On Wed, 19 Aug 1998, R. John Lye wrote:
> There was some talk the other day about the car that appeared
> at the Monterey Historics bearing the number ADU 4B. I promised
> to check out Graham Robson's book "The Works Triumphs" to see
> if that would shed any light on the matter.
>
> It was an interesting excercise, but may not really help much...
It helps a bit. I've been meaning to post to everyone what I've
already forwarded to a few people. Thanks to my buddy Leon Guyot of TSSC,
I have some pretty thorough chronologies on all of the "Works" spitfires.
I'll attach Leon's info about ADU 4B to the end of this message, and I'll
forward the entire "treatise" privately to anyone who is interested.
> At this point the cars had the smaller
> gearbox, smaller rear brakes and a "thinner gauge chassis frame"
> (hmmmm, that's interesting) saving 110 pounds over their 1964 weight.
Apparently the cars were a "bit more flexible" but not so much that it
really bothered the drivers!? (That according to some other Robson work I
read.) This before the days of full roll cages used to further stiffen a
car as well as protect the driver.
Anyway, here's the info on ADU 4B from Leon. This pretty much confirms
that the car at the Monterey Historics was indeed THE original ADU 4B,
listed in the program as: 1965 Triumph Spitfire, *FC54953, 1298cc (sic),
Bill Shanahan, New York, NY.
On Tue, 18 Aug 1998 GuyotLeonF@aol.com wrote:
> Hi Andy & Chris, Oh so that's where it went!
>
> It was owned for many years by a French speaking collector In
> Switzerland, who 'recently' decided to consolidate/reduce his collection
> of race cars, held in his private museum, inluding this, the original
> ADU 4B Yup, it's the real McCoy...
>
> Here is a definitive list of the RACING SPITFIRES to help you see what
> happened: [edited here to show only info for ADU 4B]
> ADU 4B
>
> X731, 988 XE
>
> 1964 Le Mans - Reserve Car
> 1965 Sebring - Baker/Feuerhelm
>
> X731, FC54953 & FC54804HE
>
> 1965 Le Mans - Jean-Jacques Thuner/Simo Lampinen
> 1965 Swiss Racing Team/2nd in Swiss GT Championship
> Survives in Private Swiss Museum
> (believed exported to New York, N.Y,U.S.A. with Bill Shanahan)
> (Leon spoke with J-J Thuner on 30/5/98 and he confirmed that he narrowly
> missed purchasing this car, but it was bought by the Swiss Collector,as
> he had more money!)
> nb.This is one of the most original of the Le Mans Spitfires, the 1296cc
> engine was fitted in 1965, and was of 79 cubic inch capacity, rather
> than the 1147cc/70ci
> Mr.Robson's writings were partly in error in his Works Triumphs book as
> regards the Le Mans & Rally Spitfires and that has since been put right
> in the TSSC Courier Magazine in an article written by our archivist Mike
> Costigan, after considerable research.
> There was an article written by him in June 96, but I cannot at present
> find out which issue of our magazine it was published in.
> There have also been photos of the car that you now have in the USA, ie:
> ADU 4B, when it was in Switzerland, where it was tracked down by our
> French Area Organiser, TSSC also has it on video.
> So you can be pretty sure that in this case 'your' ADU 4B is indeed
> authentic.
> All The Best
>
> Leon F Guyot
> TSSC International Liaison Secretary
And that's that! FWIW, I'm trying to find out how to contact Mr. Shanahan
(I've already been in touch with the Webmaster at historiconline.com, who
has promised to try to help). I'd love to find out more about the car and
maybe do some sort of feature in a future issue of TVT. Hey, maybe we
could even convince him to bring the car to Portland ME next summer! ;-)
--Andy
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* Andrew Mace, President and *
* 10/Herald/Vitesse (Sports 6) Consultant *
* Vintage Triumph Register <www.vtr.org> *
* amace@unix2.nysed.gov *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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