True enough - even the Bristol engine was a pre-war design.

Being early 50s both our Cooper sports cars had a limited choice of engines:
>1952 Cooper MG had a TC engine bored out to 1500 and became unreliable (as you said) - nowadays it is around 1350 which is a good compromise.
>1953 Cooper Zephyr had a 6 cylinder Zephyr engine which hopefully offers better power to weight than a Bristol engine, surprisingly few cars tried this engine.

Cooper built a Vauxhall engined sports car but that could also have been a pre-war engine?
And a 500 was fitted with Ford Consul engine & closed bodywork as a road car.

But by the second half of the 50s there were some alternatives appearing: as you say the Climaxes (my Elva has one); tuned/modified Ford sidevalves (not terribly exciting!) etc were starting to appear.

There were also big engine options by then - Jaguar, Aston, Bristol etc. but they were no doubt beyond the Lester budget (or chassis). Plus people like Alta were starting to produce racing engines.

If the owner is correct in saying it has a 1953 Riley engine it must be the postwar version of the 12/4, which was certainly available and possibly cheap but an unlikely racing engine (Riley tended to race the 9s & then the 6 cylinders, so not a lot of competition parts available).

John Treen built some highly developed Riley specials in the 50s, they tended to be 9 based, one of these engines might have appealed to Lester?

Something like the MG Q-type engine would have been a decent option, highly developed pre-war and the cars weren't terribly valuable post-war, that probably (and some lunacy) also explains the fitting of an ERA engine in a Morris OXford! Of course those types of engines could have been pretty unreliable, and were built for methanol etc!!

In its Ruddspeed version the Ford Zephyr was a useful engine in the AC Ace, less fragile than the Bristol and much cheaper to repair if it did break. Some are still raced in this application.

Alta is another pre-war design, to go with your others, and built whole racing cars (not just racing engines) pre-war. Again some are still being raced. Their 2½ litre engine was post-war of course.

Back on thread, I had a quick look at Motor Sport for contemporary reference to the Lester-Riley, without luck. Not knowing which year it is supposed to be hampers the search a bit, as MS is not very usefully indexed - any good suggestions?
Can't look in my Autosport as I flogged them years ago. It seemed a Good Idea at the time.

As far as I know Harry Lester had nothing to do with putting a Riley engine into one of his chassis. At least, I can find no reference to such in comtemporary publications.

Of the four Lesters scheduled to be built in 1955 with coupe bodies only one, with an MG engine, appears to have been completed by Lester. This was raced in 1955 by Mike Llewellyn, often as a Monkey Stable entry. The car became the property of B.J.Ashworth and his associates, J.Venning and B.Mann, and in 1959 was raced by them, perhaps even later but I do not have the time to check. Who owned and raced the car between 1956-1958 I do not know but there are various candidates for 1956 including T.E.Watson/R.B.Watson and D.A.Hoskings.

In 1953 Harry Lester drove a coupe Lester MG in clubbies, and possibly the Monkey Stable used it then as well, and indeed the Llewellyn car may well have been this car simply re-presented to the media.

The other Lester-MG coupe was not completed by Lester and it appeared in an advert for sale ( with photo) in June, 1956 as an incomplete car but with an MG engine. The seller, H.Grondwell of Seaford Garages Ltd had attempted to finish it but was selling with the job not quite done. Who bought it and if it ever raced is not known, by me.

Of the two Climax-engined cars, both probably completed by Lester, one was definitely raced in 1955 entered as a coupe by J.Shove.This car then was raced in the following year by E.Pool, when it still retained its lid. Thereafter.....

The other car is a bit of a mystery but I suspect it was the Lester that appeared in the USA in late 1955 and was driven by that very accomplished driver Chuck Dietrich. This car competed in the G Modified class, which was then for cars of an engine capacity up to 1250cc. Ted Walker mentioned that he thought the person who did not like the coupe body was an American so Dietrich or another American may well have shorn the Lester of its top. Ted Jayne raced it in 1956. The only problem is that the car was entered as a Lester MG, but to many American scribes the names Lester and MG were synonymous. Bill Lloyd's special one-off Lester powered by an Offenhauser engine was described as a Lester MG - Offy and once even as an MG-Offy. So Dietrich's car may also have been referred to as a Lester MG despite it having a Climax engine. Further support for this theory is that Suzy Dietrich, Chuck's wife and racing companion, took part in the MGCC meeting at Thompson in late 1955 using a blown TC but surprisingly Chuck did not compete. Climax engines would not have been welcomed, even in a car called a Lester MG!

Quite where the Lester-Riley, in spyder form, originated is still unclear but until others provide more information it seems Ecurie Bullfrog is the most likely answer.

It looks as though we are going round in circles and will continue so to do until "further and better" information is forthcoming. I am still inclined towards a 6 as we know a reasonable amount of power can be obtained and there must have been a lot of well tuned (not to say well used) units about. A certain J.M.Hawthorn learned his trade behind one of them.

