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Gary
Lazarus of the Sprite & Midget Club recently discovered some
pictures of a Speedwell GT on the web, with registration 6194 MM.
He contacted Allen Harris the former owner of the car and
emailed a number of Sebring 'experts' in an attempt to identify it.
Jonathan Whitehouse-Bird and Tom Coulthard put their
heads together and are now certain that the car is the one formerly
raced by Barry Wood as RAM 36. Jonathan has sent me a
black and white photo of RAM 36 in action, driven by Barry Wood
possibly in 1962. Underneath the registration it says Gaston Sprite,
signifying that it was the team car to RAM 35 which was owned and
raced by Paddy Gaston. Barry Wood later went on to race the
Shapecraft Lotus Elan (of Surbiton Motors, Jonathan thinks) ~
rather more successfully.
Allen
says: "This car was good fun, very basic inside, with
a special one-piece aluminium roof and windscreen frame. There were
lots of holes in the body panels for lightness, and the seats were
just crudely shaped aluminium tubs with a block of foam to sit on.
It was immensely noisy, and almost impossible to drive in traffic.
It would oil up plugs every couple of miles, so I kept a stock in
the car, and after each journey visited the local garage to have
them sandblasted clean!" |
