Lea-Francis' final fling

The car that never was and never will be. That’s the story of the Lea-Francis Francesca. This car, the open version of which is pictured below, is on offshoot of the disastrous car which appeared at the 1960 Motor Show and features a tubular steel frame, de Dion rear suspension, 4-wheel disc brakes, and a highly-modified Ford Zodiac engine. Three models were designed, a 2+2 coupé, a 4-seater saloon, and the spyder model illustrated here. The styling was by Fiore of Paris and the body construction work was to be done by Fissore in Turin. The open model was commissioned by an American distributor who ordered 1,000 examples suitable for the American market, which no doubt accounts for the ghastly and dangerous outside exhausts. However, just when the car was almost ready Lea-Francis got into financial difficulties and the project was shelved, leaving yet another “Lost Cause” for some future historian to write about.

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Those who trail boats will do it better, and certainly cannot do worse, to read ‘ Tackle. Trailer Boating This Way” by practical-man Percy Blandford, whom I knew when incarcerated in the Ministry of Aviation during the war (Stanley Paul, 12s. 6d.).

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Two paper backs—”Complete Control,” for L-drivers trying to pass their test, by Vincent J. Morgan (5s,) and the picture-book “Some Working Traction Engines,” edited by Alan J. Martin for the Road Locomotive Society, mainly pre-war pictures of seventeen old engines (Percival Marshall, 5s.).