Simon Taylor

All posts tagged Simon Taylor

 

It’s not an Alfa, but you gotta love the Stovebolt!

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aaSimon Taylor & HWM minues before first practice laps.LS 03

This is the famous HWM “Stovebolt” racer now owned by Simon Taylor.  The top photo is from a 1995 Road & Track feature on the car.  The next is a 2003 shot I took at Laguna Seca, just minutes before Simon took the car out for a Friday practice session, prior to the vintage races (Now known as the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion .. until someone else buys the naming rights).  So, you’re asking, why is this terrific car on an Italian car page?  Certainly not because HWM originally used Alfa engines (They were Alta motors, not Alfa).  Not even because the car was built by HWM’s legendary mechanic Alf Francis.  No, it’s here because the Stovebolt has a legitimate Italian connection and because the Stovebolt is an example of what happens when a bunch of really good hot-rodders and tuners go to work on an already fine racer.  Switching the 4-cylinder Alta engine for a 265 cube Chevy was just a start.  Now, about the Italian connection, Simon shares that “in 1950 Stirling Moss had his first Formula 1 race in it, even though it was merely a 2-litre Formula 2 car, and he finished a sensational third to the works Alfa Romeos of Farina and Fangio … that was in the Bari Grand Prix.  Then a few weeks later Moss had the first bad accident of his career in my car.  He was leading, holding off the pursuing Ferraris, when a back-marker moved across on him and put him head-on into a tree.  Among other painful injuries, he knocked out his front teeth on the cockpit edge.  In 2000, when I told Stirling I’d bought the car, he said, ‘Have a look in the undertray, boy – you’ll probably find my teeth.'”

See Simon and the Stovebolt compete at a hillclimb by clicking here.

Simon Taylor Stovebolt and friends

Simon Taylor, on the left, chats with John “Bat” Masterson and a friend.  Masterson, who is sitting in the car, is a former Stovebolt owner.

Simon Taylor in HWM enters turn 4 copy

Above: Simon applies the Stovebolt’s Chevy power at the 2003 Monterey Historics, in California.  Below are two more photos from Laguna Seca Raceway.

 

6 Taylor catches Jag at turn 4 copySimon Taylor in HWM.Pits at LG 03

From Simon Taylor Sept 2014 005

Simon took this photo on the way from London to Scotland and back, to compete in a hill climb. I can’t imagine the startled looks he must get driving this spectacular machine on the road.


See Scuderia member Simon Taylor run a Gurston Down hill climb  in his historic racer

The video is courtesy of Simon Taylor and videographer Tony Bray.

Simon is a well-known British motorsports publisher, announcer, and monthly columnist for Classic & Sports Car magazine (a publication he founded). He’s also the current custodian of the famous HWM Stovebolt racer, which he races and drives on the street (That alone makes him our hero!).

About the hill climb shown in the video, Simon writes: “The finishing straight at Gurston Down is not a straight, it’s a deceptive S-bend.  The championship single-seaters go through here at 155mph (on a road 12ft wide), but because of their downforce it is no problem to take it flat.  With the HWM it’s a serious corner, and that day I couldn’t quite get it flat. I was trying to, which is why you see me briefly get my right rear wheel on the grass as I approach the line…..got to try to get that flat next year.”

Note the Alfa Romeo connection in Simon’s account of his car’s history: “My HWM is one of the three-car works team run in 1950 by Hersham & Walton Motors, designed by John Heath and built up over the winter of 1949/50 by HWM’s legendary mechanic Alf Francis.  Some background in case you want it: my car was raced during that 1950 season by the 20-year-old Stirling Moss – it was his first ‘proper’ race car, and his first-ever works drive – and he had several excellent results, including third in the Bari Grand Prix behind the Alfa Romeos of Farina and Fangio (a remarkable achievement as it was a Formula 1 race, and this was a Formula 2 car). That season it also won the Grand Prix des Frontieres, driven by Johnny Claes, and was also driven by Rudi Fischer and Raymond Sommer.

” In 1954 it went to Hollywood to appear in the 20th Century Fox movie The Racers, starring Kirk Douglas, who drives and crashes the car in the movie.  Then it was sold off to Tom Carstens, who radically rebuilt the car and fitted it with the then very new Chevy V8. Press reports at the time gave it the name that has stuck with it ever since: The Stovebolt Special. On its debut on the old Pebble Beach road circuit in the hands of Bill Pollack it became the first road circuit car in the world to use the small-block Chevy – the first of many.

“This car has enough history to fill a large book. It has been raced by all its owners over the past 56 years, and has had many adventures. It has been totally rebuilt for me by Peter Denty Racing into pretty nearly exactly the form it was when Carstens finished it in 1956, in his colours – black with white wheels.”

See more about the Stovebolt by clicking here.