13 replies to this topic

[luca]

Hi wondered if anyone knows if the chassis numbers of race cars were recorded on each event as part of entry into the race.

Thanks .

[Mistron]

If only!

Generally not, though some teams kept records and some races may have recorded it. Did Le Mans or F1 require it for entries or record it at scrutineering? I seem to recall this being the case at some point?

That said, even if records were kept (either by teams or organisers) it wouldn't always mean that the records were correct!

Chassis numbers seem to get more important the older/valuable the cars get (or the more successfull they were)

[Tim Murray]

Here's the definitive statement on the subject, from this thread:

There is a common misunderstanding that chassis numbers are available in original entry lists. They aren't - except in a tiny handful of exceedingly rare cases.

I blame websites like racingsportscars.com and oldracingcars.com which publish chassis numbers in their race results and make it look like they came from original published material.

Chassis numbers have to be derived from other sources, such as manufacturers' production records, adverts, occasional chassis plate observations, documentation held by current owners and from mentions in reports of previous owners. Organisers hardly ever recorded chassis numbers and even where they did, the records have not in most cases been preserved. The best cases are at the Indy 500 (but not as early as 1963) and Le Mans.

[D-Type]

Chassis numbers did have to feature on import and export documentation - but that doesn't mean they really matched the car. If for any reason a team changed its plans (eg if a car was damaged) and had to take another car, it was easier to change the chassis plate than change the documentation.

As racing cars were imported on a temporary import permit, if the car crashed the wreckage had to be taken out of the country. Which leads on to the scam of selling a perfectly good car and re-exporting a load of junk with the correct chassis plate and passing it off as the wreckage from a racing accident.

[Stephen W]

Basically this whole subject is "a can of worms" or "a minefield". The project I am currently working on will have chassis numbers but it willl be a far from complete data-field. This sort of data is lost in the mists of time and to actually get to what a chassis number of a particular car at a particular event was is in my experience a long winded and fruitless task.

[luca]

Thanks, the question came to me after seeing this on ebay. Visit My Website

Edited by luca, 06 May 2011 - 23:53.

[donharper]

D-Type is correct. I can remember using Carnet De Passage for cars going to and from England in the late 70's.
Chassis plates got removed from damaged cars and riveted to the new car.

[Jesper O. Hansen]

Here's the definitive statement on the subject, from this thread:

Here's the definitive statement on the subject, from this thread:


QUOTE (Allen Brown @ Mar 19 2011, 11:46)
There is a common misunderstanding that chassis numbers are available in original entry lists. They aren't - except in a tiny handful of exceedingly rare cases.

I blame websites like racingsportscars.com and oldracingcars.com which publish chassis numbers in their race results and make it look like they came from original published material.

Chassis numbers have to be derived from other sources, such as manufacturers' production records, adverts, occasional chassis plate observations, documentation held by current owners and from mentions in reports of previous owners. Organisers hardly ever recorded chassis numbers and even where they did, the records have not in most cases been preserved. The best cases are at the Indy 500 (but not as early as 1963) and Le Mans.

Sorry for the mess, but to get the full quote.

racingsportscars.com and oldracingcars.com (that's the quoted Allen Brown, by the way?) don't claim to know the chassis numbers anywhere on their sites. ORC even has a statement that says so, among other things. So, what's readen into the chassis numbers listed on the sites is for the beholder of the eyes reading and nobody else to blame. I salute their work.

Jesper

[arttidesco]

DSJ did his best to record chassis numbers used in Grand Prix for Motor Sport during the 1970's, I imagine even he was probably not privy to information about vehicles that had chassis numbers swapped last minute in order to cross international borders.

In the 1980's particularly 1981 Alfa Romeo threw a spanner into his enquiries and much info on Alfa 179 chassis types and numbers for 1981, Spanish GP onwards, simply does not tie up with contemporary photographs.

I imagine it would have to be a particularly diligent journalist who got 'most' of the chassis numbers at Crystal Palace though with good photographic records many of the registration numbers might not have proved such a difficult task.

RSC and ORC do their best with the information they are provided with, Martin Krejci of RSC operates primarily as a photo resource of the entries in sports car races and makes no secret of the fact that Allen Brown at ORC and others are greater authorities on the subject of chassis numbers.

