How nice it was to see the F1 Kieft finally take to the track.
My late father’s company, E.W.Humphries Ltd, located in premises adjacent to Boulton Paul at Pendeford, Wolverhampton built the body for the car and also the body for a V8 Chrysler sports car. My father’s company specialised in prototype aircraft work mainly for De Havilland and this was his only involvement with Kieft.
The rolled aluminium-alloy bodies were made to aircraft industry standards but when the F1 chassis arrived the body did not fit properly. My father was less than impressed with the design work. However they did eventually get it to fit.
Although I cannot recollect seeing the F1 car I do remember seeing the V8 sports car. It seemed to me, as a 10 year old child, to be the perfect replacement for the family Rover 75! Great was my disappointment when my father explained he did not own it.
The sports car was sent to Kieft’s Reliance Works, Derry Street, Wolverhampton, where it was fitted out, painted white ( photos in Autosport 13 August 1954 ) and exported to Erwin Goldschmidt. It is said he soon crashed the car. Replacement parts were sent out ( not from EWH ) and the car was rebuilt; only to “disappear”. It may have been located derelict in the USA or it may have ended up in Argentina. A driver called Carlos Stabile drove an “Alta-Chrysler” in the V Premio Invierno held at the Buenos Aires Autodrome on 30 June, 1957. In a photograph in Velocidad this car looked similar to a Kieft although the front had been re-profiled and the steering had switched sides possibly owing to it being rebuilt in the USA.
Can anybody in the States or Argentina supply information about the whereabouts of this car?
http://homepage.ntlw...es/image002.jpg The photographs were taken on the road near to the entrance of my Dad’s place. The men are those who built the bodies. Unfortunately I do not know their names but good blokes, all of them.
John
about that beautiful looking machine...
