Monday 17 October 2016

With a name like that?...

You have to wonder why, don't you?
I mean Bummer...come on!  And a background at a Public School, well, I mean...

W.S. "Bummer" Scott was a racing driver who knew Sir Malcolm Campbell. Well enough to buy a 1927 Delage 1 1/2 Litre GP car from him, ex-works almost.  That was the car with possibly the most beautiful engine ever built.  Never mind the Italians. They don't come close. Nope, the Delage straight 8 and the Amilcar straight 6 1100cc were staggeringly lovely bits of engineering/styling.
This only 1500 ccs. A straight eight, too!

And the Amilcar 1100



Anyway, old Bummer had one and he turns out to be a distant relative of an old client of mine.  He wanted a model, a one-off, to celebrate that fact, with a brass scale chassis and a front motor, so here it is.

Bummer liked to paint his cars black with an emerald green chassis and wheels. A dull as dishwater scheme if you ask me, but you ain't, I'll warrant, so I'll tell you anyway.

The body came to me as a shapeless mis-cast blob of resin off ebay somewhere, so had to be completely remodelled.  Then the chassis was made in brass and soldered up.  The funnel thing around the radiator area was made in very thin brass shim and the driver was an amalgam of three with some Miliput remodelling.  The wheels are a set of RS Slotracing's new skinny 19"s, which I designed for just such a model.  For too long slot racers have not had pre-War cars for want of a decent skinny 19" wire wheel.  And, what's more, they've needed not just some spindly thing for Austin 7s, but a selection for everything from that A7 up to an Invicta, with Amilcars and Delages in between.  So, here, at last after being messed about by a Scottish etcher, is an example of the 48 spoke wheel.  A7's, GNs, etc. have a 36 spoker and the bigger boys have a 60.  £15 a set of four seems to me to be the best value since Woolworths'. £20 with tyres, as seen here.

Tomorrow, this goes to its new custodian along with a Brabham BT33 F1 car.


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