I won’t hide it…when it comes to anything built before 1955, I’m somewhere between bad and God-awful. The first half of the American motor car is a mixture of Tin Lizzy shapes, fat fenders and early Willys MB in OD green paint. I pretty much have to donate hours of research on anything my grandfather would’ve been driving when he was my current age. I remember the stories he told me about the cars of his past…Model As that had been converted into pickup trucks to move produce to market back when he was just another Iowa farm-boy, his Plymouth command car during his early days of service, and more. If he saw the random old car out and about he was sure to point and inform me that what I just saw was a real car, not some gas-guzzler with a plastic interior. He’d also be quick on the draw when I offered to finance an old “real car”, backpedaling to safety and modern efficiency standards.
I’m almost embarrassed to admit that when I first saw “Frazer Nash” that I was expecting a tie to Nash, the American company that composed part of the merger that created American Motors. Guess I was wrong…Frazer Nash is entirely British! Archibald Frazer-Nash engineered the cars and after he proved to be rubbish at running a company, the brand wound up in several different hands, including a tie-up with BMW and eventually Porsche in 1987. Leno’s car is a TT Replica, but that was one of three models offered up for 1934, with the Colmore and the Shelsley also offering up the 1.6L Blackburne six-cylinder engines.
Leno will walk you through every bit of the car in detail, since this has been a long-winded work in progress. But watch as he takes this chain-drive machine out on the road. It looks like it’s sporty regardless of age, doesn’t it?
