Vintage Thing No.56 - speedway Allard Atom
Regular readers of this blog will know of my appreciation of Allards but I've never seen any quite like this one or heard any references to it. The Allard badge might be on this thing as a joke but I have a feeling that it really is an Allard.I spotted this at a very wet hillclimb at Prescott in - I think - 1984. The pictures aren't brilliant but it was raining pushrods and back then my camera didn't have a light meter that worked so it's pretty amazing they came out at all.
It's got a speedway JAP 500 cc engine under the driver's left elbow that drove the rear axle by chain. I think it had a gearbox and wasn't direct drive. There were some Formula 3 500s at the event but I managed to establish - probably by asking someone nearby - that it wasn't an Allard F3 car but a speedway racer used on the same cinder ovals as the bikes.
If you look closely you can see the Allard badge on the nose an I am inclined to believe it is an Allard. It's got a split front swing axle for a start and Sidney Allard was just the sort of bloke who would have been attracted by the idea of strapping an engine and four wheels to yourself and getting very dirty with it. (That might sound a bit pervy but only to people with dirty minds). He was a trials driver, speed hillclimber and pioneer in this country of drag racing, so why not speedway?
There don't appear to be any brakes.
According to Paul Huggett's book on short circuit racing, 500cc Midget racers were tried out on the unsuspecting public both before and after the second world war. There's a great picture of two similar devices chasing each other round a dirt track in this book but Midgets in this country became highly sophisticated open wheeled single seaters albeit on the small size. They never proved as popular with the crowds here as in the US where Midgets were actually quite large with V8 engines.I reckon this little Allard (a contradiction in terms, surely?) dates from this halcyon time of experimental motorsport for all.
But does anyone else out there know any more?
Yes this is an Allard, it is the Atom. A Speedway car built by the Allard works at the height of the Speedway boom at the behest of a South of England Speedway promotor. It was driven by Ronnie Moore amongst others. Although there was supposed to have been two built this appears to be the sole survivor.
ReplyDeleteIt indeed has no brakes like the 'bikes, speed being scrubbed off by flicking it sideways. Fitted with a good JAP 4B 500cc methanol burning speedway engine it should have been producing circa 40bhp which in a car that two guys could pick up guranteed spectacualar action.
With all due respect, as you have everything else correct... It is Sydney Allard, not Sidney.
ReplyDeleteAll the best
JT
Thanks very much for this JT.
ReplyDeleteThis was just the kind of response I was looking for. The Allard Atom rings a bell somewhere but it's probably because it sounds like Ariel Atom. I'd be interested to know what date the Allard Atom was.
And thanks for the name thing - I'll ensure it's Sydney from now on.