Tag Archives: CS

Balls Of Steel – Delahaye 135 CS

Today’s featured car is a Delahaye 135 was first registered in the UK on the 24th of March 1938. It appears to be a short wheel base CS version fitted with similar body work to the Competition Special which Eugène Chaboud and Jean Trémoulet drove to victory over the sister 135 CS driven by Gaston Serraud and Yves Giraud-Cabantous in the 1938 Le Mans 24 Hour race.

This car is fitted with a 3557 cc / 217 cui straight six motor that in it’s highest state of tune, with three carburetors, produces around 160 hp.

Delahaye 135, Sir Ralph Robbins, VSCC, Prescott,

The man seen driving this car at the VSCC Prescott meeting a couple of years ago is Sir Ralph Robin, an unsung hero of British Industry who joined Rolls Royce as an Engineer from Imperial College as a graduate apprentice in 1955.

When he retired from Rolls Royce in 2003 he was the companies longest serving employee and had risen all the way to the Chairpersonship 11 years earlier.

He helped turn the company around from a troubled nationalised enterprise in 1971 to a privatised world leader in it’s field by 1987, his deals with Cathy Pacific in 1979 and billion dollar deal with American Airlines in 1988 helped secure a future for British manufacturing for decades to come.

His CEO Sir John Rose once pithily described Sir Ralph as having “balls of steel”.

Thanks for joining me on this “Balls Of Steel” edition of ‘Gettin a li’l psycho on tyres” I hope you will join me again tomorrow for a closer look at the car in front. Don’t forget to come back now !

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Bavarian Coupé – BMW 3.0 CS Automatic

Soon after we got our first black and white TV in 1967 I remember seeing a Karmann built BMW 2000 CS on a report from a motor show, possibly Geneva, thinking that was one cool futuristic car, I must have been 8 at the time.

The next time I remember seeing a BMW Coupe was on the cover of one of the earliest copies of Motor Sport I bought in the summer of 1973, it was a white works CSL being yomped through the Eifel Forest on the Nurburgring by Hans Joachim Stuck Jr, the magazine must have been a sell out because the following year a near identical picture appeared on the cover Motor Sport from the 1974 6 hour race at the Nurburgring this time with Hans driving a black works CSL.

In 1968 the 2 litre Karmann built BMW Coupé’s evolved into the BMW 2800 CS based on the E9 platform, unfortunately ditching the very cool faired in headlights lights for the familiar US spec twin round headlights.

BMW was thought stand for British Motor Works in the USA around the time this car was built, BMW engaged in a works backed US Motorsports programme using the ‘Batmobile CSLs’ to correct that perception, to Bavarian Motor Works, in 1975.

In 1971 the E9 platform was fitted with a 3 litre / 183 cui 6 cylinder motor which when equipped with twin carburettors produced 180 hp.

This vehicle, according to the registration plates, was first registered in London around 1973/4.

I never did get what performance cars and automatics were all about, which is probably why I never became a auto marketing executive, but 30 plus years on an ‘automatic’ badge shows us the relative aspirations of the original owner and utilitarianism of the time when the car was manufactured.

There is something about vehicles designed around a simple horizontal midriff I find extremely alluring.

IMHO one of the few cars that looks as good in standard street form as in fully equipped racing form.

Like to thank every one who pops into ‘Getting a lil’ psycho on tyres’ at some point during the night this blog had it’s 10,000th page hit not exactly close to the 10 billion hits achieved by Apple Store but if you’d asked me if this was possible a year ago I would have wondered what on earth you were talking about, thanks again.

Hope you have enjoyed today’s Bayerische Motoren Werke edition of ‘Gettin a lil psycho on tyres and that you’ll join me again tomorrow for Ferrari Friday in the Bonham’s auction house for a look at a vehicle once owned by a dreamer who imagined all the people living in the world as one. Don’t forget to come back now !

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