1945 Ford Sprint Car

“ This is a riotous sprint car / racer / hill climber with a great track record and years of fun left in it. ”
With a VSCC Eligibility Document in one hand and the (notional) keys to your Ford Sprint Car in the other there is no limit to the fun you and your new car could have together.

Background
This is the bit where we would normally give you a brief history of the model we’re selling. A bit of context, as it were, to help you place whatever delightful classic we’re about to describe.

However, writing a potted history of this Ford Sprint Car is going to be a bit more difficult because Ford didn’t build it, Hillegas did.

Hille-who?, we hear you cry.

Hillegas, and if you weren’t Limeys you’d be kissing the screen right now and singing The Star-Spangled Banner with a tear in your eye because Hiram C. Hillegass of Allentown, PA is nothing less than Sprint Car royalty.

Born in 1895 and inducted into the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame in 1997, the Eastern Museum of Motor Racing said of him:

“his talents were responsible for more victories that any one driver could ever hope to achieve. Simply put, he built the cars and they drove to victory, and, in doing so, he joined the likes of Harry A. Miller, Frank Kurtis and others in that select fraternity of legendary race car fabricators.”

Hiram built his first race car in 1919, honing his craft until a move to Pennsylvania in the 1940s marked the point at which his workshop at 2435 South 4th Street in Allentown became something of a mecca for the sport, with racing drivers crowding around him with fists full of dollars as they begged him to build them a car.

His now-famous "Hillegass tube frame" saw him consolidate his position as the builder of some of the finest sprint cars in the ‘States with drivers such as Tommy Hinnershitz, Deb Snyder and many others driving them to victory.

They were renowned for being reliable too; while major racing teams like Ferrari and Ford could junk their cars at the end of a season, privateers who raced for fun had to use them year after year, and it wasn’t at all unusual to find some racing drivers using cars – and winning in ‘em – that were twenty years old and more.

Hiram passed away in 1960, but his cars live on, like this beautifully preserved Ford.

Overview
As you’d expect given its pedigree, this is a pukka job with the Vintage Sports-Car Club even issuing it with an Eligibility Document in 2022, something it gatekeeps with the sort of ferocity more usually associated with doctors’ receptionists.

The seller tells us that it was issued with an MSA Vehicle Passport in 2017 too, and they don’t give those out with a Kinder Egg either.

We’ll go into this one’s specification later but for now rest assured that it’s got All The Good Stuff under the hood.

The seller bought it on a whim a couple of years ago but ran into problems with getting his racing licence, hence this sale. He has still spent a small fortune on it recently because a car like this gets under your skin and you want to treat it right, even if you can’t race it.

Estimate: £10,000 - £15,000

View Current Bid Price HERE