My feeling is that the car is a bit later than assumed and probably has a BMC type engine.

I thought Mike Hawthorns Rileys were an Ulster Imp with a 4 cylinder 9 engine and a TT Sprite which had a 12/4.

A 6 cylinder Riley would have been very big for this kind of car, but agree that there must have been some well tuned ones around and at reasonable prices.

All this discussion would easily be solved by a single poor quality photo of the engine bay!! I'm sure we have exceeded the thousand words that the proverb compares to a picture.

Mallory Dan introduced a thread on John Horridge a couple of years ago saying that a friend if his knew JH's son. I will send a pm asking for any information available.

John Horridge's son Nick Horridge can be emailed on newfordparts@btconnect.com

The Hawthorn TT Sprite was most definitely a 6 cylinder.
I believe I am correct in saying that the Riley works never raced the 12/4. After the Brooklands 9 Riley put their racing efforts into the 6 cylinder Grebe, then the 9hp Ulster Imp and finally the TT Sprite.

Sadly I can offer no help at all with the Lester Riley. For what it's worth I would subscribe to the view that it has a post was RM series engine

Thank you Dutchy, I was pretty sure I was correct, the Ulster Imp was a 4 cylinder 9 with 4 Amals, but the TT Sprite was a 6 (Riley specialist help!!!) but exactly which one I don't know.although Leslie Hawthorn was something of a whizz on Rileys. I have emailed Nick Horridge but the response was "if you find anything please let me know". The only info obtained being that JH's old Lister-Bristol is now in the hands of Anthony Taylor from whom I have requested information.

At the time they were raced by the works I would think they would have been 12/6s so would race in the 1,500cc class. I think the Hawthorn car raced as a 1,500 too.
More recently one (Colin Readey's AVC 20) has raced with a 15/6 (1,808cc) engine and another (David Hawkins') with an ERA motor.

Riley Sprites had 12/4 engines - we had 2 of them. MPHs had 6 cylinders in pretty much the same chassis.

TT Sprites had various engines (a 2 litre raced with a streamlined nose, that must have been a 6), but they were racing Sprites so originally had 12/4s.
The Hawthorn TT Sprite chassis had a 12/4 when we saw it at Beaulieu.

Prior to the TT Sprite there were racing sixes, which are quite different, Dixon took some over another got modified into the White Riley.

Colin Readey's TT Sprite was much modified during its life - not sure if it has been restored back to original or not.

Is David Hawkins ERA engined one a replica TT Sprite fitted with an ERA type motor? I know there is at least one such car.

Some of the 'replicas' (Riley specials really) have been built with 6s but most of the original TT Sprites have 12/4s (at least when I last knew where they were - over 10 years ago).

Just looked this up - apparently:

The first 4 TT Sprites (AVC15 - 18) were initially built with 6 cylinder engines, continuing from the Racing Sixes. The chassis are very similar, big difference being the inrroduction of rod brakes replacing the cable brakes and huge drums on racing sixes.

As the 6 cylinder MPH had been dropped and replaced by the 12/4 Sprite the subsequent (they built 4 more, total 8) TT Sprites were built with 12/4 engines.

The initial 4 cars ran with a variety of engines (depending on the event) 6 & 12/4, but basically ended up as 12/4 engined cars - they were after all promoting the 4 cylinder road car.

AVC19 & AVC20 were built with 12/4s, as were the final 2 cars (including the one that Hawthorn had) that were built later.

Most were quite extensively modified in their later careers.

I have just looked in Dr Birmingham's Riley book to find that he mentioned that Dixon used one of the latest 12/4 Sprites to win the 1935 TT. The remainder of the works team also used 12/4 engines in their AVC cars. The Motor report of the 1935 Le Mans has a picture of the Van der Becke - Richardson which shows 4 exhaust pipes indicative of 12/4 engine. They finished fourth.

I'm in no way qualified to post on this thread, but does the very handsome red 6-cylinder Riley Special owned and hillclimbed by Macolm Dungworth fit into this picture somewhere?

Just a thought ... I won't be offended if you all ignore me!

You are very welcome to join in, if you can add anything even an informed guess or a possible line of research to follow please post it
JF

David Ashworth rented a small unit from John Venning (a pinking shear manufacturer) at Broxhead.Lindford ,Bordon. Barry was JVs workshop manager I believe. David then moved to Alton for a few months before going to Sleaford garage from where the car was run. David worked as Sales manager at Sleaford for about 3/4 years before moving on. The man was a delight! I last saw him about 20 years ago.I sold EME to a Mr Carter of East Anglia keeper of MGs/Healies and I think BRM

Crossle51f
Going back to an earlier post of yours you mention a Falcon 11 body , obviously the photo by GG is not a Falcon, another car (also a spyder) reg 5 ERE and seemingly or coincidentally (aren't there a lot of coincindences in this thread?) a Lester-MG, is being run in the UK currently. Anybody got pictures of it, the body is not Falcon to my eye but I have not seen a proper shot, It looks more like RGS which is where I came in---------! So that might take care of the two Spyders built, putting a Falcon body on in place of a coupe might explain the car in the States, were there 3 or 4 cars, the information I have is 2 spyders 2 coupes all built for Jim Mayer but never delivered.
JF

Peter, I owe you an apology for talking nonsense. Having checked the only source I have at home, Dr. Birmingham's book which is rather short of detail on the racing cars, it is clear that the TT Sprites raced as 12/4s for the major part of their works careers.

