History Auto racing 1894-1944

[model.A.keith]

.

.

[model.A.keith]

.

.

[THE FRENCHTOWN FLYER]

Originally Posted by model.A.keith

.

.

They're kidding, right?

I expected to see Dick Van Dyke in the cockpit.

[T-Head]

Originally Posted by THE FRENCHTOWN FLYER

They're kidding, right?

I expected to see Dick Van Dyke in the cockpit.

I have seen the same photo before if I remember correctly on the Florida State Historical Society website. They attribute it to a gentleman from Daytona Beach.

It looks to me that the chassis under Rocket mans car appears to be foreign.

[Vitesse]

Originally Posted by T-Head

I have seen the same photo before if I remember correctly on the Florida State Historical Society website. They attribute it to a gentleman from Daytona Beach.
It looks to me that the chassis under Rocket mans car appears to be foreign.

This picture was allegedly taken at Daytona Beach, but the car is French and never actually left its homeland. It was powered by two Bristol Jupiter aero engines, which would have developed about 600bhp. Built by René Stapp between 1930 and 1932 it caught fire while being tested on the beach at La Baule. Stapp broke his leg during this incident and the car was destroyed.

I presume the picture came from a French press agency and was sent to Daytona in advance. Until just now - when I did a Google News search - I knew of only one other picture of it, in Eyston and Lyndon's Motor Racing and Record Breaking, which shows it running on a public road in France. On pavé, which must have been a bit uncomfortable!

If you do a Google News advanced search using Stapp and Daytona as keywords and specifying 1932 as the date, you'll find another (very poor) picture in the Ottawa Citizen. And some very wrong information!

[kurtis]

Apparently this ambitious record breaker was fitted with four engines. The chassis is reported to have come from a Voisin as was the engine that sat in front and acted as a starter motor for the three radial engines in the rear. These were converted to turbines by removing the pistons.
Another feature that was built into the car was a periscope. Again..

I'd like to know why Monsieur Stapp mounted a spare to the car. Was he really expecting to make a return run?

[model.A.keith]

.

.

[model.A.keith]

.

.

[Vitesse]

Originally Posted by kurtis

Apparently this ambitious record breaker was fitted with four engines. The chassis is reported to have come from a Voisin as was the engine that sat in front and acted as a starter motor for the three radial engines in the rear. These were converted to turbines by removing the pistons.
Another feature that was built into the car was a periscope. Again..

I'd like to know why Monsieur Stapp mounted a spare to the car. Was he really expecting to make a return run?

Having dug into some French papers this morning, I find you're right - it did have three driving engines, not two. On March 31st 1932 Le Figaro reported that Stapp was ready to test the car at La Baule, on the stretch of beach between Pornichet and Pouliguen.

On April 26th, at about 4pm, the car rolled slowly onto the sands, driven by Stapp and a riding mechanic. Two hundred metres into the run, smoke was seen coming from the car, at which point Stapp ordered the mechanic to bail out while attempting to do the same himself. He seems to have been caught in the cockpit, his legs being trapped. Meanwhile the car had run over the mechanic's foot before coming to a stop. The now unconscious M Stapp was extracted from the car with severe leg injuries and taken to the clinic of a Dr Dubois.

Although only the smoke is mentioned in the report, the headline says the car was "destroyed by fire". Stapp apparently claimed he would make another attempt once he had recovered, as he had another car toute prête. Perhaps that explains the prominent number 2 painted on it? Maybe even the discrepancy as to whether it had two or three engines and by extension the confusion over reported power outputs which vary from 600hp to 1800hp? Jupiter engines - and I suspect he'd have used licence-built Gnome-Rhône versions rather than Bristols - developed anything between 400 and 580bhp.

As for the periscope, I think the cockpit was totally enclosed with no forward vision. The picture I mentioned earlier seems to show M Stapp standing up and leaning out while driving it on the road!

As to the spare wheel: just a guess, but maybe French construction and use regulations required it? The thing is road-registered!

edit: Found a better report in l'Ouest-Éclair, which seems to confirm there was another chassis! The destroyed car is referred to as "Number 2", with the hope expressed that he'd be back with an improved "Number 3".

