During my time in the Forces, I had started to think about building a special and during spells of leave at home I began formulating my ideas.
From some initial drawings, so that I could evaluate the strength of the chassis – essentially it’s torsional integrity, I produced a ¼ scale chassis using a similar section square balsa wood chassis frame. At this time to run in the sports car class it was required to have doors, not only for the driver but also for the passenger. The special took years to build being finally registered as a Ford Special with a registration number of 20 RPH.
I had tried to register it, as a Manta Ford, but the Licensing Authority would only accept the name as Ford Special. The name was borne from the front body shape looking slightly like the Manta Ray fish, well before the Manta Opel usage.
The Manta Jaguar of Gordon Viola was my second venture into the world of specials and it came about in the early sixties. Gordon had purchased, from Don Farrell, a 3.4 Jaguar Special using a single tube (3” diameter) chassis, with Jaguar front and rear suspensions grafted on.
It sported an aluminium body with the flattest nose you could ever believe. Without belittling Don Farrell’s handy work it was, in my view, ‘horrid’. By this time Sydney had decided to stop any further attempt to produce the Allard marque, however I had a wish that we should have resurrected the J2/J2X in a modern form. The company had started to move on to more productive work, so a chance to use some of the redundant Allard parts in conjunction with the next ‘Manta’ seemed a good idea.