Engine Punk

Nimbus was, and is, low. Note the great scallop cut out of the bonnet to allow hot air from the front mounted radiator to escape. I'm not into personal plates but TOY711 seems quite appropriate. Nimbus is a very low hillclimber built by Don Parker and powered by a supercharged 1293cc Mini engine and gearbox mounted at the back. The bodyshell is a much modified moulding originally intended for a GSM Delta, a rare breed of kit car that came to Blighty from South Africa in 1960. However, Nimbus pre-dates the GSM Delta by some years (nobody is now sure by how many). As built in the fifties, it had aluminium bodywork to clothe its spaceframe chassis and a front mounted Riley engine, which was subsequently replaced by a transverse Ford sidevalve engine. This drove through a Norton gearbox and chain to a rigid rear axle and apparently was a pig to handle. Must've been that rigid rear axle, I guess. Anyway, by the time I saw this curiosity at Prescott Hillclimb in 1984 (incide...

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 f...