A Le Mans Singer

Sir,

You may be interested to know that on May 3rd 1935 I bought, second hand, from Green Bros. of Leeds, a racing Singer Le Mans, Registration No. KV 5670. It cost me £160; its colour was red.

From my personal car book, I see that it had a 4-cylinder o.h.v. 972 c.c. engine. I noted that its tank held 131/2 gallons of Racing Ethyl, that it used KLG LKS 2 plugs and that the maximum speed I attained was 84 m.p.h. I don’t recall how this was measured since the car had a rev. counter only. I also recorded that the body was “a light two-seater on a Le Mans chassis, specially constructed for the 1934 Light Car Club’s Relay Race at Brooklands.”

I only entered the car for one meeting — at Filey Beach, Yorkshire on May 6th 1935, organised, I think, by the Yorkshire Sports Car Club. We ran in the 12 and 24 mile handicap races. I noted that “the car went well but the top gear was too high for sand” and that I “also ran” in both races!  

Fellow competitors included W. I. Miller in a 1,496 c.c. Bugatti, T. V. G. Selby in a 2,000 c.c. Bugatti, R. V. Spink in a 747 c.c. Austin and H. Hodgson in a 1,087 c.c. Riley.

The Singer wasn’t very exciting and I sold her in August 1935 for £140 to Allen’s Motor Mart in Leeds from whom I bought an MG J4 (747 c.c. supercharged) (Reg. No. BRF 107).

This latter car I had converted to single-seater and raced it quite successfully throughout 1936 on Brooklands (Mountain Circuit) Saltburn, Shelsley, Lewes, Wetherby and various other speed trials. I sold her at the end of 1936, when I was posted abroad, to Ian Nichols, who did well in her,

The car’s greatest achievement with me was to climb Shelsley in only 3/5s seconds slower than the 5,304 c.c. Formula One Auto Union, driven by Hans Stuck, at the June Meeting at Shelsley in 1936!

Shandon, Dumbarton ROBERT KING-CLARK