You know the story. Start with a svelte English chassis, add an American V-8, clothe it in a lightweight body and go racing. It worked for Carroll Shelby. It worked for Sydney Allard. Worked for a lot of other folks too, but Ray Saidel went about the whole Anglo-American alliance formula from a completely different perspective, and it worked just fine. His Jomars were a match for most of the Lotus 11s, Elvas and Coopers on the East Coast, and he was one of the few to have successfully supercharged a Coventry Climax engine! Plus, his development program led to the successful line of TVR sports cars in England.
Ray Saidel owned the Merrimack Street Garage in Manchester, New Hampshire, when racing bit him hard. He was making a good living selling Oldsmobiles in the dealership he had inherited from his father, but an HRG caught his eye and, before he knew it, he was caught up in the excitement of sports car racing. The “Hurg” gave way to an Allard J2X Le Mans, which he stuffed with an Olds V-8. “We had the only one with an Olds that I know of,” Saidel recalls. He won the Northeastern Region C-Modified Championship in 1955 before deciding he wanted to build his own car.
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