Chain-Drive Frazer Nash: Not Your Grandpa's Nash

As part of our long-running series on car manufacture as a tool for achieving bankruptcy, we thought of presenting the Frazer Nash saga. Then we noticed something odd: the company never quite went out of business.  It's true that founder Archibald Frazer-Nash and his modest motor works skidded into receivership in 1927, three years after starting production of his spindly little roadsters.  But then the Aldington brothers bought the concern in 1929, and kept it going through the end of the chain-drive era and (against all odds) into postwar success as England's Porsche distributor.  The chain-drive cars, though, were among the first sports cars to be recognized as classics, and it's their aura which interests us here. Minimalism wasn't much of a word in 1930, but it's hard to look at a Frazer Nash chassis from that year without having it float to the top of your mind.  It's a car that made an impression because of the things it lacked.  The list begins famously with the absent gearbox and continues with the absent differential, missing driver's door on most models, and largely absent weather protection. Forget about effete nonsense like bumpers, radios and heaters.  In fact, forget about having the shifter and the emergency brake inside the car. If you wanted to operate the shift, you'd hang your arm outside, and if it was raining (nearly every Frazer Nash lived in the British Isles) your arm got wet.  But then again, Frazer Nash tops were sketchy (when present at all) and time-consuming to erect, so in the event of rain you were likely getting soaked anyway...

Wait a minute, we just mentioned the shifter after telling you there was no gearbox.  A contradiction? Time for a bit of history.  In 1910 Archie Frazer-Nash formed a partnership with H.R. Godfrey to make the G.N. cycle car.  In those early motoring days, cycle cars were a modest step up from drafty, hazardous motorcycles.  They offered the added stability of 3 wheels (the Morgan trike) or 4 (Amilcar, G.N.), and usually space for two smallish, friendly people.  In order to save weight and cost, Godfrey and Nash came up with a chain drive and dog-clutch system, with different diameter sprockets offering various speeds as on a bicycle. There was a separate idler shaft for the reverse effect; the diagram below also shows the quarter-elliptic springs which were the source of the car's memorable ride qualities (think of an unhappy wild pony).  When a move upmarket failed and G.N. wound down, Archie Frazer-Nash took his chain-drive system and some G.N. parts, and started making cars on his own.  It was 1924...

Specialist car builders in Roaring Twenties England were catering to racing aristocrats, and to possibly less-expensive thrill-seeking by men (and some women) who'd managed to survive the Great War, and saw nothing especially scary about racing up a muddy hill in a flimsy little car which exposed you to the elements almost as much as a motorcycle.  Hill climbs became popular contests, and none was more famous than the one at Shelsley Walsh, which gave its name to the twin-supercharged s.o.h.c. 4 cylinder Frazer Nash Shelsley model.  Unlike G.N. which made its own two-cylinder engine, Frazer Nash usually sourced its engines from specialist suppliers, including Meadows, Anzani and Blackburne, which made a refined twin overhead cam six, at 1,657 cc the biggest of chain-drive 'Nashes.  After being purchased by Frazer Nash, the British Anzani division built the overhead cam 4-cylinder Gough-designed engine across the street from the AFN works.  None of the cars had differentials, so there was a bit of sliding in the rain and on tight corners.  Steering was startlingly quick, as little as 7/8 of a turn lock to lock on some models. The great automotive writer Ralph Stein likened driving a Frazer Nash to being on two motorcycles bolted together...    

The magic never faded, but the business of selling chain-drives suffered from competition with upstarts like Jaguar, which offered bourgeois luxuries like interior shift levers, windshield wipers, and even heaters.  Production slowed to a trickle, with only one chain-drive car produced in 1939, by which time Frazer Nash had signed up to distribute BMWs in England, an effort derailed by war.  The loyalty and enthusiasm inspired by the chain-drive Frazer Nash greatly exceeded what would be expected from a total production of 350 cars.  A high percentage have survived, along with this limerick about them:

Nash and Godfrey hated cogs,

Made a car with chains and dogs.

It worked.  But I wonder, would it if 

They had made it with a diff.?*

*Footnote:  The Frazer Nash was, of course, unrelated to the American Nash or to the Frazer produced by Kaiser-Frazer in the USA.  The author of our limerick is unknown, but it was popular in England's Vintage Sports Car Club, and I found it in William Boddy's The Sports Car Pocketbook, from Sports Car Press, New York, 1961.  If you need help telling a Schneider from a Salmson or a Senechal, Boddy's your man.

