Big Jim in a little teenie car


Henry Manney III was the editor at large for Road and Track Magazine. He traveled the world documenting the post-world war 2 racing scene but he lived in southern California. He was friends with Jim Seely and the Cannon boys. He had a number of cars including a crosley hotshot special and a Cooper Formula 3. The formula 3 was created after the war by the lads that had raced speedway before the big war. The story goes that they would get castor oil from the dispensary and dribble it on to a chunk of steel from a blown up german tank that was heated in the camp fire. Smelling the burning castor oil and regaling each other with stories of how fast they used to be. After the war they were too old to be competitive on the speedway motorcycles and so they created the formula 3. It used the JAP (John A. Prestwich) 500cc motorcycle engine and a sequential shift transmission in a very lightweight chassis. The cars tended to be very evenly matched because the same mechanical parts were used to build the cars. This made for close and exciting racing. Back to Henry, who, by the way, was an accomplished ballet dancer. (That is a fun fact and all included in your one low price). Henry had a formula three that he wanted to sell, but Henry never got it to finish well enough to command a good price. He asked Jim Seely to drive it for him. So they took the car up into the hills of southern cal, to the ‘test track’ which were provided by the state of California –Mulholland Drive. Jim got the ‘feel’ of the car on the twisties of Mulholland.
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It was a natural fit for him and by that I mean that driving the car that was like a motorcycle was easy for him, but he didn’t ‘fit’ into the car very well. He wore his best abrasion and fire resistant racing jacket (a motorcycle jacket) and they went racing.
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One of the jokes that Henry would play is making up names for people, so it just so happened that Henry had entered Jim Seely under the name Jim Feely as a joke (if my memory serves me correctly-but I would hate for the truth to destroy a perfectly good story) in the Santa Barbara race. He did well enough in the race that the officials refused to give him the trophy, they were sure that he had cheated in some way because he had lapped the field! While they argued with the officials, a fellow came up to Henry and made him a cash offer on the car and so they sold it. Where is the car now??






