Andrew Talbot Racing
In 1981, when I was PR Secretary of the TSSC, I was informed that an Andrew Talbot who had a ‘Triumph Road and Racing Tuning’ business in Runcorn, Cheshire, allegedly had a Le Mans Spitfire. I wrote to him and received the following reply (only the original letter-heading is shown below as the letter was hand written).
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your letter of September 8th inquiring about the Le Mans Spitfires. Unfortunately I do not own one of these, much as I would like to. I do have numerous parts from the Le Mans projects including a bodyshell for the extra-wide GT6 1966 Le Mans prototype which was stopped by Donald Stokes in his ‘motor racing does nothing for selling motor cars’ campaign. I also have engines, original body moulds and some alloy panels. Most of the alloy body panels were destroyed and sold for scrap.
I myself raced Spitfires in Modsports, and a Gt6 & Herald, from 1968 to 1975 and have quite a few photographs.
As far as business goes I manufacture every single panel for Spitfires and GT6s (except Mk3 GT6 roof and bonnet), from bumpers to complete replica body shells, in glass fibre of course.
When I was racing myself I occasionally saw a Le Mans Spitfire (ADU6B I think) but it was non-original; the engine was 70X and the logbook was original too, but they were the only parts that were. The problem was that Triumphs tended to use the same logbook for various cars, and damaged cars were often sold, but never with logbooks. Unfortunately without a genuine logbook I have no chance of building a Le Mans car in spite of the fact that I would have more genuine parts than most of the other documented “Le Mans” cars. I could build one but the Historic Sports Car Club would not accept it.
I later visited him with a friend. Some of the photographs I took were published in Triumph World in August/September 1999 as well as in the TSSC magazine ‘Courier’. I show some below.
There was never any provenance to confirm that this body was ex-Standard Triumph and David Pearson of Canley Classics tells me that it was actually a Windmill Plastics body. “Mr Williams (Windmill Plastics) was a prolific producer of plastic Spitfire racing body shells here in Coventry in the 60’s, and early 70’s. Perhaps the most famous earlier Windmill Plastics bodies were used on the Gold Seal racing cars, but they went on to make the closed coupe shells some of which were widened”. I never saw any Le Mans parts or photographs.
Andrew Talbot did indeed have some success racing in Modsports and Special Saloons in the late 60s to mid 70s, usually in Triumph Spitfires or a Spitfire based Triumph Herald. A couple of pictures are shown below:
