Le magazine et marché mondial pour les passionnés de voitures classiques, par des passionnés.
Le magazine et marché mondial pour les passionnés de voitures classiques, par des passionnés.
We wrote about the mad Jameson Special before but thought the time had come to ask for more information about the car once again.
What's its story? Well. You’d expect it to be impossible to loose sight of a six-wheeler car, over 18 feet long and equipped with a 1760hp strong 27-litre Merlin V12 engine from a BOAC Argonaut airliner under its fibreglass two-seat roadster body. However, it appears to be right the case with this wacky Special built by Paul Jameson in the mid-1970s.
Th fearsome machine made headlines and was dubbed ‘World Fastest Private Road Car’ at its time. The Frankenstein of engineering had its Rolls-Royce Merlin engine mated to three gearboxes with special gearing to keep the top speed below the 200mph mark. Its stable mate - John Dodd’s notorious ‘The Beast’ - was initiated by Jameson too. That leviathan survives to this day in southern Spain. When he took us out for a spin in the Merlin monster some years ago in Malaga, he was adamant the Jameson Special survived in the Netherlands, where it did a record run on the Afsluitdijk in the late 70s.
Video with the monstrous car and its lovely creator here.
Could it really still be hiding somewhere in an extra large shed? We'd love to be enlightened on this matter.
UPDATE: Reader Henry Norberhuis saw it very recently in The Netherlands. The car survives! (picture added)
(Words Jeroen Booij, picture Hot car magazine)