Le Mans, 1951

We are excited to share these recently unearthed photos from Le Mans in 1951. It's interesting to note the dramatic change between Le Mans in 1951 and what the race has become today. The #2 car of Alfred Hitchings & Peter Reece is featured prominently. The team crashed on lap 22, but managed to make the end of the race, finishing 214 laps. Unfortunately their last lap took more than 30 minutes, which disqualified the team.

Who can you spot in the photos?

I want one...

My boys would love one of these...

From the August 12, 1957 issue of Sports Cars Illustrated magazine. Anyone know if this still exists? Special thanks to Kerry for sharing!

Can you do it?

The British Pathe Archives

We were excited to learn today that the British Pathe, who has been archiving world history on film since the 1890's...has posted their archives on YouTube. What does that mean for Allard fans? We get to enjoy at least a dozen or so Allard related films that we likely never seen before. Our favorite so far is this clip of the one-off Allard Dolphin. A car built on a L-type chassis that featured one of the earliest retractable hard top roofs. Loyal readers of the Register will recall that we published a story on the Dolphin back in 2009. Click here to learn more.

From the desk of...

Erwin Goldschmidt was probably one of our favorite Allard racers. Not only was he an outspoken supporter of the Allard marque, but he was extremely competitive. As early as June of 1951, Erwin realized that his 331 Cadillac powered J2 would soon lose out to Chrysler's new 331 Hemi. Desperate for more speed, Erwin wrote the following letter to the Cadillac Engineering Department in order to persuade them to share their latest speed secrets. Click the image below to view the complete letter and the response.

Special thanks again to Barry Burrel for sharing another great find from his father Frank's archives.

Allard For Sale

From the SCCA National Newsletter #8, September, 1953

The Allard Manifold

We were fortunate enough to recently receive the donation of an alloy Allard Intake Manifold (thank you!) and we thought you might like to know the back story behind these unique manifolds…

In the late 40’s, Allard was struggling to make their Ford flatheads more powerful. The stock single carb intake manifold was pathetic and Sydney knew there were several alternatives available in the US. Unfortunately Post War England was very protectionist as it tried to rebound from the war. Basically nothing could be imported into the country, which meant no American speed parts could be sold in the UK.

If you’ve read the Tom Lush’s definitive Allard book, you may recall that in 1948, Reg Canham took an Allard M type to the US and went on a cross country tour towing a caravan to promote the Allard Motor Company (a pre-cursor to GM’s motor-rama). Not much is known about this trip, but we do know that Reg stopped in Los Angeles, where he met a number of hot rodders. One of the people he met was Eddie Meyer who operated a speed shop dedicated to extracting more power out of the flat head. Eddie Meyer Engineering made arguably one of the hottest dual carb manifolds on the market, with several cars using his equipment to achieve several records at Bonneville.

Fortunately post war airports didn’t have metal detectors and Reg was able to sneak one of Eddie’s manifolds back into the UK. The Allard boys soon appreciated the performance gain from the manifold and made quick work of making replicas for use on their performance Mercury 24-stud flatheads.

I must admit that it was a bit disappointing to learn that that Sydney basically ripped off someone else’s design (without even giving Meyer credit!). However, I don’t think it’s that big of a issue. Eddie Meyer couldn’t sell his manifolds in the UK and the odds of Allard selling a bunch of their knock-off manifolds in the US were pretty slim. Fortunately Eddie Meyer wrote a letter to Road & Track magazine (June, 1950), explaining the situation…although it was tough to tell whether he was proud or insulted that Allard had copied his design.

P.S.: If you know anything about or have any photos of Reg Canham’s USA M-type caravan trip, please click here to contact us!

Something New...Something Blue...

While perusing the SCCA "Sports Car" newsletters that were kindly shared by Andy Picariello of the AOC, I came across this interesting story about the Dam Rally. Apparently Sydney decided to debut his fiberglass Palm Beach prototype with the entrants at one of the check points. Apparently the car caused at least a few entrants to be delayed. Click here or the photo above to read the story.

Back in the Day...

From Lindsey Parsons...

"I ran across a few photos the other day while cleaning out some old storage...

They are of #3147 on a visit back to friends during my senior year at Colgate University in 1953-4. The car was only months old when these photos were taken. As the car appears in these photos the spare tire was in the back hatch along with a foldable canvas top and half side curtains. The two little wind screens were stored back of the seats. I used the machine winter and summer and found the top quite effective in keeping one dry with the car moving but I put the half side curtains in a closet at home as they were far more trouble than worth as far as any useful effect when installed on the car."

-Thanks for sharing Lindsey!

From the Chevrolet Files...

The report above is a vehicle test report from Zora Arkus Duntov regarding the Cadillac-Allard #952. Test car!? Allard!? Chevrolet!? It's no secret that the major car companies bought their competitors cars to test and dissect, but we think it's pretty cool that Chevrolet had an Allard as a test car. A few points of reference...this report was dated August 19, 1953 and the first Corvettes started rolling off the production line on June 30th of the same year. The first Corvette could hardly be called a true sports car, it was basically an underpowered sedan chassis wrapped in a sleek body. With the lack of comparable production sports cars from the competition, it makes sense that the bow tie would would want learn what made an Allard tick so they could make the Corvette better.

So what car did Chevrolet acquire? We know they had access to Fred Warner's J2X, but that was an outright race car. After checking the database, we found that Chevrolet purchased K3 3171 from Vauxhall Motors USA (Vauxhaul Motors was acquired by GM in 1925). It makes sense that they would use the K3 as a test mule...convertable body, V8 engine, sporting suspension. Although we don't learn much about the car from the report, we do learn that with a fairly stock automatic transmission, the car could hit 0-60 in 8 seconds flat...not bad! It also sounds like they have some plans to tune the car to see what else it could do.

Our records also indicate that Fred Warner ended up with the car and that it was raced. In case your curious, the car was light gray with a red interior and black top - and yes, the car still exists.

-Click here or the image above to download the pdf. Special thanks to Barry Burrell for sharing this document!