Who belongs to this Bugatti (or Riley)?

You are THE MAN!!! Right you are! And when I did a search, the grey one came up on the first page...



BINGO! More! This album has quite a few of the grey one!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fine-cars/sets/72057594082200864/

 

After seeing this thing in all these different albums, it's obvious the color is really dependent on the light for this thing. Not what I thought at all. However, it gave me some GREAT ideas.

Thanks everyone for your help! I also learned quite a bit about some vintage racer makes I never knew before. Good stuff!

Damn, it would be cool to have one of these!

 

That's what I thought.

I figured they were priceless works of automotive art that I had no possible way to own a real one...so I'm building my own, inspired by pictures I found.

 

I hear ya on that one. I've loved Bugs for a long time, part of the other side of my car love, the none HAMB side

Maybe we should all pool our money and buy one. We could spend our time driving it from coast to coast, partial custody arrangement

 

Oh what?? A jet-powered belly tanker isn't good enough for you?! You have to have a Bug too??! LOL!!

Good plan though! However, I do really like Flipper's idea of just building one...

 

Hey Scooter,

In the late 70s Mercedes Benz had a deep blue colour used on their big sedans (6.3, 6.9 et al) and I wanna say I've seen the colour on their 123 bodied (german taxi cab model) models as well. This colour is what I've seen, used on early Riley, ERA, Sunbeam and at least one Railton!

And I got nervious when ChevyGirl used the term "custody"!

S****ey Devils C.C.
"Spending A Nation Into Generational Debt Is Not An Act Of Comp***ion!"

 

Sorry I'm late, just found this thread. I'd vote for a current Mercedes dark blue or one Audi has. If you want old Bugatti paint chips send me a PM with your address, these belly pan pieces are the last Bug bits I have, dark blue over white. Now for the interior...........trust me, DARK green leather, and wood grained window garnish and dash.

 

Man, that's a narrow car. Those guys are shoulder to shoulder and have quite a bit hanging out in the breeze.

 

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]Rally NC - two seater sport body - manufactured in 1930[/FONT]​

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif]There was a time when a car manufacturer could produce only a handful of cars each year and still be successful. That was in an era when skilled manual labor came relatively cheap and the price of a car was largely dictated by the materials used. Small, specialized manufacturers were able to build cars to order and charge enough for them to pay for the man-hours and materials while there were just enough customers who could afford it. This way a large number of tiny car factories existed up to the 1930s when economic recession prompted for a far more commercial manufacturing process and only the most famous of them were able to survive.
The French manufacturer Rally was a small scale operation located in Colombes which didn't survive the 1930s. Since the company started its production of small, lightweight sports cars in 1921 it competed with better known French marques as Amilcar and Salmson. The company quickly gained a reputation of producing rapid cars of high quality. Practically all of their cars were open 2-seaters particularly suited to be used in compe***ion on normal roads, hence the name of the marque. But Rally sports cars were also entered in circuit events like the 24 hours of Le Mans. During the years the cars Rally produced grew from Harley-Davidson powered "cycle cars" to compact yet mature roadsters with a sturdy ch***is and 4-cylinder engines.
The best known models Rally produced were the types ABC, NC and NCP, all from the late 1920s and early 1930s. Since the cars were largely built to order each one that left the factory was more or less unique. The engines which powered the Rally models usually came from outside manufacturers and could be specified by the customer; engines of the make SCAP were mostly used. The car on the picture however has a 4-cylinder Salmson powerplant with alloy cylinder head and two carburettors. Rally has produced a proprietary engine as well, a 4-cylinder with double overhead camshafts producing 40 hp @ 3800 rpm.
Rally didn't stray from the uncompromising compe***ion designs which had rendered them a loyal following of customers, unlike Amilcar and Salmson. This lead to the downfall of the marque in 1933, when the demand for its true sports cars just wasn't enough to survive and there were no other, more practical, car designs to fall back on. The limited amount of cars Rally had produced were hardly known outside of France and this meant the marque was soon forgotten. [/FONT]

Like the text color?????? closest I could get.
Jim ​

 

Do any HAMBers have access to one of these Rally cars?

I would love to find out the basic dimensions of these cars (wheelbase, overall length, track width, body width, body height, wheel and tire sizes....etc.).

More pictures would also be appreciated.

 

Flipper,

Here is a Bugatti 35C- will see if I can find a Riley for you:

 

Sorry for the big pic!!!

 

I found another picture of one.

 

I found some more Rally pics.

 

A few more....





One with fenders!

 

Interesting that despite being French, they're all right hand drive? All the French stuff I'm aware of is LHD, but admittedly I'm not familiar with pre-WWII ones.

 

Flipper, if you can determine the wheel size you should be able to scale all of the other dimensions from your photos.

 

I finally found one parked next to something that I can use as a size referrence... a Bugatti! It does appear to be really close in proportions. ...maybe a tad wider?

I dig the low headlights. It looks like a hot rodder got ahold of this one.

 

Great thread, This will help with the project that I have that is slowly going together.

Now I need to find a source for those Brooklands style windshield frames.

