Lot Ended
Description
Unfinished project; elements of genuine McEvoy
Special Jensen body included; lots of spares; lots of potential
Colonel Michael
McEvoy was a fascinating character who not only saved the VW Beetle from the
rubble of WW2, he also designed superchargers for Mercedes, made his own
motorcycles and produced high-performance engine parts for Morris and
Wolseley.
It was thus a natural progression for
him to develop his own car, the McEvoy Special, based on the standard side-valve
Morris Minor of the time. Employing Jensen of West Bromwich to make the neat
four-seater body, he fitted various tuning parts to the engine, a remote control
gearbox and an 80mph speedo, two versions being available, the Model 60 and
the Model 70, the latter gaining a donwndraught carburettor, high compression
head and finned cast iron manifold. Only around 60 were made in total and
survivors are extremely rare today.
First
registered in April 1933, this Morris Minor was acquired by our vendor from The
Mouldsworth Motor Museum in Cheshire in August 2015. The museum also owned a
genuine McEvoy Special and our vendor was planning to rebuild the Morris into a
replica of that car but, as you can see, life and work got in the way of
completing this fun project.
Since the 2015 purchase, the essential
components for this build were assembled and fitted to the rolling chassis that
you see here. The drive train was completed with refurbished 4-speed
gearbox, balanced drive shaft, new clutch plate, cable brake system, and dynamo.
The chassis has been cleaned, sealed and painted and fitted with a new cross
member.
The vendor advises that although the gearbox is fully
functional, the remote control shifter gets stuck in reverse and a minor
adjustment is required to get these two parts to work nicely together. The
orignal shifter to the gearbox is in one of the boxes.
Supplied with many parts, including a spare engine in a
dismantled state and a four-speed Wolseley crash gearbox, it also comes with the remains of an original Jensen-made McEvoy
Special body, incomplete and in a fairly poor state, although there are drawings
of what the completed body should look like and photos of the Mouldsworth Museum
McEvoy (which was subsequently sold by Brightwells in 2017 for
£23,000).
Being sold here strictly on a
‘what you see is what you get’ basis, it comes with a V5C, historic restoration photos, a few invoices for new parts acquired
by the vendor since he bought the car (brake cables; engine mountings etc);
correspondence from the Mouldsworth Motor Museum and the Morris Register; plus
various magazine articles, drawings and bits of technical literature relating to
the original McEvoy Specials (see photos).
Only
for sale because our vendor has now moved abroad, this has the makings of a very
interesting Special and is on offer here at no reserve so the best bid takes it
home.
Consigned
by James Dennison – 07970 309907 – [email protected]