Errata:  We'd originally credited the Albert Gough-designed Frazer Nash SOHC engine to an outside contractor, but as Frazer Nash vintage racer Erich Volkstorf points out in his expert notes in the Comments section, by the time British Anzani made this engine it was owned by AFN Ltd.

Bibliography:  Beyond  The Sports Car Pocketbook, our sources were the following:

The Great Cars by Ralph Stein, Grosset & Dunlap, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1967.

Automobile Quarterly Magazine, 1st Quarter 1973, Vol. XI, Number 1.  The Frazer Nash issue, including "Tales of the Chain Gang and Other Stories" by Bill Morgan, and "Chain Gang Impressions."

Frazer Nash by David Thirlby, Haynes Publishing, Somerset, England, 1977.

Photo Credits:
Top:  giddins@porsche.blogspot.com
2nd:  Giddins Racing
3rd:  oppositelock.com
Bottom:  Linda La Fond 

Unsung Genius: Pete Brock, Car Designer

American race car designer Peter Brock has rare talent, and he had the good fortune to live and work in Southern California during the golden age of American road racing.  His luck was not so good, however, when it came to persuading car manufacturers to put his creations into volume production.  The most famous product of his imagination, the Cobra Daytona coupe, is so well-regarded today that replicas far outnumber the meager six cars that were hammed out of alloy sheeting over a wooden buck in the mid-sixties.  But even though none of Brock's car designs broke out of single digits in terms of production, they had an influence far beyond their numbers. In his regard for formal purity and his intuitive sense of aerodynamic fitness, Peter Brock is America's answer to England's Malcolm Sayer, who created the iconic C, D, and E-Type Jaguars. Here are some favorites among the stable of Brock-designed competition cars...

In the photo above, the aluminum body of a Daytona Coupe* is fitted to the AC Cobra chassis during the early days at Shelby American.  Brock conceived the Kamm-tailed coupe body to reduce air resistance compared to the 289 Shelby AC roadster; it added 20 mph to the top speed and was timed at 191 mph. Below we see all six of the original Cobra Daytona coupes reunited at the 2015 Revival Weekend of racing at the hallowed Goodwood track in England, over fifty years after their first appearance.

In his next assignment for Shelby, Brock was tasked with designing a body for a mid-engined racer to compete in the SCCA program that became the Canadian-American (Can-Am) Series in 1966. The 1965 P70 used the De Tomaso backbone chassis that later formed the basis of the Mangusta. While De Tomaso fell behind schedule developing special heads for a bored and stroked version of the Ford 289, Shelby sent Brock to Italy to work with Carrozzeria Fantuzzi on forming the alloy bodies (and not incidentally, to keep an eye on De Tomaso).  This time, Brock's design incorporated the adjustable rear air foil which he had originally suggested for the Daytona coupe. The spare, fluid forms were startling on first exposure, but once studied they seemed almost inevitable, like much good design and a whole lot of good music.  This characteristic carried over into Brock's independent work.

                             

Shelby cancelled the project when it fell too far behind to be ready for the 1965 race season, and De Tomaso kept the two cars of five planned, outfitting the second version with a windshield and doors complying with European racing regulations.  After taking over Ghia, De Tomaso credited that firm with the P70 and the revised Sport 5000 shown below, but the design was all Brock's.

The designer formed Brock Racing Enterprises after leaving Shelby American, and eventually had great success racing Nissan products. But his first team success involving Japanese imports was with the Hino 1300 Contessa, a MIchelotti-styled rear-engined coupe loosely based upon a mechanical format established by Renault.  Encouraged by BRE's competition success, Hino authorized Brock's design of a more focused sports racer built around the Hino engine.  The resulting car garnered plenty of attention, both from industry insiders and the press, and appeared on the cover of Road & Track in 1967.

The Samurai project allowed Brock to explore a more advanced expression of his philosophy, in that except for the engine, it was a completely new car.  The mid-engined chassis allowed a lower profile, and like the P70, the form prioritized smooth air flow above concerns with mere styling. The alloy body panels were tailored to the tubular chassis by Troutman and Barnes, experienced race car builders who had turned out the bodies for Lance Reventlow's Scarabs*.

Like the Shelby-DeTomaso P70, the Samurai featured an adjustable air foil at the rear.

