Hot Rods Hot Rod Sports Cars

Yes he was at the Meltdown in 2016 and I spoke to the owner for quite awhile. I took photos of the car as I really like the car. I wish I could have bought it. When you study it up close it is a bit crude which is understandable as many were if the truth be told. I took probably 20 some pictures but many did not come out well as my battery was dying and I had to keep turning the camera off and on.

 

I may have posted one of these previously but, what the heck, they can bear repeating. I was
surprised when I saw it at the Melt Down and on the whole it looked pretty good. White's
Pit Stop has had an exceptionally long run as a speed shop, also. Fifty years?

 

In my facebook feed this morning

 

A staged photo with jackstands. Been around a long time and discussed on the HAMB. Ask me how I know LOL I posted that way back (maybe drag car in motion thread) and the discussions began. I THINK it was on the HAMB somewhere that somebody posted the shots of this being setup but anyway the whole story is on the net somewhere.

 

I'll guarantee not too many people apart from those in Sth Africa would have even heard of this car a 1964 GSM Flamingo Coupe first built in 1957. They came from the factory fitted with a 4cyl engine however one prototype was built and fitted with a 260SBF V8. It seems they had some racing pedigree in their time and it appears to to be similar size and shape to an Opel GT. A V8 in that car in 1964 seemed like a good idea however the government thought otherwise and the project was shelved. Well Carroll SHELBY was ballsy and continued with his idea of stuffing similar into the little AC didn't he, and the rest they say is history. This road test was undertaken in 1967, 3yrs after it had been built.

• http://www.saclassic.co.za/2016/02/29/1964-gsm-flamingo-coupe/
• https://www.carmag.co.za/news-blog/from-the-archives-gsm-flamingo-v8/

This new National Broadband Network (NBN) we're forced to use is just SHIT, it's taken me a ridiculous amount of time to just uploads these screenshots!!! Might as well be in a 3rd world country, I'd probably get a better internet service provider and that's not a joke.

 

A couple more shots of the GSM car.

 

There was also the open-top GSM Dart, basically a Flamingo without a roof. That was more recently revived as a kit, and they're not that uncommon around here. There is usually a GSM or two at any local classic car show.

 

Roo

 

Easy to see if you look at the distortion in the rear tire sidewall. The horizontal wrinkle is a dead give away.

 

Very respectable 0 - 60 & 1/4 mile times for the period, and that engine rated at 164 h.p. max was pretty mild state of tune. Thanks for posting.

 

You're kidding me! Now that you mention it, something doesn't look right about those wrinkles in the slicks... Well, they got me. Still a cool car though!

 

Lots of fiberglass: Cheetahs and what appear to be either Kellisons or Devins, no Victresses although they show up on other posts. One of the Baldwin Specials looks like it started out as an Allard J.

 

Cunningham --- the quintessential Hot Rod Sports Car, replete with Chrysler Hemis and Halibrand wheels.

(Actually, the coupe is a near perfect replication of the single original C4RK.)

 

This is cool:

 

Cunningham also built about 20 hemi-powered road cars.
The last Cunningham race car ran an Indy Offenhauser engine.

 

A few more photos of Cunningham Hemis

1952 C-3




1952 C-4R



1953 C-5 R

 

In the early 90's I worked at a shop that did quite a few high end restorations and one of my early jobs was to build a four carb 331 Hemi for a Cunningham. I never got to work on the car itself.

Roo

 

From the dover site https://doverdragstrip.com/

 

Prior to building his "own" cars, Briggs Cunningham built and raced this car around 1940 to 1950. It had a modified 1939 Buick chassis with the straight eight engine, and a modified Mercedes SSK body. After manufacturing of the Cunningham ceased, his racing team had a couple of Lister-Jaguars, a "Knobbly" and later a Costin designed aerodynamic model. Both of these cars were also available with Chevy V8s, as more commonly provided for the USA.

(Cunningham ran three modified Corvettes at Le Mans in 1960. When the cars "came home" after the race, they were converted back to "street" configuration, and sold off through a local Chevy dealer. Eventually, one wound up in a California junkyard, another was a "no sale" at $700 about 8 years ago on a Florida Craigslist, with unfinished modifications and repainted for drag racing. Two have been restored, and the third is slated for restoration, to Le Mans specifications, all by "new" owners. It is considered each is worth $5,000,000 +/-.)

 

Since the Cumminghams came up here is a little history.

1951
For Briggs Cunningham, Le Mans 1950 was a trial run “to see what would happen”. What did
happen convinced him to return in 1951 with a genuine American sports car. Since no manufacturer in
America was building such a car, Briggs determined he would do it himself.

Acquiring Frick-Tappett Motors and moving that operation from Long Island to Florida was Briggs’
first step. Bill Frick had overseen preparation of the Cunningham Cadillacs for Le Mans; Ted Tappett was
the pseudonym of Briggs’ co-driver Phil Walters.

