Pomeroy pics - a dream come true!

[Maisie]

Thanks to eclectic our esteemed moderator Tim got the chance to realise a dream and drive the Stutz Bearcat. And here's the proof! Thanks to Suzy for the pictures

[Maisie]

And another!

[Maisie]

And last but not least...

[Diabando]

AWESOME!!!!!

[Suzy]

It was great to watch Tim's dream come true.

Thanks to eclectic for the "loan" of such an amazing car. I'm pleased to report that Tim was very calm (or so it seemed from the outside anyway) and did not stall it or hit anything.

[Peter Mallett]

Well done Eclectic. Tim will dine out on this for a few seasons I'll bet.

[eclectic]

Tim, it was a pleasure, I always insure all my old cars for anyone over 25 to drive, how else can you hook new enthusiasts for older cars? The problem I forsee for the VSCC is that the youngest generation will only rate cars their Dads had, so we will only see grids of Vauxhall SRi, VW Gti, etc in 2020.. Boooring! Lead on Vauxhall 30/98's!

Now, does anyone know where I can find a World War One aviation engine for the 1907 chain drive Delahaye chassis that I have just found to make a seriously torquey special?

[gfm]

Eclectic - would you be so kind as to give us a brief potted history of the Stutz. What an extraordinary car.

[eclectic]

OK, here goes, if this looks familiar it is because it was the basis of an article in The Automobile Jan 2003!

In the mid 1980’s I decided to seek out a Stutz Bearcat. Not one of the early cars with a monocle windscreen and no comfort at all, but the later, just post Great War variety that have step over sides, and long sweeping wings. This became the ‘style godfather’ of so many vintage sports cars and even the MG T type.


With good looks, sixteen valves, dual ignition and four cylinders of 1 ½ litres each, I thought that the performance should be good. There was a problem, very few have survived, they rarely change hands, and the asking price was usually astronomic. At the time I had young children there was no hope of buying an up and running car so I set-to to find a project.

I had already rebuilt, with much help, a straight eight Stutz, [1928, 4.9 litre] as a replica of the Tourist Trophy car of that year. In the course of tracking down parts I had come into tenuous contact with a famed recluse who lived in Vermont close to the border of Canada. He was supposed to have a large collection of Stutz of all types rotting in barns, the final spares from the Stutz factory, and a reputation second to none for difficulty and eccentricity. All these points proved to be true so as you can imagine actually doing business was a long drawn out and at times frustrating business.

After a total of three visits to see him, the first uninvited, in 1989, I was able to buy the rusted rolling chassis to rebuild a 1918 Bearcat. While mechanically complete, there remained only the vestiges of bodywork, of which only the wing stays were salvageable, no windscreen, instruments, or lights and although there was a dynamo it proved so corroded as to be irreparable. There remained the top half of a radiator with the bottom completely corroded away and a fuel tank, suitable only for a pattern and fittings. This was unfortunately dumped by a YTS lad at the shop where it was sent for copying after he carelessly drove a fork lift truck over it!

My first thought was to make an Edwardian racing special, something along the lines of the 1914 Stutz Indianapolis cars as I had the tall radiator from a contemporary racing Hudson. It now forms part of the central heating system in my office! However, by 1996, I had bought a set of instruments through a contact at Hershey, been given a windscreen, with no pillars by a chance acquaintance from Dallas, and decided that the original radiator was reclaimable. The rolling chassis was almost restored to original specification but to rebuild a Bearcat I still needed many detail parts and most notably, a fuel tank and dynamo.

During the intervening years, both Alec Miller and his wife Imogen had died. The moment she was interred, U S Marshals secured the property and put it under 24 hour guard. The reason for Alec’s wariness with strangers then became obvious as it emerged that since WW11 he had paid no taxes and never received a penny of help from the State. Not unnaturally they wanted their share now that he was no longer around to deter investigators from the Internal Revenue Service. He had always maintained that he was operating within the law, and amazingly after the forty eight cars on his property (of which thirty seven were Stutz or HCS) were sold at auction by Christies, on orders from the IRS, he was proved right in the courts!

There was also found a considerable amount of gold bullion and silver bars secreted about the place, notably in a huge and very heavy safe that I had helped him move across a dirt floor with rollers, a long bar and considerable effort. Yet they lived a live of incredible parsimony, truly as they say in Yorkshire, ‘there’s nowt so queer as folk’.

This amazing sale proved to be the final incentive to finish the car for it provided the dynamo and a fuel tank. Somewhat surprisingly, Retromobile in Paris provided some rear lights of suitable American parentage, a friend in Colorado found me some headlights, a stranger in Australia cast up many minor detail parts from his car (thank you Ian Smith, we are strangers no longer even if we haven’t yet met), and Jim Duncan in Fife re-assembled the chassis. Michael Sharpe in Derby replicated the body and the result is what you see today.

It was a real pleasure, over twelve years, to assemble all the bits and get this beast together. This has only been exceeded by the excitement of driving such an archetypical Edwardian sports car.

[gfm]

Many thanks, great story and a treasure of a car.

[zefarelly]

Eclectic . . .a long shot . . .but try Shoreham airport . . .they have loads of stuff laying about there as well as a college . . . . . .it is one of the oldes airports in the country.