The A40 "Kudalari" Special 

History of the Edgar L.G. Bailey 1953 Austin A40 Special

The originator of this Austin A40 Special was Edgar L.G. Bailey, an ex-Austin man who joined Borneo Motors in the early 1950. When Richard "Dickie" Arblaster arrived in Singapore in 1952, Bailey was the service manager for Borneo Motors at the Orchard Road office on Oldham Lane. By 1952, Borneo Motors' Southeast Asian operations had recovered sufficiently from the Japanese occupation for its premises at Orchard Road (what is now Plaza Singapura) to be back to normal. The company was back in business selling Austin cars, vans and trucks, as well as Rileys, Vauxhall, Bedford and BMC-Leyland trucks from the UK.

In the middle of 1953, Bailey was posted to Kuala Lumpur and came up with the idea of creating a special body for the Austin A40 GS2 chassis. The idea of building a special body for an off-the-shelf production car was nothing new and was in fact fairly common not just in Malaya but worldwide. Typically the domain of coachbuilders, the art of the Special was something an artisan with a good eye and patience could create, albeit limited to one-offs. MGs were often seen as good donor cars for such "Specials" and in Singapore Lim Peng Han, C.L. Wong  and a few others had created some very attractive shapes, Peng Han's cars being called the L.A. Specials while Wong's were called the Silver Arrows (three built, the last being a proper road registered roadster). Vintage Race Car Magazine of the US published a piece in 2009 on the history of the Malayan-built special (see  http://www.vintageracecar.com/pages/thismonth.cgi?magid=40&magiid=142)).

British troops based here would often use such cars as regular road cars as well race cars (raced at the Gap Hill Climb of 1939, or at the Johore Grand Prix in 1940, for example). Some of the examples that raced in Southeast Asia are shown below.

Bailey's Special was built in that same vein, maintaining Austin parts throughout without sacrifice to safety. Once completed, he would take Dickie Arblaster out with him on test runs in the evenings, determined to have the car ready for the 1953 Johore Grand Prix (which was going to take place in early August 1953).

Arblaster recalls: "I was quite impressed as the front suspension was particularly good although it was a bit twitchy in the rear because they were using a basic A40 chassis with some coil and wishbone for the front suspension and leafs at the back." Arblaster recalls Bailey phoning up Freddie Pope (then President of the Singapore Motor Club) to discuss suspension characteristics with him in the evenings after test driving the car. Pope would win the 1953 Johore Grand Prix in his own stripped-out Jaguar XK120. Dickie recalls that he was particularly "...impressed by the bodywork [of the A40 Special] which was beautifully hand done by Low Cup Kee, one of the panel beaters at Borneo Motors at that time. The workshop used was at the old BM premises at the back of Oldham Lane. It had been beautifully done and incorporated the A40 Somerset grille in the front, unpainted in bare aluminium with cycle-type front wings and rear wings and so on...Altogether a very nice package indeed." The only time the car was ever seen in competition by Dickie was at the Johore Grand Prix of 1953 when the 1500cc Sports Car event had a Le Mans start. The car was entered as an A40 Special with the 1220cc B-series engine but stripped down and carefully balanced with high compression pistons, twin carburettors and so on. Dickie thinks it was no where near the 40 brake horsepower standard and perhaps nearer to 55 brake horsepower. The car would run with an aluminium tonneau over the passenger seat to streamline airflow over the car. The car was subsequently raced at other venues in Malaysia - at Seremban and Malacca where it did reasonably well.

It was more than likely that the car spent a considerable time under wraps, initially intended as an exhibit in a motor museum in Singapore that was the brainchild of the late Basil Bradshaw. It was left in a rather decrepit state for many years outside the office of Mike J. Truter along the mile-long Singapore Grand Prix straight on Upper Thomson Road. It then went to quantity surveyor and motoring historian J.N.C. Collins before being finding its way to its present owner. The old chassis, which had been replaced along the way, was scrapped but the bodywork remains.

The body style is almost identical to that of the Frazer Nash Le Mans Replica - as sort of Geoff Bewley-coined Replica Replica (Vintage Motorsport Issue No 2, 1990). A closer study of the similarities (as the A40 Special would have predated the Crosthwaite & Gardiner "replicas" of the 1960s and 1970s) suggests that the C&G cars were similar to this Special than the Le Mans Replica. C&G used Austin front and rear axles, brakes, wire wheels (it has been noted that the REAL Le Mans Mk2 Replicas actually used Austin bits from new and some of the Mk1 Replicas were modified to accept Austin parts as well !!!). A look at the front scuttle suggests further similarities - this area in front of the steering wheel is flat and not humped to fit speedometer and tachometer.