The currently huge sale prices for vintage Austin Sevens like those in that brilliant video clip would make a Ford Model A look very reasonably priced by comparison. Also you can do a fair bit of tuning on a Model A motor without resorting to the billet crank and rods which are pretty well a "must have" for continued reliability in a tuned A7 motor.
Happened upon, as is often the case, in the course of looking for something else, Skinner (as in SU) Morris-Hudson special: Story here.
https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/half-fendered-hotrods.1189042/page-6#post-13525794 ...I believe this qualifies as a special...why...it's one of a kind, a hybrid of Hotrod/Custom and oozing with innovative creativity... I have posted other images of this period offering shared by @rbantique who has contributed so many premium historical images at the Hamb for which I am very appreciative... Credit to Photographer, Owner
An American Barchetta-style special from the early '50s, the Kirscher Special: https://www.automobilemag.com/news/kircher-special-long-lost-300-sl-relative/
We take off tomorrow (May 15th) for a weekend of running (I don't say racing as it looks like I have no competition) at Buttonwilllow Raceway Park, West of Bakersfield California. The'll be 5 of us in the PreWar/Historic Group. Sadly our good friend and competitor. Peter Giddings will not be there. Peter died last year. We'd run together from the West Coast to Indianapolis for over two decades! Many of you know that Peter had a stable of fine European race cars. Below are photos of our last race in 2018! View attachment 4685654
Thank you Dawie,For nice photos and interesting article. I supposed that this special must be based on Renault 4CV. There were a few more sports coupés and cabriolets specials based on it. Later famous Alpen Renault started the same way. Only this photo of engine confused me a lot: two Stromberg carburettors (that is good) but 6 intake tubes (in three pairs) - on the small four-cylinder engine? Ciao, Zoran
Specials were some of the first cars I saw as a pre teen. In 1947 my dad would bring magazines home from Greyhound buses that cleaners would pick up and give to him. I don't remember the names of the magazine but I saw these types of specials involved in hill climbs. I guess that was the real start of my car nutitis.
Check out this link from Hemmings today! https://www.hemmings.com/stories/20...aily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2020-10-07.
Knew I'd seen the Richard Bolster car before, it appears towards the end of this video clip, appropriately in the paddock for the The John Bolster Cup. This is a race for vintage specials including cyclecars and the like. It's worth watching the whole clip IMO as there are some interesting vehicles as well as Bolster car there.
Love the Hampton radiator. I had one for years thinking I would build a special behind it. Looking at this I now regret selling it.
Not sure who I'm responding to, has Old Dawg has typed his reply to GNichols inside GNichols' post? There are a couple of misunderstandings here. Neither Richard nor John Bolster spent much time competing in Trials. They originally built Bloody Mary as a field car, just horsing around in their field (or a neighbor's). It didn't take long for them to try their hand at motorsport, primarily hillclimbs. British Trials were, and still are, a series of stages on 'unimproved rights of way,' not on grass. Mostly on private land, but occasionally on military reservations, 'unimproved right of way' is a euphemism for paths or trails that are often little more than goat tracks. Bloody Mary has little suspension travel and less ground clearance, two things that a trials competitor needs. Part of the confusion is that the British were also fond of 'Speed Trials,' which the Bolsters regularly entered. Speed trials were similar to hillclimbs. Both were time trials, but speed trials often had fewer corners (or none at all) and typically did not feature a significant hill. The BaT replica is an odd duck. Most, if not all, of the time that Bloody Mary ran with one engine, it had a different body. They seem to be replicating something that might not ever have existed. In any case, the replica is pretty sterile. The original has a presence that the fake can't come close to: I wonder how the replica handles. As far as the original, well I'll leave the last word to the inimitable John Bolster: "I admit that she’s rather dicey on those tricky straight bits."
It took me a while to figure out the various authorships, too. At the very least, it is good that cars like these are getting enough of a profile that people try their hand at working in the idiom. I like to think that I have in some measure been instrumental in bringing that about. The cars in the clip Stueeee posted above are really so diametrically opposite in character to the direction automotive performance seems to be going, it is arguably only to be expected. It's a pity the HAMB has only the single like facility; that post was the Seventh Heaven for me.
I've thought that a speedster style special could be built. I was at the Petersen museum a couple of years ago and saw a Stutz Bearcat on display, I was impressed. Perhaps built on an early truck chassis, imagine a vintage straight eight engine. I've thought that I could build one on my '51 Jaguar MarkVII chassis, which has a very sturdy ladder type frame. This is the "feeling" that I would like to evoke.
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