 

Try this place: -

http://www.vintagecarparts.co.uk/part.phtml?PartID=982

 

I think its a race thing. Ive seen right hand drive race-Ferraris: Its normal in Europe that race cars are right hand drive. The same with the Ford GT 40, that was built in England.
Lars

 

It's more of a status thing, especially in France pre-WWII. Ch***is that attracted chauffeur-driven coachwork would be supplied as RHD, so that the chauffeur was on the right side to hop out and open the door for Madame or Monsieur. As performance ch***is were often based on the same components they inherited the RHD architecture. It was therefore customary for sports cars to have RHD, and the usage spread to fairly humble models, too.

I wonder if that was what prompted Panhard to build a car with a central driving position in the late '30s. Their market position at the time was at the exact point of transition from LHD to RHD!

 

I figured Right Hand Drive was always the way it was done in Europe.

 

Im not sure, that you are right about that.
Sunday the local rod club, had arranged a museum tour, and there where several old racecars, Alfa Romeo, Bugatti and Ferrari, that was rigth hand drive.
Lars

 

The History Of Left and Right Hand Drive

About a quarter of the world drives on the left, and the countries that do are mostly old British colonies. This strange quirk perplexes the rest of the world; but there is a perfectly good reason.
In the past, almost everybody travelled on the left side of the road because that was the most sensible option for feudal, violent societies. Since most people are right-handed, swordsmen preferred to keep to the left in order to have their right arm nearer to an opponent and their scabbard further from him. Moreover, it reduced the chance of the scabbard (worn on the left) hitting other people.
Furthermore, a right-handed person finds it easier to mount a horse from the left side of the horse, and it would be very difficult to do otherwise if wearing a sword (which would be worn on the left). It is safer to mount and dismount towards the side of the road, rather than in the middle of traffic, so if one mounts on the left, then the horse should be ridden on the left side of the road.
In the late 1700s, however, teamsters in France and the United States began hauling farm products in big wagons pulled by several pairs of horses. These wagons had no driver's seat; instead the driver sat on the left rear horse, so he could keep his right arm free to lash the team. Since he was sitting on the left, he naturally wanted everybody to p*** on the left so he could look down and make sure he kept clear of the oncoming wagon's wheels. Therefore he kept to the right side of the road.
In addition, the French Revolution of 1789 gave a huge impetus to right-hand travel in Europe. The fact is, before the Revolution, the aristocracy travelled on the left of the road, forcing the peasantry over to the right, but after the storming of the Bastille and the subsequent events, aristocrats preferred to keep a low profile and joined the peasants on the right. An official keep-right rule was introduced in Paris in 1794, more or less parallel to Denmark , where driving on the right had been made compulsory in 1793.
Later, Napoleon's conquests spread the new rightism to the Low Countries (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg), Switzerland, Germany, Poland, Russia and many parts of Spain and Italy. The states that had resisted Napoleon kept left – Britain, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Portugal. This European division, between the left- and right-hand nations would remain fixed for more than 100 years, until after the First World War.
Although left-driving Sweden ceded Finland to right-driving Russia after the Russo-Swedish War (1808-1809), Swedish law – including traffic regulations – remained valid in Finland for another 50 years. It wasn't until 1858 that an Imperial Russian decree made Finland swap sides.
The trend a**** nations over the years has been toward driving on the right, but Britain has done its best to stave off global homogenisation. With the expansion of travel and road building in the 1800s, traffic regulations were made in every country. Left-hand driving was made mandatory in Britain in 1835. Countries which were part of the British Empire followed suit. This is why to this very day, India, Australasia and the former British colonies in Africa go left. An exception to the rule, however, is Egypt, which had been conquered by Napoleon before becoming a British dependency.
Although Japan was never part of the British Empire, its traffic also goes to the left. Although the origin of this habit goes back to the Edo period (1603-1867) when Samurai ruled the country, it wasn't until 1872 that this unwritten rule became more or less official. That was the year when Japan's first railway was introduced, built with technical aid from the British. Gradually, a m***ive network of railways and tram tracks was built, and of course all trains and trams drove on the left-hand side. Still, it took another half century till in 1924 left-side driving was clearly written in a law.
When the Dutch arrived in Indonesia in 1596, they brought along their habit of driving on the left. It wasn't until Napoleon conquered the Netherlands that the Dutch started driving on the right. Most of their colonies, however, remained on the left as did Indonesia and Suriname.
In the early years of English colonisation of North America, English driving customs were followed and the colonies drove on the left. After gaining independence from England, however, they were anxious to cast off all remaining links with their British colonial past and gradually changed to right-hand driving. (Incidentally, the influence of other European countries' nationals should not be underestimated.) The first law requiring drivers to keep right was p***ed in Pennsylvania in 1792, and similar laws were p***ed in New York in 1804 and New Jersey in 1813.
Despite the developments in the US, some parts of Canada continued to drive on the left until shortly after the Second World War. The territory controlled by the French (from Quebec to Louisiana) drove on the right, but the territory occupied by the English (British Columbia, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland) kept left. British Columbia and the Atlantic provinces switched to the right in the 1920s in order to conform with the rest of Canada and the USA. Newfoundland drove on the left until 1947, and joined Canada in 1949.