The publicity surrounding the Samurai caught the attention of Triumph racer Kas Kastner, who then managed the firm's US racing department.  He approached Pete Brock about designing a Triumph prototype for racing and possible production. This car, released during the 1968 race season, duplicated the Samurai's success in attracting admiring attention, and it appeared on the cover of Car and Driver.

The prototype, christened the TR-250K and based on the just-introduced TR-250 (a TR4 with a six cylinder engine transplant) went from first sketches to final design within two months, but owing to delays in gaining approval from Triumph's home office, construction of the car in time for the 1968 Sebring 12 hour race was compressed into three months.  Still, the final product exhibited tight contours and deft control of proportions, achieved partly by moving the engine back for better weight distribution and a lower hood.  In the photo below, the photographer has cleverly accented the curves by using  tire tracks on the pavement as a compositional tool...

Those compound curves were accented by horizontal creases breaking along the car's centerline, and the compound curved glazing and steeply sloped parabolic windshield recall the work that Franco Scaglione had done for Bertone.  In the photo below, the adjustable spoiler, by now a familiar theme on Brock's designs, is visible.

   

The TR-250K's 1968 Sebring run was cut short by the failure of improvised hub adaptors for wheels obtained from the Chaparral team.  The overall design showed great promise, and was promoted by Kastner and automotive journalists as the shape of the future for Triumph. But that company's management, distracted as it was by the 1968 merger with BMC, decided against financing series production...

Late the next year, Nissan Motors, which was providing cars for BRE to race in the USA, introduced the Datsun 240Z, a curvy coupe with a wedge profile.  The car quickly took over the American market for popular-priced sports cars, a market which had once been dominated by British manufacturers.  Triumph would build its last car, based by then on a Honda platform and mechanicals, in 1984.

*Footnote:  The Cobra in the 2nd photo, CSX2287, is the prototype Daytona coupe being fabricated at Shelby American's Venice shop, which had previously been home of Reventlow Automobiles. It was the only Daytona to be built there; alloy bodies for the 5 cars which followed were built at Carrozzeria Gransport in Italy.  Lance Reventlow's Scarab sports racers are reviewed in the posting called "Timing is Everything: Reventlow Scarab Saga" in the archives for June 2, 2017.

Photo credits:

Top: the author

2nd:  carbuildindex.com

3rd:  youtube.com

4th:   carbuildindex.com

5th:   hemmings.com

6th:   thegentlemanracer.com

7th:   Hino Motors on pinterest.com

8th:   mycarquest.com

9th:   Road & Track Magazine

10th:    theroaringseason.com

11th:  Car & Driver reprinted on pinterest.com

12th:  centralcoastbritishcarclub.com

13th:  farm5 on flicker.com

AC Cars Part 3: The Shelby AC Cobra

The Shelby AC Cobra story has been told so many times that we're just giving a brief account, mainly so that we can talk about what came after.   By the time AC Cars persuaded Ford of England to supply their Zodiac inline six to replace the Bristol during 1961, Ford of Detroit was preparing to release their new lightweight "thin wall" cast iron V8 in the 1962 Fairlane, first in 221 cubic inch capacity and later as a 260.  It was the latter engine which Shelby persuaded Ford to supply for his first Cobra in 1962, and it powered the first 75 chassis which AC sent to Shelby in LA.  After AC engineer Alan Turner substituted rack and pinion steering and a ball joint front suspension, the next 528 chassis were powered by the punchier 289 cubic inch V8, and the 260 Cobra became known as Mark I.  Contrary to postmodern myth and legend, it was the 289 Cobra in Mark II form, not the 427 Mark III, which made the car (and Shelby) famous in road racing, and won the FIA Manufacturer's Championship in the over 2000cc class for Shelby American in 1965.* By the summer of 1973, the Cobra had reached the bottom of its value curve as a used car, but the rise of vintage racing was about to re-ignite interest in these shapely, lightweight roadsters.  I was offered a well-used example like the one below for $4,700, and turned it down because it needed a paint job and had a busted speedometer.  Today, of course, you could put three kids through Stanford on the proceeds from selling a car like it.  Pretty, isn't it?  Even with torn upholstery and a dent in the nose...

