Lot details
Registration No: TME 924
Chassis No: 421/100/006
Mot Expiry: July 2005

As the largest specialist historic car auction house in Europe, H&H are delighted to be offering one of the most important British postwar collector vehicles in their auction here today, a 1948 Frazer Nash Le Mans Replica, only the second High Speed FN built with chassis number 006 from new and still carrying the original registration TME 924.
The marque, which has captured the imagination of the discerning collector, was founded in 1922 by Captain Archibald Frazer-Nash, who had previously made GN cycle cars with Ron Godfrey. Indeed, in 1924, the chain-driven transmission system employed on the GN was adopted for early `chain gang' Frazer Nash production which amounted to just one handbuilt motorcar per week leaving the Kingston-on-Thames works. First cars were made in an overcrowded workshop and then a larger factory across the road, before the Aldington brothers, H J, WH and DA, took the firm over and moved production to their AFN premises at Isleworth where Frazer Nashes were produced until 1957 after which importing Porsches was to become more profitable.
Postwar Frazer Nashes do not come under the hammer very often, which is hardly surprising as a total of only 84 of these extremely sporting motor cars were built. Of these, 34 were the cycle-winged cars that became the Le Mans Replica following the third place achieved by drivers Culpan and Aldington at Le Mans in 1949. The first four of these were Competitions or High Speed models, as being auctioned here.
The duplicate logbook shows that 006 was first registered on 30th October 1948 with an FNS Bristol engine. The first owner in the AFN Register's records is the proprietor of the Halfway Garage, Commander Allison, who bought it on behalf of one Patrick Hall in June 1949. By then, it had already been used by AFN as a development racer. Proprietors, the Aldingtons had lent it to Count Lurani for Dorino Serafini/Rudi Haller to drive in the Giro di Sicilia (better known to us as the daunting Targa Florio road race) as well as that other infamous test of man and machine, the Mille Miglia. Serafini had been leading the former, even staying ahead of such formidable competition as Ferrari 166s, until he visited one of the walls in a wet race, bending a wheel and the steering. The Serafini/Haller pairing also failed to finish the Mille Miglia, so 006 was hardly factory fresh when it reached its new keeper.
After this factory ownership, the car's first private owner was Tony Crook - a very successful racing driver in the immediate postwar era and, to this day, proprietor of the exclusive Bristol marque - who took delivery of 006 in time for the 1950 season. Crook and car started well by winning a Goodwood club race and finished the season with a 10th place in the high profile Tourist Trophy sportscar race. However, after Crook had taken delivery of his Le Mans Rep (PPG 1) in April 1951, he sold TME 924 to H A L (Lawrence) V Mitchell of the brewing family, Mitchell and Butler. At the 1952 Goodwood opener, Mitchell won a scratch race, leading Crook in his newer car. Autosport commented on "the verve of newcomer H A Mitchell".
During the 1952/3 seasons, Mitchell (whose exploits with the car have been well chronicled thanks to his "Post-war Musings" published in the `Nash Gazette' edition No 92 of December 1990) drove it to several lesser race wins and had some class wins in the major events. Probably his most important 1952 performance was fifth in the British Empire Trophy. Frequent co-driver Peter Scott-Russell recalled him as a very fast, but very smooth driver. "In the Jim Clark mould", he said.
It was probably for the 1953 season that Mitchell acquired a new competition engine, direct from Bristol, and fitted a wider longer air scoop on the bonnet top. While Mitchell was away winning the class at Le Mans with Ken Wharton in a Le Mans coupe, Scott-Russell took 006 back to the Isle of Man to secure eighth place (and third in class).
Mitchell/Scott-Russell had obviously been suffering from wheel problems as the car was by now shod with the bolt-on Austin wheels used on the current road cars, rather than the uprated BMW 328 peg-drive wheels originally provided. The Austin ones were obviously a little stronger as the car shed a wheel, subsiding onto its brake drum, during the 1953 Nine Hour Race in August; but they and 006 still completed the race.
By the time Mitchell and Scott-Russell went to the Ulster TT, the following month, the car was fitted with the wire wheels being used by the works car. On a surface notoriously hard on tyres, it was not the wheel that failed, but the stub-axle - the next weakest link. The car overturned, finishing on top of a stone wall and depositing Scott-Russell unhurt in the middle of the track.
At this point, Mitchell hung up his crash hat and retired from racing, although he did have the car rebuilt by AFN as, happily, it had been insured. As evident in 1954 photographs, it seems probable that this rebuild included a high-lamp Le Mans Rep front body section. However, it retained the sill-bulge of its High Speed ancestry. On its first post-rebuild outing at Crystal Palace three weeks later, Scott-Russell got the car on the grass and hit a discarded railway sleeper sideways; the car falling over again.
