| (6-24-08) From car owner Ed Savin's
son Mike Savin:
"That photo of the Morgan
could not be from the same weekend -- though it certainly could be 1957.
Dad was driving the Morgan on the street after the AC arrived. And
the
Morgan
was raced up until the AC arrived. Dad drove the Morgan on the
street for some time -- it had a locked rear end, and dad delighted in
taking it around corners on two wheels -- scaring the hell out of me.
LA Times sports editor Steve Dredge wanted,
and purchased, the car. I believe he raced the Morgan for some time.
Much to my surprise, I recently read Andy Granatelli's autobiography, "They
call me Mr 500" -- and Steve is mentioned near the end of the book: he
became Andy's publicist.
The AC was shipped from England in a
crate on the deck of a freighter. When it arrived at the docks in
San Pedro, the car was covered with bird shit. Dad's men cleaned
the car
and drove it to the East LA shop.
As purchased, the car was white with
black interior. As Bill states, it was raced only once with the original
paint job. The next outing, Sacramento, the car had its new livery.
Bob Oker took first in class and first
overall at that event at Goleta -- something he was to repeat a number
of times. He was giving the drivers of 300SLs, Jaguars, Austin-Healeys,
etc. fits -- as Bob was driving a 2-liter car, beating cars with
more displacement and more
horsepower.
There had been other ACs in the US prior
to this one, but this was the first AC ACE with a Bristol engine in the
USA. Later AC Bristols had a "Bristol" tag as part of the AC logo
-
this one had only the AC logo.
Again, from an article I read years ago,
Shelby mentions that he had been impressed with the performance of an AC
- and I believe it was this one.
I also inserted a short Vignolle article
- mentions Ed Savin's challenge - this has to do with a certain race at
Palm Springs. Oker and E Forbes-Robinson (Austin-Healey) had run
1-2 in an earlier production race.
The officials allowed them to start at the rear of the Big Bore production
race -- with Dr Dick Thompson on the front row. Before too long,
Oker and E F-R were passing and headed for the front of the pack -- the
officials evidently black-flagged Oker and E F-R to avoid embarrassing
Thompson with his factory-backed Corvette. Oker would likely have
won the race." |