Not everyone agreed that the Cobra  Daytona Coupe, penned by Shelby designer Peter Brock, was a looker.  After the first alloy prototype was hammered out over a wooden buck in  California, the final 5 bodies were built in Italy by Carrozzeria Gransport.  The Italians did not love the appearance, but Brock (pictured with the car below) was convinced that the new contours would cheat the wind enough to raise the car's top speed; they actually added 20 mph.  The Daytonas contributed mightily to Shelby American's success in endurance racing... 

And they clean up nicely, making for an effective museum exhibit or living room display.

During that championship year, 1965, Shelby and AC turned away from the 289* to make the final Cobra, and production lasted through 1967.  The coil-sprung 427 Cobra Mark III (Mark I and II had transverse leafs, like the AC Ace) has claimed the distinction of the first computer-designed chassis (the computers belonged to Ford) and a rabid cult following which may have produced enough fiberglass-bodied Cobra replicas to outnumber the 348 alloy originals by at least 5 to 1.  It was a fearsome brute, but as we shall see, it was a hard act to follow...

*Footnote:  2nd place in the FIA Manufacturer's Championship in 1965 was taken by arch rival Ferrari.  After introduction of the Mark III, AC offered the new chassis design with the 289 engine for the home market and Europe, but produced fewer than 30 examples.

Photo Credits:

Top:  wikimedia
2nd:  simeonemuseum.org
3rd:   wikimedia
4th:   hemmings.com

Roadside Attraction: Rolling Sculpture at North Carolina Museum of Art

The North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh has an exceptional exhibit covering cars of the Art Deco  period, and the show closes on Sunday, January 15, 2017, so this would seem to be a good moment to hit the highlights.  The show encompasses cars built in the 1930s and 1940s, and while the curators have identified the prevailing style as Art Deco, there are also examples of Streamline Moderne, as well as a style Raymond Loewy long ago christened "Borax."  We'll get to that in a moment.  First, some distinctive faces which may be familiar to longtime readers of poeschloncars...

This spectacular 1938 Xenia, built for aperitif king and inventor Andre Dubonnet on an Hispano Suiza chassis by Saoutchik to a design by Jean Andreau, was covered in detail in our essay "One of One, a Brief History of Singular Cars" from September 7, 2015.  Among its innovations: sliding doors, compound curved windshield and curved side glazing, and teardrop fenders which (at the rear anyway) flow out of the body sides before merging into the tapered tail.

The Tatra T87 from 1936 to 1950 was the product of Czech engineer Hans Ledwinka, and featured a rear-mounted, air-cooled overhead cam V8, along with aerodynamic bodywork along lines pioneered by Paul Jaray.  The triple headlights, 3-piece wraparound windshield, flush sides and single dorsal fin were very advanced, and betray a confident (and misplaced, for Central Europe in 1936) faith in the ability of technology to solve all problems.  The car, along with Ledwinka's rivalry with Porsche and lawsuit against VW for patent infringement, is covered in our essay "Cars and Ethics: A Word or Two on VW" in the archives from November 27, 2015.

This Delahaye Type 135M* which was bodied by Figoni & Falaschi with spatted wheels in a style inspired by cartoonist Geo Ham seemed, like the Xenia, designed for a jet set that would have to wait awhile for those jets.  Like the Tatra, the exuberance and confidence of the design reminds us of cartoons of a lost future by artists like Bruce McCall.  But that's with the benefit of hindsight. The Delahaye, with its outdated mechanical brakes and pushrod engine, was a poem about the future, while the Tatra, with its alloy engine and overhead cams, was an attempt at a blueprint for it…

The1930 Ruxton is early Deco, with a horizontal striped, very American multicolor paint job attempting to distract us from the very upright, un-aerodynamic bodywork.  Streamline Moderne it's not.

The 1936 Peugeot 402 Darl'mat, designed by Georges Paulin for the coach builder Pourtout, has more of a kinship with the Delahaye.  The two-toning and portholes in graduated sizes lend the design a whimsical air; the metal roof is practical, and Pourtout pioneered the retractable metal roof on the 402.

Over in the States, at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, designer Phil Wright attempted to pull the conservative Pierce Arrow firm into the future with the SIlver Arrow V12, and deleted running boards for flush sides, integrating tubular headlight nacelles and teardrop rear fenders into a budget-busting composition that found only a handful of Depression buyers.

A car similar to the Packard V12 Model 1106 coupe was also shown at the Fair.  Unlike the Silver Arrow, it has separate fender forms.  But the teardrop form of those fenders, echoed in the side window shape, is in the spirit of the times.

