The Legendary 2.3

Al Coppel’s wife Liz looks upon 2311229 in the early 1950s. (Joe Breeze Collection)

By Simon Moore

Read Part 1

We can now move on to the fate of Tom Bamford’s V8 engined car. I received the following email out of the blue on 25 March 2001: “Simon: My name is Lucas McCain, my father Chuck McCain and I recently acquired a very odd car. When we purchased the car, we were told by the previous owner that he was led to believe that the car could be dated as a circa 1937 Alfa Romeo; upon close examination, we discovered the chassis number on the side of the right frame rail, number 2311229.

The story of 8C2300 SN 2311229. Photo by Jim Sitz

Simon Moore has allowed VeloceToday to publish a chapter from his latest opus, The 8C Story Continues, for your consideration. And a great one it is at that, as 2.3 2311229 spent most of its life lost in America, and finding the history involved the talents of Jim Sitz and the late Michael Lynch, both heavy contributors to our humble journal. Allow us to begin with what little information there was about 2311229 in the original book, “The Legendary 2.3.”  Simon, along with the late Gordon Barrett, realized that the only possible contender for this chassis number was a very unusual (in that the body had a completely hidden soft top when folded down) 2.3 that appeared in the May 1951 issue of Road & Track, where there were photos of the car with two different license plates, one being a British tag. The story was written by Henry Steele, who described having to drive the car from Missouri to California in 1938. It was then raced postwar in California with a V8 Mercury installed – and then with a locally made body powered by a Cadillac V8. And that’s about all Simon could report in 2000 when “The Legendary 2.3″ was published. The car appeared to be lost to the ages. Twenty-two years elapsed since then and the full story was finally revealed in his latest book, per below.-Ed.

By Simon Moore

It is difficult to know how to structure this chapter so I am going to write it chronologically which means investigating how a British registered 8C2300 with a CD plate on it wound up in the Midwest in the USA before the war. Then I will go on to who arranged for that drive described in the May 1951 issue of Road & Track, whereby the car arrived in California, before the amazing discovery of the Cadillac engine special since the book was published. Current owner Paul Gregory and I have spent hours trying to work out the history and this is our informed conclusion.