Much to his credit Martin will correct errors on RSC if you send him verifiable information.

[David McKinney]

If you knew the amount of research that goes into ORC you wouldn't say "they do their best with the information they're provided with". I assure you, our policy is to ignore all internet and printed data and do our own "providing"

[arttidesco]

If you knew the amount of research that goes into ORC you wouldn't say "they do their best with the information they're provided with". I assure you, our policy is to ignore all internet and printed data and do our own "providing"

No offence intended David, I know Allen does a lot of research and I am sure Martin does plenty too, but sometimes I am sure the information they find / get is contradictory and in that respect they are both doing their best with what they 'find / are given'

[Chris Townsend]

No offence intended David, I know Allen does a lot of research and I am sure Martin does plenty too, but sometimes I am sure the information they find / get is contradictory and in that respect they are both doing their best with what they 'find / are given'

It's much the same with most forms of historical research, there are very few absolute guarantees of fact: few things in researching chassis identities are cut and dried and there are more ways to demonstrate the identity of a car than its chassis number.
Even if we ORC historians make use of factory records, where we can get them, we don't take them as gospel - too many times cancelled orders aren't changed for one thing, clerks wrote entries in the wrong column. If we can get them, we like invoices better, and customs paperwork. Some factories better than others - Ralt record keeping almost exemplary, Chevron very unreliable and incomplete, March often dodgy, and their overseas sales mostly tell you who the sales agent was, nothing else.
At least Ralt gives you fuel cell numbers, gearbox numbers and tub numbers; March will sometimes tell you gearbox and tub, and even sometimes engine numbers for USA sales.

SCCA log books and correlating car tags are very useful.

Best of all, chassis number observations made in period - we have literally thousands - then correlated to works records, but even then the observer makes mistakes and writes the number down wrongly, or indeed records a plate that's been put on another car to keep customs happy. [March even stamped up the same plate twice in one season for a works F2 car: having sold the original team spare to a German customer they realised they were contractually bound to give their number one driver a spare, so they built another, with the same number as the original because they couldn't be bothered to raise new carnets.]
Magazine references, the trend started by DSJ, are good, but even then journalists wrote things down wrong, the typesetter made an error, or even worse, the journalist made an assumption that what he'd seen someone use the previous race or season was still his car. (A classic case being Dick Barker's F3 and F.Atlantic Brabham BT28s in 1971-72, in case you're into the detail)

How to solve this; in a word "provenance" - you trace the history, pretty much race by race, and try to match the contemporary claims for a car with what's demonstrable from the evidence, and explain the contradictions. (The journalist's assumption about Barker's car being the same can be proved wrong by observations of the frame number, not the chassis number.) If you see a chassis number quoted on ORC it's not just because we've seen it given for that driver in the works records, or even just seen it recorded on a particular day, in a particular place, by a reliable observer. It's because we've correlated all the available data and can write a narrative that explains that car with that chassis number at that point in time. Still doesn't mean that we don't have to rewrite that narrative when more data are found.

Edited by Chris Townsend, 08 May 2011 - 18:35.

[luca]

I have found that a journalist's can quickly read over a web page and make assumption that distort the facts which become facts to the reader. Small details which some might say matter little, but to the person who has bothered to take the time to research are all important thus distorting the facts.

[Stephen W]

No offence intended David, I know Allen does a lot of research and I am sure Martin does plenty too, but sometimes I am sure the information they find / get is contradictory and in that respect they are both doing their best with what they 'find / are given'

Some aspects of research throw up what are contradictory statements from the journalists of the day for example. One car in particular was referred to as a BT30, BT30X and BT29 back in the day. However the up-side is that if certain journalists state that a particular car is chassis xx-xx then I for one would believe them. Even personal observations are not infalable as I have misread a chassis plate in the past (I know we shouldn't believe everything we read on a chassis plate but it's a starting point!)

If I had my time over I would have spent more time verifying chassis numbers than out watching the racing but then again I went to events to see the cars in action rather than static in the paddock. I also didn't realise at the time the headache I would inflict upon myself years later now that I am trying to research which cars were which!

Certain cars have an unbroken line of ownership and are easy to trace. Others are so shrouded in mystery that rather than 'guess' whether the details we have come across might be accurate it tends to be left out of anything published rather than run the risk of mis-identification.