1932 Alta 1100 Sports Boattail Speedster

It is charitable to call Alta 'a small volume manufacturer'. Geoffrey Taylor ignored the usual practice of other specialist sports car makers and built the entire car himself, including in the case of this Le Mans veteran, a 1074 cc all-aluminum twin-cam Hemi-head four-cylinder engine.

This Alta (the only surviving 1100 Alta Sports) was commissioned to race at the 1932 Le Mans 24 Hours by Ludovic Ford and his co-driver, N.H. Baumer. The car's racing efforts were short-lived (just six laps) when the team's mechanics put oil instead of grease in the clutch thrust race causing an incurable clutch slip. Later in the year, the car was crewed by Messrs Ford and Baumer and competed in the Ards TT in Ulster. Unfortunately, it crashed after five laps and was forced to retire.

The car was sold in 1933 to Mr. R. F. Fowell who used it regularly for a quarter of a century. In 1958, ownership passed to Mr. T.C. Jackson and thence to a Mr. N. Haley before being acquired by Keith Eames in 1970. It remained with Mr. Eames for the next 27 years.

Mr. Ian Baxter acquired Alta number '14' in September of 1997 and then commenced on a restoration of the engine. In May of 2003, it was sold to a German individual who treated the car to a restoration. Currently, the car has its original engine and body.

Alta engines went on to other glories as one of their four-cylinder engines famously powered the Connaught of British racer Tony Brooks to victory in the 1955 Syracuse Grand Prix.