Nacional Pescara

Sir,
Although I own the only Nacional Pescara in this country, I must confess to not having done as much research into these cars as I should. Some of the details in your article (Motor Sport, March 1989) were therefore interesting.

The main point is that the production Pescaras were touring cars with a straight-eight engine with, however, one overhead camshaft and not two. But I do not know of any surviving single-overhead-cam touring cars. In fact, I know of only one other Pescara in existence, and this is back home in Barcelona and belongs to an elderly gentleman who was an official of FIVA. I have seen this car and found that it is one of the two hill-climb cars with a twin-overhead-cam engine.

My Spanish friend gave me much useful information about the make, and it appears that only three chassis were equipped with the twin-cam engine, two of them being the competing hill-climb cars and the third, the first chassis assembled by the factory in 1929, being the curio my possession.

In fact, in only three respects did the specification of the racing cars differ from the touring cars. Firstly, the engine was the same, but fitted with two overhead cams instead of one, secondly the wheelbase was shorter and was, I believe, identical with a Monza Alfa Romeo; and thirdly, the chassis was made very much lighter by extensive use of electron as detailed in the article, also by liberal drilling of the chassis.

The rumour about a supercharged car is based on the one residing in Barcelona. After the factory closed down this car was modified by being shortened still further and supercharged. The work was not done to the high standard of the Nacional Pescara firm, and the result was not very successful. The supercharger was on the offside, with the induction pipe running back to the rear of the engine crossing to the nearside and then running forward to the original updraft (not downdraft) entry into the inlet manifold. As you may imagine, this is a very lengthy pipe. The exhaust, therefore, leaves it off just behind the cruciform cross-member. The track was narrowed and a Bugatti front axle was used. Springing of the rear axle was by two parallel quarter-elliptic springs located touring welded onto the back axle. There was no provision for rotation of the back axle with vertical rise or fall, and the axle duly split during racing.

The whereabouts of the other racing Nacional Pescaras are unknown.

NRH Boyd, Enfield, London