[noboD]

With 600-1800 HP and no forward view except a periscope Stapp deserves the Big Balls and No Brains award.

[T-Head]

Originally Posted by kurtis

I'd like to know why Monsieur Stapp mounted a spare to the car. Was he really expecting to make a return run?

I think he was a little to deep into the cooking sherry......

[kurtis]

Vit,

I hope you enjoyed a pain au chocolat washed down with a tea after your little dig this morning? I had to settle for a typical Aussie breakfast during my search of Australian publications. I did however add some posh with a milky coffee. I think you call it a latte.

On a serious note, most of what is written in the French paper regarding Mr. Stapp's projectile is also mentioned in The Canberra Times-29th March 1932. It also state's the three Jupiter engines have a power output of 800hp each with a 60hp unit in front.

Stapp says that everything is Frenci. "I built the car myself. Theoretically, it is capable of 312 to 370 miles an hour but i must make more tests on the La Baule sands before going to Daytona in May to attempt the world's record"

In another article he test's the car in the presence of two French journalists without much success, achieving a speed of only 80mph. He later conducted another test on the St. Germain-Paris highway when the fireball occured.

So, after reading this i think you're correct in saying the car never did make it to Daytona. The assumptions of noboD and TH are probably right too.

[Bluto]

furb

Here's mine...... fould it in a junk shop in Munich.... $15.00 then

Silverplated but nice

I'll find the Celuloid letter opener and post it later

I gotta a lot of this junk to unpack

[Bluto]

Here's the letter opener

[Vitesse]

Bizarre that all the Aussie papers picked up a piece from the Daily Express! Perhaps they were hoping to nudge Wizard Smith back into action? The Australian National Library wouldn't have been the first place I'd have looked though! There's also a piece in the Straits Times of April 28th 1932 which gives a few more details of it - published two days after it had burned out!

I did find a report of the crash in The Times too, almost certainly copied from l'Ouest-Éclair, as it includes details like the fact that they were both strapped in, which was the reason they found it hard to escape. It also specifically mentions that the engines were Gnome-Rhônes! OTOH they thought he was Belgian, an error repeated in the New York Times! L'Ouest-Éclair also reported in some detail on the first run at La Baule, which took place on April 20th, achieving about 160km/h.

Where did you find this report about a fire on the St-Germain-Paris road? Could this have referred to car "Number 1"?

Incidentally, if you look at La Baule on Google Maps, you'll find that the sands he was using are in an enormous curved bay. I don't know how far the tide goes out there, but I wonder if a really long straight run on firm sand would be possible. When they ran the 1938 Grand Prix there they used a simple 5km each way circuit with hairpins at each end, but the sand cut up so badly that they had to move the course every ten laps!

[kurtis]

It's nothing more than what i have already mentioned but here it is anyway.

www.sportscars.tv/Newfiles/recordatt.html

*note: This link should work.

[Vitesse]

Thanks. Found it. Correct link is http://www.sportscars.tv/Newfiles/recordatt.html

I believe Fraichard was working for l'Intransigeant at the time. Gallica have been promising to digitise that paper for years ...

It seems nobody has yet written the whole story of this monstre.

[kurtis]

Speaking of which,

Has anyone translated any of the French papers? It takes me the better part of a day to read just a few pages.

[Vitesse]

In a word - non! French I can cope with quite easily, German reasonably although I struggle with Fraktur text. I knew O-level German and A-level French would come in useful one day. With a bit of effort, guesswork, dictionaries and online translators I can manage Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch and Romanian too. Even Polish, Hungarian and Czech at a pinch. For Finnish and Swedish I ask Leif Snellman! But I draw the line at anything Cyrillic ... although there's a wonderful set of reports on the 1939 Belgrade race in a Yugoslav paper called Politika!

[T-Head]

A photo of a couple of stripped roadsters about ready to race at the Utah State Fair circa 1910, the car on the left is a Packard.