[Spridgets] A Puzzler

[Larry Daniels]

Oh, incredibly wise ones, I have a question for you.  Today while stripping
down my Bugeye #2 project, I found a tag screwed to the chassis rail just
after the chassis number plate.  In fact, the screw at the trailing edge of
the chassis plate was shared in holding down the leading edge of this second
tag.

The tag seems to be a vinyl type material and is 1" tall by 1.75" wide.  It
bears the letters and numbers "BMC-61".  Does anybody have any idea what this
means?  There is also a lot of crayon lettering on the rear of the dash on the
passenger side.  I didn't write it all down before leaving Flounder's shop
where it is stored, but neither of us could make any sense of it.

The chassis tag on this car says AN5L / 47156 which would seem to indicate a
September 1960 build date by normal production.  That doesn't jibe with a
"BMC-61" tag.  Is it possible that this was a CKD car from somewhere other
than Australia?  Horler says Aussie CKD's had chassis numbers prefaced with YH
and this is a LHD car.  He also says that cars were taken out of the numbering
order to be assembled overseas later as CKD cars and that the "largest" market
was Australia, but not the only market.  Could this have been taken out of the
production line order in 1960 and sold as one of the 24 LHD CKD cars in 1961?
Yeah, I know, highly doubtful.

Also the first color on this car is a kind of maroon color.  (I think -- I'm a
bit color blind -- maybe Flounder can describe it better.)  That doesn't seem
to be a standard  color scheme according to Horler, either.  One other bit of
info is that there is no title with it and it definitely was a dedicated race
car in it's prior life and, in fact, was bought in a package deal with another
Bugeye race car with Elliot Forbes-Robinson race history that Flounder took as
part of his end of the deal.

I am at a loss to explain the "BMC-61" tag and the, seemingly, Sept. 1960
build date by chassis number.  Has anybody heard of dealers attaching this tag
when the car was sold new?  The odd color could be explained by somebody
totally stripping it to bare metal throughout (and I mean every inch) and
repainting to his taste.  Anybody have a clue what is with this car / tag
number?


Larry Daniels