Year!

The Allard Register hopes you and yours have a happy and blessed 2013!

Allard Art

We received a nice thank you note the other day from an Allard enthusiast with the image above on the front. We thought it was pretty cool so we decided the share it with you. The card was printed in 1994 by the Helmet Goggle and Company in PA....no word on the artist though. The caption on the back reads, "1950 Allard J2, This British sports car, powered by either Ford, Chrylser, Cadillac V-8 engines, gained much success throughout Europe and the United States." It looks a bit more like a J2X to us though.

Scottsdale RM Preview: JR-3403

This is probably one of my most favorite Allards, JR-3403...just one of 7 built. The car was raced at Le Mans in 1953 by Zora Arkus Duntov and Ray Merrick for 65 laps before retiring. After Le Mans, the car was sold to Col. Reade Tilley of the Strategic Air Command. This JR (also called a J2R) is ready to race and it will likely gain the new owner entry into the most premier vintage race & rally events around the world. To learn more about the car, click here to view the RM post. The car will be sold as lot #115 on Friday January 18. The estimated selling price is $350-450,000, which I believe to be fairly modest. With the right bidders, this car could double that estimate and be worth every penny.

Photos by Scott Miller, courtesy RM Auctions

Here's a video of the car prepping for Le Mans, courtesy of Cadillac Engineer Frank Burrell: