History of the Allied body

This car has an Allied fiberglass body from the early 1950s. The story on the body goes something like this:
The Cisitalia 202 was created after WWII as one of the many small Italian car makers who, interested in racing, were making some passenger cars for profit to fund their racing efforts. Duseo commissioned a man named Savonuzzi to pen the drawing, and gave that to the newly established coachbuilding firm Pininfarina. They transformed the design into a small two place coupe with a body built of aluminum. A fiat 1100cc engine propelled the car, and in addition to its beautiful lines for which it has been considered one of the most beautiful cars built, it was effective enough for Nuvolari to win his last race (in ill health), the Mille Milia. 170 of these cars were produced, and the sad story of Cisitalia is published elsewhere on the Net. The story is fairly dramatic with connections to buying Ferdinand Porsche's freedom from his French captors, bankruptcy, and a rebirth in South America.

Several of the Cisitalias made it to America, and one of them was purchased on the east coast by Robert Petersen, who had started a publishing empire with a small pamphlet called Hot Rod. This success allowed "Pete" to enjoy his passion for cars, and he had someone drive the car across the country to the west coast. There's a published account of that in a motoring journal (if I can figure out how to post it here, I will), and somewhat the worse for wear his car showed up in LA.

Pete had an enterprising ad manager named Bill Burke. Bill had been, like so many others, in WWII, exposed to a lot, and had (has, he's still living!), a great passion for things that go fast. Fascinated by aerodynamics, he purchased a surplus fuel tank from a P-38 fighter plane, rigged a Ford V8 to it, and set records with the newly formed SCTA on the dry lake beds in California, and also at Bonneville. This was in the very first years of the Bonneville speed events, and I've read where Petersen thought the efforts pointless. Nevertheless, having gotten one record (and caught the Bonneville bug), he was looking for another project. Enter his boss' car.

The car needed to be repainted after the cross country trip, and who better than a bodyshop in the area: the Barris Brothers. George and Sam were legendary for their customizing work (George is still doing amazing things all these years later), and the car was driven there for a paint job. Petersen supposedly went out of town on a trip at that point. Burke, who obviously had had some interest in, and had been studying the new idea of fiberglass car bodies, went by, poured plaster of paris all over that aluminum body, and made a mold.

I should interject here, that the whole concept of fiberglass car bodies was a big deal then. John Wells had published a book about this, and there were a number of folks in the SoCal area who were creating fiberglass bodies for existing car chassis. Geoff Hacker's new book, "Forgotten Fiberglass" will show how many different outfits were out there in this new medium. Of course we all know that GM got in on the act quickly with the Corvettes (the early bodies were produced by Glasspar).

But while they made a mold and then painted Pete's car, they didn't do a great job cleaning out the door jams, etc, so that while the car had a nice new paint job when he got back, Petersen found bits of plaster of paris in out of the way places (he complained about this to Burke when he figured out what had happened, but didn't fire him; Bill worked for Petersen for 38 years).

The first body pulled from the mold was given a gullwing door (since Bill liked the Mercedes gullwing concept), and was put on a simple tube frame. Mickey Thompson, a friend of his for some years, had a Clem Tebeau prepared Flathead Ford engine (I believe it had the Ardun head OHV conversion), and that was placed in the car. They used 18" milk truck wheels which were welded for strength. The two took it to Bonneville where it set a record at something like 143 mph.

Following that success, the two men decided that they could form a company to produce more of these bodies (the bodies were such that they would easily fit on an MGTD chassis), and each put $1000 into forming the Allied Fiberglass company. Roy Kinch was brought in to manage the place (since both Thompson and Burke had full time jobs), and over the next couple of years produced 50 bodies (plus the one used at Bonneville). The bodies were hand laid fiberglass, and at some point later I may add details on what or what didn't come with the body. Most were copies of the Cisitalia, but with the advant of the Chrysler hemis, a wider version of the body was made to fit the engine in that bay. Of these 50 bodies, I believe there are fewer than 10 that exist. I believe the body on my car was perhaps #22 or #23 since that's written on the ceiling of my car in pencil, but there's no real way of knowing since there were no official markings on any of the bodies, and if there were records of the cars, those records are long gone. What I do know is that after awhile, with absentee ownership, the demand tailed off. Another body, an open roadster (with a different look) was created, which was called the Allied Atlas. However, that didn't lead to any great success, and eventually Bill and Mickey called it quits. I believe the equipment was sold, but don't know to who or where it went. I do know there was some acrimony between Bill and Mickey at the end on Mickey getting his $1000 back.

Next post: Where Jud comes into this.