Engine Punk

The DHS 3 special has tremendous patina Simon Knight was my scratch bouncer for the 2020 Exeter Trial. Binky still hadn't recovered from some tumbles on the 2019 Testing Trial so I asked for a last minute substitute and Simon was the result. We'd had nothing to do with each other beforehand but got on like a house on fire during the 2020 Exeter trial and when he bought the DHS special later in 2020 I was very intrigued by it. David H Small was the son of Reginald Small, partner of Farnham Jowett dealers  Barnett and Small. David built a series of specials - possibly as many as seven - for racing and trials and this particular example features a h andmade tubular chassis not unlike the contemporary rocket tube Dellow chassis . All up and running and ready for Heritage Trials Simon has contacted members of the Small family in his research into the car and was able to speak to Peter Figg, David Small's long-standing friend and frequent trials passenger. Although 92, Peter coul...

Tim Kary in the Imhof Special and Rob Robinson-Collins in the ex-Imhof Allard J1 at the Heritage Trial on 4th July 2021 I was delighted to re-acquaint myself with the Imhof Special at the Heritage Trial in 2021. Tim Kary is the current owner and really knows how to drive this historic car which I first came across in 1993.  I had recently started a new job and moved to sunny Andover in Hampshire. Having checked out the local car club, I arranged to meet the club president at the club workshops during his lunch hour. Picture the scene – an old army Nissen hut on the edge of Salisbury Plain. The interior is dark but orderly. This is the workshop of the local car club. And there he is, Il Presidente!  He wears overalls over his office clothes, complete with shirt and tie. He’s sitting in the bare framework of a very small sports car while he files some tubes in the cockpit. He may have been making engine noises before he heard the door open. Binky (aka Mr Robert Robinson-Collins)...

Long before I ever became a Candid Provocateur, I stumbled across the Imhof Special. One of my best friends at school gave me The Book of the Motor Car , published in 1952 by The Naldrett Press Ltd and approved by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, no less. My favourite chapter was Building Your Own Car by A Godfrey Imhof, in which our hero made a competition car out of parts of Ford 10 and Austin 7 gleaned from scrapyards. HRK55 was the first version of the Imhof special as described in The Book of the Motor Car   (Photo : Naldrett Press) Who couldn't be inspired by such Boy's Own DIY initiative? I later discovered that this A Godfrey Imhof was actually the Godfrey Imhof, or Goff Imhof, one of the original Candidi Provocatores who’d raced Singers before the Second World War prior to rallying and trialling Allards in the immediate post war period. He built the Imhof Special using his experiences of trialling the big V8 sidevalve engine cars and ushered in a new ...

The Coates Orthoptera just before last year's President's Trial On the 35th Launceston trial earlier this year, many people were frankly amazed by the performance of Roger Ashby in his Coates Orthoptera. It sounded so crisp many of my friends thought it was running a Ford cross-flow engine and it nearly won the event outright. I’d seen the Coates Orthoptera before and, in chatting to Roger in the past, discovered that, although the components are fairly commonplace, they are put together in a very effective manner. The powerplant of the Coates Orthoptera at the Launceston trial featured a single downdraught 1.5" SU. This followed experiments with twin 1.25" SUs and Roger says the car ran a lot better. The Coates Orthoptera is essentially an Austin 7 chassis with a Ford side valve 1172cc engine. This was quite a common combination during the fifties and typically used an E93A engine but the Ford motor in the Coates Orthoptera is a later 100E. These offer many advant...