chassis and motor combinations

[WANHER]

Unusually combinations chassis and engines like Maserati chevy,
Maserati Ferrari, Ferrari chevy etc why not

[WANHER]

Maserati T 61 birdcage with Ferrari engine v 12
driven by alan Connell in early sixties

[Ray Bell]

The best must be the Alfa P3 (Tipo B) imported to Australia by Jack Saywell along with an 'expert' pom mechanic to prepare it. After a couple of races (it was the fastest car in the country at the time) it got a rebuild and the pom put the timing back together incorrectly... and insisted it was right and towed it up the road with some other car to prove his point...

Bent valves, big problems and no fire in the hole was the result, so the pom was despatched to England and the engine to Italy. In Mid-1939!

You've heard of the bi-motore Alfa? This one was known for years as the Nomotore Alfa... then it got a 4.3-litre Alvis engine in the early fifties... which made it very unstable and it went into the crowd on Conrod Straight at Bathurst...

Surviving virtually intact, it raced on, but after a few blowups Ray Wamsley fitted a GMC truck engine to it, which improved its stability for some reason (I feel there was an element of rigidity variations with the engine installations..) and later it graduated to a Corvette engine that someone had imported to put in a boat.

So we had, in one car, an Alfa-Alvis, Alfa GMC and Alfa-Corvette.

As for Maserati-Corvettes... Froilan Gonzales and others raced these in South America in the late fifties... and there was a Ferrari-Corvette in New Zealand.

Lining up for the 1958 Australian GP were more Corvette-powered cars... the Tornado Special (having lost its Tornado Ford converted motor), the Maybach-Corvette, which had run out of Maybach motors, and our local Ferrari Corvette along with Wamsley's car.

Also in that race was a Cooper Bristol with Repco-Holden power.

Others that come to mind are the Cooper Monaco-Buick of Stillwell, the BRM-Buick that Arnold Glass had (both engines coming from the Daigh Scarab that ran at Sandown), and an abundance of Bugattis with all sorts of things..

Bugatti-Terraplane, Bugatti-Ford V8 (most common), Bugatti-Holden... with some developing new names like the Day Special and the Mackellar V8.

Even a Lotus-23 Olds raced here for a time...

Meanwhile, in New Zealand... for a time they had some wild saloon racing, the star car being a Morrari... a Morris Minor powered by a V12 Ferrari!

[WANHER]

It seems very common in Australia Ray, in any case thanks
and jus to add to our story :
I'm the owner of such a special an Austin Healey 100
fitted with a Jaguar engine coming from a MK 7
I thought it waq a one off but it appears that at less
two cars were done in Belgium One was written off during
a hill climb in my country. the other one is still
in my possession. It was modified by a workshop in Liège
with alteration to the front body work

[Ray Bell]

Not a totally Australian occupation, but it has been very popular here... Speaking of Austin Healeys, Australia has the best collection of the 100S model of any country, and they have been imported through the sixties and seventies to build up from the original half dozen or so.

A major Healey man, Alan Jones (who, when the other Alan Jones started winning F1 events, referred to himself as The Alan Jones), imported one from the States which came complete with a dreadfully modified front body and a Chev V8!

[WANHER]

Thanks Ray
I read that such conversions were tested a the end
of the fifties by an american motor magazine which one
I don't remenber I saw that in a reprint by Brooklands

Robert