In Europe, the remaining left-driving countries switched one by one to driving on the right. Portugal changed in 1920s. The change took place on the same day in the whole country, including the colonies. Territories, however, which bordered other left-driving countries were exempted. That is why Macau, Goa (now part of India) and Portuguese East Africa kept the old system. East Timor, which borders left-driving Indonesia, did change to the right though, but left-hand traffic was reintroduced by the Indonesians in 1975.
In Italy the practice of driving on the right first began in the late 1890s. The first Italian Highway Code, issued on the 30th of June 1912, stated that all vehicles had to drive on the right. Cities with a tram network, however, could retain left-hand driving if they placed warning signs at their city borders. The 1923 decree is a bit stricter, but Rome and the northern cities of Milan, Turin and Genoa could still keep left until further orders from the Ministry of Public Works. By the mid-1920s, right-hand driving became finally standard throughout the country. Rome made the change on the 1 of March 1925 and Milan on the 3rd of August 1926.
Up till the 1930s Spain lacked national traffic regulations. Some parts of the country drove on the right (e.g. Barcelona) and other parts drove on the left (e.g. Madrid). On the 1st of October 1924 Madrid switched to driving on the right.
The break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire caused no change: Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Hungary continued to drive on the left. Austria itself was something of a curiosity. Half the country drove on the left and half on the right. The dividing line was precisely the area affected by Napoleon's conquests in 1805.
When Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Hitler ordered that the traffic should change from the left to the right side of the road, overnight. The change threw the driving public into turmoil, because motorists were unable to see most road signs. In Vienna it proved impossible to change the trams overnight, so while all other traffic took to the right-hand side of the road, the trams continued to run on the left for several weeks. Czechoslovakia and Hungary , one of the last states on the mainland of Europe to keep left, changed to the right after being invaded by Germany in 1939.
Meanwhile, the power of the right kept growing steadily. American cars were designed to be driven on the right by locating the drivers' controls on the vehicle's left side. With the m*** production of reliable and economical cars in the United States, initial exports used the same design, and out of necessity many countries changed their rule of the road.
Gibraltar changed to right-hand traffic in 1929 and China in 1946. Korea now drives right, but only because it p***ed directly from Japanese colonial rule to American and Russian influence at the end of the Second World War. ****stan also considered changing to the right in the 1960s, but ultimately decided not to do it. The main argument against the shift was that camel trains often drove through the night while their drivers were dozing. The difficulty in teaching old camels new tricks was decisive in forcing ****stan to reject the change. Nigeria, a former British colony, had traditionally been driving on the left with British imported right-hand-drive cars, but when it gained independence, it tried to throw off its colonial past as quick as possible and shifted to driving on the right.
After the Second World War, left-driving Sweden , the odd one out in mainland Europe, felt increasing pressure to change sides in order to conform with the rest of the continent. The problem was that all their neighbours already drove on the right side and since there are a lot of small roads without border guards leading into Norway and Finland, one had to remember in which country one was.
In 1955, the Swedish government held a referendum on the introduction of right-hand driving. Although no less than 82.9% voted “no” to the plebiscite, the Swedish parliament p***ed a law on the conversion to right-hand driving in 1963. Finally, the change took place on Sunday, the 3rd of September 1967, at 5 o'clock in the morning.
All traffic with private motor-driven vehicles was prohibited four hours before and one hour after the conversion, in order to be able to rearrange all traffic signs. Even the army was called in to help. Also a very low speed limit was applied, which was raised in a number of steps. The whole process took about a month. After Sweden's successful changeover, Iceland changed the following year, in 1968.
In the 1960s, Great Britain also considered changing, but the country's conservative powers did everything they could to nip the proposal in the bud. Furthermore, the fact that it would cost billions of pounds to change everything round wasn't much of an incentive… Eventually, Britain dropped the idea. Today, only four European countries still drive on the left: the United Kingdom, Ireland, Cyprus and Malta.
​

 

European sports and racing cars were often right hand drive, even French and Italian makes, because in Europe races are run clockwise around the track and the majority of turns will be right turns. With the driver on the right, he wouldn't have to look over the hood to see the apex of the curve.

 

I dont know whether or not it may help but back in N.Z. we found the closest thing to Bugatti blue was Fordson Tractor Blue [and I am not trying to be funny]. I live in the U.K. now but still have a tin out in my workshop and can give you the colour code if that helps.

 

The car is a Salmson Rally. Check it out on Google images.

 

Really?? Your first post was THAT?! I think it's pretty obvious we figured that out in the thread. Would have loved it if you'd expanded on your statement with some interesting information about the topic at hand.

Interesting that this thread came back up, though. I've LOOOONG since picked my paint (even sprayed it), but was just thinking about the cars mentioned in this thread for a future project. Sort of glad to see it again, especially the car that initiated the question.

 

Now aren't you glad that some "fng" pee'd in you coffee today, Scott ?