I mentioned in the recap of this year’s Elkhart Lake Vintage Festival that my friend Paul was looking for a vintage formula vee. He climbed in and out of as many different models of vee in attendance as possible, and got sage advice from the outstandingly friendly Vintage Vees contingent of the VSCDA. “What you really want is a Lynx B”, some would say. Others tried to sway him towards a Zinc. Even some of the Formcar guys tried to beckon him in; “Nothing can touch them in the wet”, they’d say.
So what does Paul do? He does the right thing and ignores them all when he finds a remarkable McNamara Sebring for sale a mere 20 blocks from his Minnesota house. I can’t say I blame him, the McNamara looks very good—more like a Formula Ford than a vee with that mysterious air opening at the nose. And the car came complete with a custom build trailer and second set of body work. There’s just no way to walk away from that.
Beyond the car itself are the bounty of stories that came from the wife and son of the previous owner. Several period photos of the car in action and several tales of the involvement of the former owner in the seminal years of Minnesota’s club racing scene.
Needless to say, I’ll be writing more about Paul’s new ride more in the coming months as we fit him to the car and get race-ready for spring. There’s not a huge amount to do; the car is in quite good shape just needs some modification to bring it back into Monoposto compliance. Stay tuned for the progress.
I’ll leave you now with a photo of Paul’s McNamara Sebring as she was raced in her earlier years (we think she’s number 12)
7 replies on “Paul’s New Vee”
[…] we start to reassemble Paul’s Vee (hopefully) in time for this year’s Spring Brake, I realized that I didn’t have a good […]
[…] wrote in to tell us of his first outing in his recently acquired McNamara Sebring Formula Vee. The car finished the race, he passed a few fellow racers. All in all […]
Hello Paul,
My name is charles Merrill, and I worked for McNamara Racing in 1968, 69, 70 and built many of the fromula Vees as well as the F3 cars. I have a Mk1 that belonged to Andre Pilette (Belgium Grand Prix Driver)which I am trying to restore. I see from your photos that you have what looks to be nice body work. Do you have moulds? I will send pictures of my old girl, which I actually buily it in January 1968.
[…] as this fascinating recollection of the ’52 race from an eyewitness to the crash. Thanks to Paul for the contemporary photos of the […]
My dad, Art Bly, was the mechanic for this car when it was racing. Do you have any more pictures of the car? My brother is thinking of getting a tattoo of the car.
[…] to celebrate Formula Vee’s 50th anniversary together with a FV-only feature race. (Edit: Paul just wrote in to tell me that this feature race had 34 Formula Vees. […]
[…] Paul gave me a peek at his photos from this year’s Rétromobile show in France (more to come). It’s an absurdly great collection of amazing machines… but one in particular stopped me in my tracks. […]