Legendary ONES It's a commonplace to comment on something unique and uncommon. As it happened when we've found the figure of a classic sports car which in our opinion has a unique shape, we've never seen before. And we could be sure, that's you had never seen it as well. Immediately, we became curious to dig more infos about the car, eventually we've managed to find it from several sites on the internet...
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No other “Special” of the 1950s captured the imagination of the public as the design, build and debut of Strother MacMinn and John Bond’s LeMans Coupe. (Picture from: UndiscoveredClassics)
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Indeed, this uniquely shaped car made in the late 1950s has actually not existed for a long time, so it's no wonder that many classic car lovers today have never seen it before. Even some of them are trying to revive it for the sake of completing their curiosity. Latest news, some of the remaining car bodies are being tried to be revived by
Dennis Kazmerowski since 2021 and have entered the completion stage, while another one is also being rebuilt by
Geoff Hacker (founder of
Undiscovered Classics and auto archaeologist) to follow soon.
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| The LeMans Coupe' illustration from Strother MacMinn book entitled of Sports Cars of the Future back in 1959. (Picture from: CustomRodderForumactif) |
Well, the car mentioned above called
LeMans Coupe was designed by
Strother MacMinn, and the illustration had used as the cover of his book entitled
'Sports Cars of the Future' back in the 1959. Must admit if the car may have been beautifully designed and was emerged ahead of its time in styling, but unfortunately at that time the
LeMans Coupe was nothing more than a study design on paper.
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| Strother MacMinn based the design of his LeMans Coupe on the 1937 Talbot-Lago T150-C-22 by Figoni & Falaschi. (Picture from: UndiscoveredClassics) |
So it takes someone who has more than just dreams, wishes, and technical capabilities, but strong financial integrities as well to make it come true. Then who is he? As quoted from
Hemmings, that person is
John Bond, the publisher of
Road & Track magazine then. He was not only known as a publisher, also a designer and engineer.
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| Mockup for the plaster cast gives the appearance of a wingless aircraft fuselage or high speed boat. (Picture from: UndiscoveredClassics) |
For many years he wrote for his own column called
Sports Car Design in the magazine, in which he spoke about independent sports car development and production. It wasn't until the late 1950s that he challenged himself and his loyal readers to design and build a sports car projected to win the
24-Hours of Le Mans, something almost did by one of his fellow American entrepreneur and sportsman,
Briggs Cunningham in the early 1950s.
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| Mockup for the plaster cast gives the appearance of a wingless aircraft fuselage or high speed boat. (Picture from: UndiscoveredClassics) |
In a series of articles (approximately 4 articles), he gave a list of the specifications of the dream car, such as a wheelbase of about 88 inches, overall length 189 inches, tread 48 inches, height 46 inches. As for propulsion, it is projected to use
Chevrolet's V8 engine, with the layout of the engine consisting of an engine mounted in the front/center and a transaxle mounted in the middle/rear.
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| Alton Johnson’s LeMans Coupe was the first car completed and appeared in the August, 1960 Issue of Road & Track Magazine. (Picture from: UndiscoveredClassics) |
As for the frame itself,
Strother MacMinn written in his book,
Sports Cars of the Future, it was made very sturdy and simple, consisting of two straight parallel box beams, which kept costs down on this custom made piece. Furthermore the brake drum components come from Buick, and driven via modified Cord hubs. Even the wheels are made from other standard elements, and the entire assembly is kept as small as possible to keep head resistance and weight to a minimum.
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| Alton Johnson’s LeMans Coupe was the first car completed, and powered by a Chevrolet's V8 engine. (Picture from: UndiscoveredClassics) |
So far the neither
Bond nor
MacMinn built their proposed
Le Mans winner car, but released the idea to the public to attract interest among American auto enthusiasts to fulfill the car's destiny into real. As quoted from
Hemmings, along with
Strother MacMinn, Bond managed to get two teams interested in building it, though neither intended to actually take the car to LeMans. Each team is as follows; one team, led by
Ed Tift, which produced only one car before calling it quits.