Jean Bugatti tried to predict the future for Bugatti with his 1935 Aerolithe; this green phantom is a faithful replica on a Type 57 Bugatti chassis from the period.  The original was lost, as Bugatti's future in Alsace Lorraine involved a German occupation, and no customers for magnesium-bodied twin cam dream cars.  

William Stout tried, like Ledwinka at Tatra, a rear-mounted V8 (here, a Ford) format to maximize interior space. The Stout Scarab anticipated minivans in its efficient, cavernous interior.  But the application of Egyptian themes, overlapping wing motifs, and the bathtub approach to streamlining echoes its own times (the first alloy-bodied Scarab was built in 1932; later cars were steel) and anticipates the next decade.  The unconscious humor of the design shows a naive faith in streamlining that Raymond Loewy labeled "Borax".  Perhaps he thought of this as the style was supposed to be clean, and Borax was a cleaning product...  Only a few Scarabs were built at $5,000 a copy; five survive.

The 1941 Chrysler Thunderbolt is firmly in the late Streamline Moderne period, with its alloy envelope body designed by Alex Tremulis (later the designer of the Tucker), its fully enclosed wheels, and its retractable metal roof following Georges Paulin's innovations at Pourtout and Peugeot.  Six cars were built as "cars of the future", but there was a war in America's future instead.  After that war, a Thunderbolt appeared in the TV series "Boston Blackie."

*The Delahaye's brief moment of heroic achievement was covered in our essay "Dreyfus and the Million-Franc Delahaye vs. the Third Reich", on Nov. 22, 2015.  

Photo Credit:  All photos but two are by longtime reader George Havelka, who reports that the Xenia's paint job is a knockout for depth and luminosity.  The detail of the Scarab hood ornament is from the website aerodynamicsproject.com, and the rear view is from remarkablecars.com.

Happy New Year to all our readers, and thanks for your over 23,000 visits.  We look forward to reporting on new and old Roadside Attractions in 2017, along with features on the Frazer Nash, the cars of Briggs Cunningham, and some cars we hope will be completely new to you...

Forgotten Classics-----AC Part 2: There Was Life Before the Cobra

At the end of the our feature on the AC Ace Bristol you probably thought we were going to talk about the Shelby AC Cobra which came next.  But before we visit that subject (which has never suffered from a lack of attention) we are going to take a detour down some seldom-trod paths which eventually led to the famous Cobra.  In 1937 AC made a kind of MG for grown-ups called the 16/80.  It featured the then-still-advanced single overhead cam 2 liter six designed for the firm by John Weller at the end of WWI, and elegant proportions in the long hood / flat vertical gas tank / no trunk English tradition.  The 80 horsepower allowed a fairly nippy zero to sixty time of 15 seconds, and if you needed more power supercharging was available, as well as a Wilson pre-selector gearbox as a substitute for the non-synchro 4 speed.  Stateside, one of the grown-ups attracted to the 16/80 was Frank Lloyd Wright*, here shown with Olgivanna at the wheel in their AC which he had painted in his trademark Cherokee red. 

The appearance of the new Ace for the 1954 model year must have seemed like a revolution to the company's traditional clientele, because it replaced solid axles with four-wheel independent suspension, and the upright style of the prewar and early postwar cars with Italian-inspired modernism.  The Aceca, introduced later that year for a mid-1955 production start, added full weather protection and more space for passengers and luggage.  Even in the US, at prices ranging from $4,000 for the base-engined Ace up to around $6,000 for a Bristol-engined Aceca, there was nothing comparable until you got to the more expensive Aston Martin, which also offered handmade aluminum bodies and that distinctive rear hatch. And the visual impact of the cars' carefully contoured, minimally decorated alloy body forms was such that only one was ever bodied in another style.  This was on a chassis sold in Switzerland, and this Bristol-powered AC was bodied by Zagato…

This fastback design, which featured Zagato's trademark "double bubble" roof, shared the purposeful, aggressive look of the original Aceca, which had been designed in-house at AC. Another effect common to the lone Zagato and all the AC production cars on the 90 inch wheelbase was the impression that the aluminum shells had been wrapped tightly around the mechanicals and wheels with no space to spare.  The Zagato had a lower hood than the standard Ace, and the air intake bulge was contrived to clear the carbs on the Bristol engine.  In 1959, AC decided to expand its appeal by releasing a true 4 passenger car called the Greyhound. Wheelbase was increased to 100 inches, and weight went up a bit, to just under 2,200 pounds.

