Balsa BMW No. 2 (most probably)

[nicanary]

I was looking for new puzzle subjects today, and came across this. It's a "still" from a short film about the 1951 GP Sables d'Olonne. A rear view of the car reveals the race number 28 (or 29?) painted in that odd floral manner of French race officials of the time. Problem is, race #28 is allocated to the Ferrari 166F2 of Victor Polledry. All reference books insist that this is that car, unless of course I have misread the number.

It is always the possibility that it was a late entry or Polledry replaced his Ferrari with another car. I have perused the full entry list and it doesn't fit anything. The rear of the bodywork resembles the Delage and Delahaye race cars of the late 1930s but those wheels make me think it's something fairly low-powered. Simca? Wheelbase looks too long.

Any ideas?

[nicanary]

I may have solved this myself. It looks an awful lot like Eugene Martin's BMW special - note from this image that the cockpit side could be taken away, just like in my mystery photo. Martin is not entered in the race, but car #22 is a BMW driven by Armand Philippe. Maybe he was loaned the car for this race. (The race number on the tail could conceivably be #22)

PS I've just found out that Philippe knew Martin as friends - they shared a Veritas in one race and a Ferrari 166 in another. Looks like I've solved my own problem.

[tobytwirl]

Not sure I agree, but an alternative is hard to pin down. The problem is the dearth of photos of Eugene Martin's car, usually known as the BMW 328 special.  The other one looks nothing like the one you have shown in your photo, yet ostensibly they are the same car, perhaps at different stages of development.The problem I see is that the unknown car has wheels much more typical of Simca engined cars such as Gordinis. The Martin photos show either steel wheels or larger wires and to me looks bigger.

The only other entered cars with a number in the 20s were Meteor - BMWs, a Simca and a Ferrari. It is clearly not a Ferrari - you can see a 166 circulating in the film. Jean Thepenier's Simca 1500 was almost certainly an ex-works Gordini that he bought that year. Did he have it rebodied? He was number 26.

Number 20 was Marcel Balsa's car, labelled a Meteor BMW. By this time his own Balsa car was powered by Veritas Meteor engine, but again it suffers from lack of photos except in its earlier form. However a later photo of this car fitted with its V8 engine has a distinctly similar nose to the unknown car.

At one point in the film you can see the back of the unknown car. It has a long tapering headrest fairing, and is very left hand drive - not a central seat. That would tend to rule out a Gordini, (but early Veritas Meteors were lhd.) It would have ruled out the Balsa except for the fact that I have a photo of a lhd car labelled Balsa which looks very like it.........but I suspect its accuracy. Ironically it could be Eugene Martins car!!!!
Still with me? I don't think it is any of these cars,  I think it is more likely to be a late entry, small engined car as yet unknown.

[tobytwirl]

Seem to have lost some photos

[tobytwirl]

and again

[tobytwirl]

 On reflection this does look the same as my "Balsa but is it"  photo

[nicanary]

Thanks. I knew you'd be just as interested as myself - you have done great detectice work and it's much appreciated. I'm more or less in agreement with you. It all leans towards some sort of Simca-based special. The Balsa is definitely single-seater, the Martin BMW in my image bears no relation to the other Martin car which was one of my puzzles - and there's always the possibility that an image has been incorrectly captioned!

That's the problem with history. It's always being changed. Every reference I came across regarding this race stuck rigidly to the official entry list, even the sainted Black Book. On the day of the race, the organisers would have announced any changes to the entry, and no doubt some spectators would have marked their programmes accordingly. Oh to have access to one of those!

So it goes down in history as a BMW special, and nowt can be done about it. I would like to put this enigma to the old codgers on a well-known website for nostalgic enthusiasts (you'll know) but I lack the technical skills - they have a complex system for posting images which has confused lesser men than I. Go ahead if you want.

Thanks for the hard work.

PS I've just double-checked the photo of Martin's earlier BMW at the Coupe de Lyon, and it's confirmed in the Black Book.  I imagine he rebodied it a few years later. It's not as you say the same car as our puzzle - the bodywork does vary and the spring hanger is absent in the Coupe de Lyon photo. The rear view of the car which you have found looks like it is taken in the paddock (the car is shown on the tarmac road in the race footage) and bears the number 22 (faded) in the strange painting style used by French officials of the period. I mistook it for 26 or 28 in the film footage. This almost certainly makes it the race at Sables d'Olonne. Definitely the same car as my poser. The wheelbase looks rather long for anything Simca-based.

[tobytwirl]

I think I have cracked it. I am absolutely certain that the mystery car is the same as that labelled in my photograph " Balsa or is it". That photo even bears the outline of no.22 on its tail. The problem is that we have no photo of its front - until now. Attached is an albeit modern photo of what is undoubtably a Balsa, and I think this is Balsa-BMW no.2. Notice it is left hand drive, and has that perspex windscreen as opposed to the more common aero screen. It is quite different to the earlier Balsa - and note its cockpit shape. OK it has a different grille but I am 99% sure this is our car. I cannot of course explain why it is not driven by Marcel Balsa, who is on the programme as driving no.2O. I have peered at the film again and it is possible that he was driving the first Balsa-BMW, but I cannot be sure. On the version of the programme I worked on there were 3 "BMW Meteors" numbered 20, 22 Philippe and 24 Orley. I could not see one on the film, whereas I can make out the Duval and  I think a Deho-Simca.  I suspect the BMW Meteors were in fact all BMW specials.
Whatever, I think our car is a Balsa-BMW!

[nicanary]

Well done TT !  I have to agree with you 99.9%. I've got to keep something back!

Virtually everything on the internet about Balsa is just stats of his career. For that final 0.1% I'd like to see mention of him either improving his first car or building a second. Can't have everything I suppose. Now I know the results of your investigation, I realise that I probably couldn't have used this car as a puzzle anyway - it's probably a continuation model of an existing solved puzzle.

Thanks. Very much appreciated.


PS I'm a bit slow today - the BMW special with which we are most familiar is usually captioned as 1952. This suggests that either the puzzle car was altered to a smaller less heavy body shape, or that indeed there were 2 cars, because the photo you have posted shows the car as it is in modern times.