ALLARD CLIPPER

Built in 1954
3 wheels
Bench seat
347cc
The only known example left in the UK

Sydney Allard's Allard Motor Company is better known for its much larger cars, built in South London after the second world war, using a variety of six cylinder engines from Jaguar and Ford Motor Company and massive V8's from U.S.A. manufacturers. During 1954, in collaboration with David Gottleib's company Powerdrive Ltd., Allard built a small number of three-wheeled microcars, bearing the model name Clipper. It is believed that only about twenty such cars were made before the project came to an end, and only two examples are known to survive, one in a German museum and one in England. Both have RUMCars registration.

The steel chassis of the Clipper carries a Villiers 24B 346cc single-cylinder two-stroke engine at the back, just ahead of the left-hand wheel, which it drives by chain via a Burman gearbox. Traction on left-hand turns is reported to have been poor, especially when the driver was alone in the car. JAP and British Anzani engines were also tried but rejected by Allard.

The Clipper was at the forefront of technology in its day in having bodywork constructed of glass reinforced plastic, which was impregnated with colour throughout - normally ivory for the roof with a choice of ivory, red, or blue for the lower part. Production of such a shapely body in small numbers would have been difficult using traditional methods. Road wheels (one at the front and two at the rear) were of eight inch diameter.

Some contemporary pictures show child occupants of a rear "dickey" or "rumble" seat in what would normally have been the luggage space. This was intended only as an option, but would almost certainly have represented the last known use of such a feature, coming along after even the rather larger Triumph Roadster cars had ceased production.

906 CMT, seen here, has been featured in several books, and is still to original specification.