My memory might be playing tricks again but I distinctly remember that car as being 12/4 powered.
It was built by David Fairley in the 1970s and has no connection with the works cars.

At least my information re various "eme" registered cars narrows the field to other cars! My "EME" had hydraulic brakes and the logbook carried the names of John Clayton Meyer/DJ Ashworth and myself. I last drove the car in the mid sixties when a cromard liner collapsed. I sold the car in the early 70s.

Just got hold of a copy of A record of motor racing at Aintree by Graham Heath & John Lawson.

There is an entry for:

3rd September 1955,
Daily Telegraph International meeting.
Event no. 1 Sports Cars upto 1500 cc
Car no. 51 is John Horridge (Ecurie Bullfrog) with a green Lester Riley.
He qualified 16th and finished 13th.

Hello Graham,

Dick Duncan here, I am somewhat familiar with the Lester you are referring to. The body was one of the Monkey Stable cars built in 1955. There were two models built, an M-11 which was fitted with an FWA 1098 Climax and open body work, the other was the M-15 which was a coupe body and had a 1.5 liter MG motor. I own what we think may be the only M-11 chassis with Climax power. It came to California with an Ashley body in 1957. I also own an M-15 chassis and the original Lester alloy coupe body which was the prototype for the M series Monkey Stable cars. This car was owned by and raced at Goodwood in 1956 driven by Ted Pool.

Gianni's car is somewhat of a mystery in that we are not sure as to whether the body is a cut down coupe or an original open type body.
As the Monkey Stable team principal, Jim Mayers, was killed racing at Dundrod in September of 1955, the cars which were being built by the MS at their shop in North London ended up being sold off. The one M-15 Coupe, 5 EME, was owned and driven by Michael Llewellyn. That car is documented and known today in the UK in highly modified/restored condition having been stripped of its fiberglass coupe body and fitted with an Ashley body, (like my car) many years ago. There is evidence of a second M-15 coupe being partially completed and for sale in 1956-57 in the UK, but its current whereabouts are unknown.

At this point, there exist four known M series chassis, the two I have, Gianni's Riley powered car and 5 EME owned by a gentleman in Wales who bought it from and had it rebuilt by George Edney.

I have been in contact with Gianni through his nephew who speaks English and communicates via the internet. His car was owned by Ken Booth and we have tried to track its history but with little success. There are several Lester enthusiasts / owners in the UK. One, Stewart Penfound, is undertaking to get all the information and facts together and document the history of Harry Lester, the Lester Cars and the Monkey Stable Racing Team.

Trust this will be of interest to you, and encourage you to contact either myself or Stewart if you have any information that might be helpful.

Best regards, Dick Duncan

Welcome Dick
If you read thro' the thread you can see that we have covered most of your points. We still have not finalised our thinking on the provenance of the Italian based car. So far as I can see the most likely candidate is the Horridge car as it is the only one which combines Riley and Lester. Can you ask your correspondent for engine details?
John

Dear Dick
Thank you for your confirmation. I was beginning to think I was going mad but when you look at the car you must conclude that surely nobody, even a mad Italian enthusiast, would wish to build a replica Lester. As I have said before I never fail to be surprised at the odd racing cars that turn up either here in the South of France or in Italy.

In the 80s (& possibly later) Ken Booth used to travel regularly between England and Italy taking many classic cars with him.
He could well have bought the Lester Riley in the UK and exported it to Italy.

Peter
If I remember correctly Ken Booths name came into the conversation with our Italian friend.

A bit late to the discussion, but for the record... Chuck Dietrich's Lester was in fact of the earlier cycle-fendered design, NOT a Climax-powered "M11".

Proof? Start on the remarkably helpful "etcetereni" website, where an article by J.A.Brown describes the Put-In-Bay road races of June 18, 1955.
http://ferrariexperts.com/SCCA%20results%201955.htm#put

In describing that day's second race, Brown wrote: "Chuck Dietrich aboard his new Lester MG (1250cc) finished first in class and directly behind Manting's Porsche."

Proceed from there to the Put-In-Bay Road Race Historical Society website to see a photo of Dietrich's Lester-MG, clearly sporting the earlier body style:
http://www.pibroadrace.com/the-big-list-pu...-drivers.html#d

(You can click on the thumbnail-sized photo to bring up a larger photo photo of car# 31. Note that the car is marked "G" for G-Modified immediately above its racing number.)