This time, it was rebuilt by Scott-Russell. The rear body was changed to a Manx-tail to carry the spare wheel - as on the works car XMG 6 - and the bodywork was repainted in a slightly darker green with yellow wheels. By now 006 had passed into Scott-Russell's ownership, although the logbook indicates that he bought the car in April 1954. He had some success with it during that season, but he was being left behind by the latest machinery from Lotus and Cooper. He decided to join the Lotus camp and bought a Mark X, into which he inserted the engine and gearbox from the Frazer Nash. Replacing these with a reconditioned Bristol BS1 engine and gearbox, he advertised the Nash in March 1955.
A D Brooks of Cambridge became the next registered owner in June 1955, not keeping it long before selling it on to Tom James, then an RAF recruiting officer at Duxford. A sprint or two later, James decided it was not appropriate for his visits to local schools, so he asked John Aley from the same motor sporting group of friends (and later of the Aley tuning firm and roll-over bar manufacturing fame) to dispose of it for him. John duly advertised TME 924 in September 1955, eventually part-exchanging it for a Triumph TR2 with J (Johnny) C Bain of Kilmarnock. The car was registered with the Ayr taxation district in March 1956.
Bain was driving it at Charterhall during the spring of 1956 when, following a grassy excursion, he overturned. Still damaged, it was acquired by Clive Bourchier and rebuilt it with a Swallow Doretti body and a hot Ford V8 engine; in this form, being taxed again in May 1958. It was then owned by David Power and, in November 1964, sold on again to Peter Nuding.
Stephen Curtis acquired 006 from a March 1965 advertisement in Exchange & Mart, in which it was described as a "Poor Man's Cobra". Although Stephen was not overly impressed with the car, he knew he had a 1948 Frazer Nash underneath - and set about restoring it to a period specification. However, he chose to re-create the Le Mans Rep body with the higher (legal) headlights, retaining the wire wheels; nearly its 1954 specification, in fact. Importantly, and contrary to one published version of the car's history, the vendor claims that it did not have a new chassis. For apparently the present chassis apparently still carries evidence of once having mountings for that Ford V8 engine; the Ford power unit being replaced with a Bristol 100B2/D2-spec engine and the bodywork painted in Burgundy.
In 1976, Peter Jackson then became the car's owner and, in the early 1980s, bought an ex-Bob Gerard 12-port head engine from Cecil Booth, who had long raced it in TMX 545, the Norman Culpan car he had bought in 1959. This is believed to be a period conversion from Gerard rather than one of Bristol's own 12-port head BSX engines as used in the 450 Le Mans cars.
Although it had a conventional water pump and fan, Jackson replaced this with an external water pump to improve circulation through the block, placing it where the dynamo should be, with the latter moved to the off-side driven by the same belt. The same solution was adopted by Bristol. Although this left the engine fan-less, an ubiquitous and period Kenlowe electric fan provided the necessary cooling air in heavy traffic.
With rare twin-choke downdraught Solex carburetors, a magnesium sump and big crankshaft, a Bristol engine, thus converted, reportedly produced around 160bhp in its day - and, even when tested recently, at 5000rpm, an impressive 130bhp was recorded at the rear wheels.
Looking stunning like only a Frazer Nash can, TME 924 is also said to drive beautifully. It is certainly very well presented today, with open 2-seater bodywork painted in maroon, interior trimmed in black leather interior and running on wire wheels. It is also an important part of the Frazer Nash story - and, although this famous motorcar may have led a slightly chequered existence during the first 25 years, the chassis is still the original and does have the benefit of continuous and fully charted history from new. Besides, so very few cars have the provenance of having taken part in such historic epics as both the Targa Florio and Mille Miglia as well as our own Tourist Trophy.
H&H are particularly indebted to Michael Bowler, the Editor of `The Automobile' and a leading authority on the marque, for his assistance and historical researches, which have been invaluable in the compilation of this catalogue description.
PLEASE NOTE: We have been contacted by previous owners of this sensational car including Tony (AD) Brooks who denies he was part of the Cambridge set at that time and was in fact on leave from Sri Lanka but completed races in it prior to the crank giving up the ghost.
Tony Crook, the owner of Bristol Cars and a most accomplished racer, also rang to say that he felt Michael had been light in extolling the achievements of this racer. The first meeting of any year is the Oxford/Cambridge Speed Trials and this car had the fastest time of the day in 1950; it competed with success at both Goodwood and Silverstone with the latter seeing it achieve the same lap time as Ascari in the Ferrari; it competed also at Presott and Shelsley and various other hillclimbs and in the awful wet race at the TT that year, when the Frazer Nashes came 1st, 2nd and 3rd, Tony came 3rd behind Stirling. He enthused about the car for some while and wishes the new owner well.e