For perspective, that's still about 150 pounds less than the original Mazda Miata.  In order to offer the expected levels of performance, the 2 liter Bristol six was supplemented by a 2.2 liter version and also, late in the run, the 170 hp Ruddspeed Ford.  But the graceful lines of the Aceca lost something in translation to a larger car, and as a result of that, as well as the compromised handling from a new semi-trailing rear suspension, only 83 cars were made. The year before the Greyhound appeared, the LM 5000, made to a John Tojeiro design and entered at Le Mans in 1958, did not suffer from any deficits in speed or in visual impact...

Tojeiro's design owes something to the Costin-penned Lotus Eleven in aspects like the high tail, Perspex-shrouded headlights and one-piece alloy bonnet, which like the Zagato featured an intake blister to clear the Bristol engine.  The latter unit was nearing the end of its life in competition and production cars, but coaxed the unique LM 5000 to 150 mph on the Mulsanne straight. Weaknesses in the rear of the tubular frame meant that the car retired from the '58 running of the 24 Hours, while the "standard" Ace Bristols did well, finishing 8th and 9th behind a pack of Ferraris including the winner, a lone Aston Martin in 2nd place, and three Porsches.  The following year, a lone Ace Bristol finished in 7th place.

The conventional wisdom cited these race results, along with the commercial failure of the Greyhound, as evidence of AC's last hurrah. When Bristol finally discontinued their engine in 1961, lots of car enthusiasts expected AC and its products to follow their favorite power plant into oblivion.  What happened next proved how wrong the conventional wisdom can be...

*For a discussion of some of Frank Lloyd Wright's other cars and also his showroom design for Max Hoffman, see our essay entitled Max Hoffman: An Eye for Cars and the Studebaker Porsche, from May 1, 2016.

Photo credits:

1 & 2:  hemmings.com

3:  pinterest.com

4:  wikimedia

6 & 7:  acownersclub.co.uk

Happy Accidents with Bristol Power: AC Ace and Aceca

When I was a grade school kid there were two cars in my neighborhood that I really wanted. One was a brand new black 1959 Citroen DS-19 owned by one of two mysterious sisters who lived across from the Catholic church; they'd traded in an almost equally new-looking black 1934 Chrysler Airflow for it, and that seemed a pretty appropriate move to me.  Around that time, I floated away on a hydropneumatic cloud when a substitute teacher treated me to a ride in her own gray DS.  Perhaps I'd finally turned in a decent book report to deserve this; I can't remember. The other automotive lust magnet was a metallic blue AC Ace Bristol roadster which was almost too pretty to behold.  Now and then I'd spy it parked near the bank; perhaps it was owned by a banker. I didn't have anything to trade for a ride in that car, but I would've given anything except my dog…

The Ace, first shown by AC in 1953 and in production until 1963, was a kind of lucky accident. Race car builder John Tojeiro had been building specials with alloy bodies closely modeled on the Ferrari Barchettas by Touring Superleggera.  AC (for Auto Carriers) had been building (mostly by hand) a traditional-looking saloon powered by their long-stroke overhead cam six, designed by John Weller and dating from 1919… 

One Tojeiro special which caught the eye of AC management was a slightly larger car powered by a Lea-Francis engine, and then a Bristol unit. AC adopted the car as a prototype, and it appeared at the Earls Court show with a transplanted 2 liter AC engine developing all of 85 hp. It's the last black &  white photo below.  Other than the full-height windshield on the Ace, the main change from Touring's Ferrari Barchetta body (top photo below) is the elimination of the stiffening rib formed into the alloy and linking the wheel arches. This line was, however, featured in the early Tojeiro Bristol (#76) and Tojeiro MG (#62).

