I hope someone from ‘across the pond’ may kindly be able to help after reading my tale!
Edmund Hamburger was a very useful Ace pilot in 1958 and 1959, prior to selling his Ace and moving up to a larger class. In 1958 he was the 2 Litre Champion for the NY Region of the SCCA, and he placed 8th O/A in the E Production class of the SCCA series. His car was displayed on the AC stand at the NY Automobile Show at end of the 1958 season.
I believe Ed was NY based, and this is reflected in the fact that most, if not all his racing appears to have been conducted on East Coast circuits.
His car was almost certainly one of a batch of four Ace-Bristols exported to Hap Dressel’s ‘AC Imports’ of Arlington, Va. These cars left the AC factory in July 1957 and were numbered BEX 311 – BEX 314. Where a car had been ordered to a particular specification the owner’s name was often recorded in the factory records. In the case of this batch of four cars there is only one name allotted to any of the cars, that of E. A. Hamberger (sic), against the first car of the batch, BEX 311. Understandably this car is assumed to be the one he raced.
There are two period pictures of the Edmund Hamburger’s car taken in 1958 attached at the link. It appears his racing number was 33, and it will be seen that the car as raced by him is a metallic brown/bronze in colour (not a factory colour), and that it was fitted with standard factory roll hoop. I’m indebted to Dave Nicholas, a journalist and photographer active on the East Coast in the 50s and 60s, for this colour picture of Ed Hamburger’s car, taken at Watkins Glen in 1958, as well as for another colour photograph showing an Ace the same colour, again at Watkins Glen, but this time in the hands of Dave Wilcox, in 1961, and using #18.
To get to the point, I own BEX 313 from this same batch of four cars. I bought the car in Florida where it had lain unused since the late ‘70s. The owner knew nothing of its history, but he told me that he had bought the car in NY State and had it transported to Florida, with the intention of restoring it. As can be seen from the 3rd photograph, when bought by me it was metallic bronze and had the factory roll hoop (as well as lap seat belts and the optional low ratio (4.3:1) differential). These racing mods had always led me to consider that the car may have been ordered from the factory with the aim of some form of competition, but until recently I had no means of researching its early history. Needless to say the emergence of Dave Nicholas’ photographs, showing an East Coast car in metallic brown/bronze makes me think it quite a coincidence that two cars from this batch of just four cars should both be painted in a very similar (the same?) colour?
Perhaps difficult to explain is why either car should have undergone a full re-spray so early in its life - BEX 311 was originally red, BEX 313 was originally pale yellow. It might suggest an accident, but certainly the alloy body on my car was in very good order under all the paint and bore no signs of heavy damage. The whereabouts of BEX 311 is not yet known to the Ace-Bristol register (hopefully it will emerge in time) so it is not possible at the moment to establish whether this car was ever bronze as well.
In finishing, I should add that I have recently tried writing to Edmund Hamburger at a last known address from the mid 1990s when he was living in LA but this letter was returned marked ‘no known forwarding address’
Can anyone throw any more light on this please?
