The Stutz black Hawk

The Stutz Black Hawk

As a Stutz devotee, I was very grateful for the excellent article in the May issue. As recently as 1972 I found one of those 1929 Le Mans cars mouldering away in an open fronted shed near Saffron Walden. I alerted Paul Grist, who did some excellent work on it before selling it to Bill Harrah in Reno. These were marvellous cars with superlative handling, a fact which prompted W.O. in his first book (p. 165) to observe “the Stutz was particularly formidable with its lower frame and superior cornering to the Bentley.” The blower was, however, entirely useless.

I am not sure that I would regard Cecil Clutton as being anti American cars. He dislikes the flashy ones such as Auburns and Duesenbergs, but for such things as Packards and Lincolns he is rightly always generous with his praise. Also, he is fair enough to make those two points about the match race which other historians so studiously ignore; one is that in a shorter repeat race afterwards the Stutz won easily, and the other that the Boulogne Hispano was very far from standard and was of eight-litres, compared with about five of the challenger. Incidentally, why do you refer to the Boulogne as ”ancient” by comparison with the American? Brettenham COLIN BUCKMASTER

in reply to the last sentence, I did so because, basically, the design of the Hispano Suiza goes back to before 1919, that of the Stutz to 1926. — Ed.).