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| It
is also unknown whether the Walter Johnson's Witchcraft dragster from
the late sixties was one of the LeMans Coupe body associated with one of
the three automaker' names. (Picture from: UndiscoveredClassics) |
While the other team consists of two aeronautical technicians, Marvin Horton and Ed Monegan, assisted by a fiberglass specialist, Alton Johnson. As it turned out, this team was preferred by
Bond and
MacMinn, because their work was more organized, at first they making a clay model, then a wood-and-plaster frame for a body mold
. In short, all the process was published in a series of articles during 1957 and 1958.
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| One of car bodies purchased by Hacker in Illinois back in 2008, which at one point had been dumped in the junkyard, come with a set of vellum drawings of the chassis by the team of engineers that Bond had come up with his specifications for the coupe. (Picture from: Hemmings) |
Their first completed car, finished in red, appeared on the cover of the August 1960 issue of
Road & Track magazine. At the time it was estimated the team had built at least six copies of the
LeMans Coupe, based on research results from
Geoff Hacker who had found five different bodies linked to
Horton,
Monegan, and
Johnson.
Because at that time usually small-scale fiberglass body manufacturers typically quit after a half dozen-built cars. |
The unfinished LeMans Coupe of Dennis Kazmerowski is made its mid-restoration debut in the General Motors Design Dome at the 2022 “Eyes on Design” celebration of cars in Detroit, Michigan. (Picture from: UndiscoveredClassics)
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Unfortunately, according to Hacker's search, this first car no longer exists because it was destroyed in an accident. So what's left probably can be counted on the fingers, no more than six units scattered throughout America. It is also unknown whether the Walter Johnson's Witchcraft dragster from the late sixties was one of the LeMans Coupe body associated with one of the three automaker' names above.  |
| Though Kazmerowski’s LeMans Coupe isn’t fully finished, the decision was
made by Eyes On Design that the car and its history is too important to
not share with others as early as possible, just as the original LeMans
Coupe also made its public display in unfinished form.. (Picture from: UndiscoveredClassics) |
As well as car bodies purchased by Hacker in Illinois back in 2008, it is not known with certainty who built the Horton,
Monegan, and
Johnson body. However, the car, which at one point had been dumped in the junkyard, come with a set of vellum drawings of the chassis by the team of engineers that Bond had come up with his specifications for the coupe. |
| This marks the first time in more than 60 years that the public has had an opportunity to see any of MacMinn's LeMans Coupes. (Picture from: UndiscoveredClassics) |
Not only that, the car is still equipped with a conventionally placed Chevrolet 283 powertrain and an automatic transmission installed in a 1-inch square tube spaceframe. The condition is not completely finished, with some parts of the fiberglass being finished, while other parts are not. Then the gullwing door also hasn't been installed and replaced with a canopy cut in the body, but hadn't yet cut out the windshield or installed glass into it. |
| The Dennis Kazmerowski's LeMans Coupe restored in the way MacMinn and Bond intended as a purely LeMans racer and not as a sports car that featured with two seaters inside the cockpit. (Picture from: Hemmings) |
Armed with Bond's original blueprints for the LeMans Coupe, Geoff Hacker decides that if he is going to complete his LeMans Coupe, he might as well complete it in the way MacMinn and Bond intended as a LeMans racer and not as a sports car. Well, to complete the
LeMans Coupe, it will involve as many as three different shops (
Craig
Johnson for the body,
JR Speed Shop for the chassis, and
Dave Koorey to put it all together) and a two-and-a-half-year timeline.
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Dennis Kazmerowski posed along with his unfinished LeMans Coupe before its mid-restoration debut in the General Motors Design Dome at the 2022 “Eyes on Design” in Detroit. (Picture from: Hemmings)
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Looking back in history, this makes the LeMans Coupe as one of the talked about and recognized special cars during the 1950s, which of course its designs has a visual impact to those who had seen it, would be automatically kept it in minds for almost 60 years of the rest of their lives.
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