Tojeiro's cribbed design was soon updated by raising the headlights, imparting the famous "mustache" line (hand-hammered out of aluminum) around the grille, which was now tilted forward at the top edge.   At the same time, AC raised the boot for more space, and angled the lower edge forward.  The happy effect was to give the car its own character, an external sign of the modernity underneath the skin; on launch in 1954 it was the first English production sports car* to feature four-wheel independent suspension.  The car found popularity with English club racers, and the demand for more power led in 1956 to the availability of the 2 liter Bristol six, with its odd cross-pushrod design allowing hemispherical combustion chambers and decent power despite the long stroke. With this engine, the car gained 35 to 45 hp depending on state of tune, and while lighter and faster than any production Bristol model, it was also a lot cheaper.  Disc brakes became optional, and the revitalized car now found success with racers across the pond…

In a move calculated to appeal to Jaguar and even Aston Martin clientele, AC introduced a fastback coupe around the same time.  The resulting Aceca featured a glassy, hinged hatch for access to the luggage area, and Italianate styling which also seemed a reference to early 50s Ferraris, in this case the ones by Vignale.  It was available with both the AC and Bristol engines, and a handful of late ones were made with a Ford six.

Just when it seemed that Bristol's decision to stop production of its famous old six signaled the end of the party for AC, racer Ken Rudd got the idea to substitute his tuned version of the 2.6 liter Ford Zephyr inline six, now with up to 170 hp.  All of the three dozen roadsters built with the Ruddspeed Ford engine featured handsomely revised styling, with the curved windshield and lower snout shown below.

But while Ken Rudd and the Hurlock brothers at AC deserve credit for the idea of popping a Ford engine into their car in 1962, someone else gets credit for finally making AC famous. In that same year, a Texan working out of a SoCal garage was scheming a Ford transplant  for the same car, but this time with a V8.  That, however, is a story for another chapter…

*Errata:

The Lagonda 2.6 Litre, built from 1948 to '53, also had 4-wheel independent suspension, but it was a 4-passenger touring car.  The first version of this post credited the AC with being the first British production car of any kind with this feature.  Though it took 6 years for Lagonda to sell 510 cars, it was a production car by British standards. Apologies to Aston Martin Lagonda...

Photo credits:

Top:  pinterest.com

2nd:  AC Cars, on myntransportblog

3rd:   wikimedia
4rh:   laluneta.com.ar

5th:   AC Cars

6th:   co1000.com

7th:   momentcar.com

8th:   hemmings.com

9th:   wikimedia

Roadside Attraction: Dolphin Club in San Francisco

One wants to say Dockside Attraction in Old San Francisco, because visiting the Dolphin Club feels a bit like time travel.  Especially once you get through the front door and see the rooms full of wooden boats.  The Dolphin Club, founded in 1877, is not only a rowing and swimming club, but also a place to learn how to build and repair these boats.  The club has 20 wooden Whitehall-style rowboats of the type originally used in New York to taxi goods out to ships in the harbor. Whitehall rowboats (named after the eponymous street in NYC) performed a similar function in old San Francisco, and the club has Jon Bielinski, a master of the boat builder's art, to maintain them. Mr. Bielinski has also built several of the club's Whitehalls, which range from 14 to 22 feet. The oldest boat in his charge was built in 1917.  

Where else can you find someone to show you how to build a wooden boat these days? Especially at the membership rates offered by the Dolphin Club.  I was invited to swim there on a recent Sunday morning by a friend who had joined at the "out of town" annual rate of $119. Locals pay $475, and there's a $111 initiation fee.  There's got to be a catch, right? Well, not exactly a catch, more like a hallowed tradition…

The Dolphin, while it is a swim club, does not have a pool.  Members swim in the same place they do their rowing: San Francisco Bay.  On the day I was there, a lively group of men and women stroked smoothly through the water, some of them going impressive distances, including my friend Alfred, who cranked out half a mile.  The water temperature that day was 56 degrees F. Wetsuits?  Nobody was wearing one.  They aren't prohibited, but a sign indicating that wetsuits are not allowed inside the building conveys the message that bringing a wetsuit for your swim might be considered a failure of tone, like bringing a bottle of Ripple to a wine-tasting event.   

The Dolphin Club is located at 502 Jefferson Street at the Aquatic Park.  The creaky old wooden building smells of salt air and varnish, and if you can wrangle an invitation it's worth a visit just to take in the artifacts and the atmosphere.  It's also not far from the Maritime Museum pictured below, a 1939 WPA project and a stunningly pure example of Streamline Moderne style, which deserves an essay of its own, and will get one soon.   

Footnote:  The author left his wetsuit fifty miles south with his surfboard, and couldn't persuade himself to experience the joys of water temps in the mid-fifties without it.  Maybe next time…

Photo credits:

All photos by the author.