I hope you will pardon my son Paul's (aka osi26r) youthful exuberance. His excitement about the Elan is not wholly unjustified, though. He has done a lot of good work on the car, including finding out a lot of things on the internet I never knew. I had always thought I just had this old Elan in the garage that was raced in the SCCA of the mid 60s. I had no idea it was a "26R", or what a 26R was. All my attempts to find parts were failures and progress was non-existant. The internet changed all that. Paul found a number of places on the internet that had parts, including Dave Bean. A couple of e-mails later I discovered that not only did Dave have a 26R, but that it was originally raced by a guy whose name I new very well, Bill Young. Bill Young won third place in points for the west coast division in 1965. Joe Ward (Paul's grandpa) was second in points behind Dick Jones of Fresno. All three drivers were eligible to race for the national title at Daytona in Florida. During the shipment of my dad's Elan to Florida the hub was damaged and he wasn't able to qualify. Bill Young, who had a similar Elan back in LA wired his shop, had them remove the hub from his older car and send it to Florida - True sportsmanship. The hub made it to Florida in time for my dad to race on Sunday, but he had to start dead last(27th position) because he couldn't run the qualifying races. By the end of the race, Dad had made it all the way to 3rd place against the top drivers in the country. Who won? Well, you know. Bill Young.
Paul also found a video on the internet that had some footage of our Elan. www.motorsportcollector.com. If you go to that site and page down a little ways you will find a section that has a link for "videos". There, you will find the video "1965 Times Grand Prix". The video was actually taken from an ABC Sunday sports show at Riverside International Raceway. I thought I would buy the video hoping that maybe there might be some footage of Joe Ward in our Elan. Sure enough, there are about 6 different clips of the car, mostly getting passed by the likes of Jim Clark in his Lotus 40, or Hap Sharp's Chaparral. He had qualified 41st for a starting field of 40 and it looked like he wouldn't be in the race. Then, Jim Hall's Chaparral's suspension broke and moved Joe Ward up to the last spot on the grid. The only other car in the race that even resembled a street car was a factory backed 427 Cobra. Joe Ward finished 3rd in the under 2 liter class behind a pair of Lotus 23s and 17th over all.
The video, with shipping and all, is about $31.
I never thought I would ever see actual footage of our Elan, but I am hoping now that there is more available. If anyone knows of any, let me know. Thanks,
Bruce
Paul also found a video on the internet that had some footage of our Elan. www.motorsportcollector.com. If you go to that site and page down a little ways you will find a section that has a link for "videos". There, you will find the video "1965 Times Grand Prix". The video was actually taken from an ABC Sunday sports show at Riverside International Raceway. I thought I would buy the video hoping that maybe there might be some footage of Joe Ward in our Elan. Sure enough, there are about 6 different clips of the car, mostly getting passed by the likes of Jim Clark in his Lotus 40, or Hap Sharp's Chaparral. He had qualified 41st for a starting field of 40 and it looked like he wouldn't be in the race. Then, Jim Hall's Chaparral's suspension broke and moved Joe Ward up to the last spot on the grid. The only other car in the race that even resembled a street car was a factory backed 427 Cobra. Joe Ward finished 3rd in the under 2 liter class behind a pair of Lotus 23s and 17th over all.
The video, with shipping and all, is about $31.
I never thought I would ever see actual footage of our Elan, but I am hoping now that there is more available. If anyone knows of any, let me know. Thanks,
Bruce