This C-1, with Cadillac V-8 engine, was the first product of the B.S. Cunningham Company of West
Palm Beach. Just one was built. The reason? G.M. wouldn’t sell Cadillac engines to Briggs direct, and
leadership in America’s horsepower race had just been taken by Chrysler’s brand-new hemi.

Le Mans was fast approaching. Briggs insisted on “made in U.S.A.” throughout. Improvising
American parts into major league racing equipment was a real chore. Forty men worked eighty-hour weeks
for three months to do it. The new C-2 had Chrysler’s hemi, Ford front suspension, Oldsmobile rear springs

The C-1 prototype that has been restored. It had a Caddy engine.








1952 C-4 R Hemi power

Despite its power and speed, the Cunningham C-2 had been regarded by motoring pundits in Europe
as outrageously heavy and much too big for Le Mans. Briggs agreed. To the extent that the massive
Chrysler hemi allowed, the new Le Mans car for 1952 was much reduced – slimmer by six inches, shorter by
sixteen and lighter by nearly a thousand pounds.









1953 C-5 R Hemi power

The new C-5R, which to the French seemed a giant step in the wrong direction. Solid front axles were regarded as
practically antediluvian in Europe, even though Frank Kurtis’ Indianapolis cars were demonstrating how
sophisticated that set-up could be made. In the C-5R the beam axles saved 30 pounds compared with the
previous Ford components, and further were hoped to improve braking. The brakes themselves were huge
17-inch Alfin drums. Additionally, the Chrysler hemi was boosted ten horsepower over C-4 tune. The C-
5R’s body swooped from toothsome radiator grille – “The Smiling Shark,” journalists coined it – to sleekly
finished tail.

The C-5R recorded the fastest kilometer at Le Mans in 1953 – 154.81 mph. Driven by John Fitch
and Phil Walters

 

Thanks for the history both Desmodromic and LB. Some guys like pictures the best but I probably lean towards the history aspect myself. I have always been a fan of Cunningham, his exploits and his cars (especially the coupes). Funny thing back in the mid 80s, I was living in San Marcos California and wanted to study a 1914 Grand Prix Mercedes up close and so I called his museum to see if I could take a look. I spoke to the secretary (I presume) who was a nice lady but she wanted to know why I wanted to see it and in trying to explain it I suppose I lost her. The next thing I know I was speaking to Cunningham himself which really surprised me-it completely took me off guard. I told him I was a huge fan and spoke briefly on his early cars although I was not prepared to talk to him on those with any measure of intelligence since I never figured I would talk to him. I told him I had the remains of a car built side by side with a rebuild of a 14 GP Mercedes in the Packard experimental department in the teens and some of the design elements were "borrowed". He agreed to let me come up and take a look but he wanted Tommy Milton III to work with me and give me the tour so to speak. I thought cool. Tom Milton the racing great worked for Packard as an inspector when he retired from racing and I had one of his original inspection reports. I dug up the report and was going to give it to his grandson when we met and I awaited his call. When he called a few days later, let's just say we would not get along to put it mildly. Rather than to close the door altogether I figured I had another avenue and so I told him I would get back to him-as it turned out, I never did. I called George Wingard up in Oregon and went and studied his 1914 Mercedes which won the French Grand Prix at Lyons in 1914 just weeks before the outbreak of WWI. Glad I did, as George was really a good guy and showed me his other cars, like his big Fiat (and an Isotta Fraschini OHC engine he was restoring that he had bought off of my grandfather and I have kicked myself to this day for letting it get away) and allowed me to use his library which was fabulous. Still thought it was cool though that I got to talk to Briggs Cunningham for a few moments albeit I never got to meet him.

 

About 1967 I went to the Cunningham museum then located near the Orange County airport in Costa Mesa, the museum also had its own restoration shops and was by any collection standards spectacular. The day I went was a slow day and Briggs Cunningham said' I'm not doing anything, I'll give you a tour" over time I've heard similar stories from others, the guy was an American Original in the greatest sense, I was sorry to hear of the difficulties encountered by his family trying to recreate the C4R cars. All of my race cars had a number of detail features copied from or inspired by the Cunningham cars, the only thing I wasn't able to copy was his cars ability to finish races, or drive a race car.

 

Briggs Cunningham was pried away from his busy auto racing activities in 1958 to skipper the 12 meter sloop Columbia in the America's Cup races, in which he beat three other American boats to get to the final races against the British challenger. Briggs then trounced them in four straight races. During the post-race celebration, he slipped away to call Alfred Momo, who was managing his racecar team at Watkins Glen, to learn that his driver, Ed Crawford, had won the feature race. Shortly thereafter, a reporter congratulated Briggs for a fine race, to which he replied "Yes, I just heard that; wish I could have been there."

 

Cheetah

 

Peffley Ford