New The Kircher Special

Charles Hughes of Denver, Colorado, the scion of a wealthy local family, developed a passion for speed earlier the war, testing planes for the country of war machine as well as sponsoring vehicles inward the Indy 500. After the armistice, he farther indulged this involvement past times purchasing a Jaguar XK120 to race. He bought the automobile novel from Kurt Kircher, who owned the local unusual automobile shop, Denver Import Motors. Kircher was an amateur racer himself who’d had some success alongside a Chrysler Hemi-powered Allard J2X, i of the quickest cars of its time, if a combat crude.

The 2 became fast friends, quite literally. Kircher had a score inward automotive engineering—he’d worked for General Motors on post-war V-8s as well as the Powerglide transmission. Hughes had a score inward physics too every bit a stellar machine store inward his six-car garage. So inward the early on ’50s, the twain decided, according to a history Kircher wrote a few years earlier his expiry inward 2004, “It would move fun to drive to build something better.”

Familiar alongside the Jag powertrain, they decided to practise a clean-sheet racer to a greater extent than or less an engine as well as transmission salvaged from a wrecked XK120. Kircher designed the drilled chrome-moly subway scheme frame, nurture De Dion suspension, as well as inboard rear-wheel drums as well as security hubs. The front end intermission came from the Jag. The steering rack came from an MG. The nurture differential came from Halibrand. The remainder of the bits were either shopped or poached.

Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 stylist named Charlie Lyons hand-built a curvaceous trunk out of aluminum. Like many homemade sports cars of the time, it was a combat of a mashup of Italian as well as British lines—a Ferrari 250S mated alongside a Jaguar D-type. But different either of those, it had inboard headlamps inward the grille, deeply scalloped sides, as well as an intriguing dual-piece construction—the car’s entire top one-half could move unbolted to let for mechanical massaging.

http://www.automobilemag.com/news/kircher-special-long-lost-300-sl-relative/

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