Hemmings Blog:“S.P.O.: the only one, and it still rolls”
Jim Donnelly, Hemmings Senior Editor, gave a wonderful shout-out today to VanderbiltCupRaces.com on the Hemmings Blog. The article is reposted below.
Enjoy,
Howard Kroplick
Hemmings Blog
S.P.O.: the only one, and it still rolls
We’d like to direct your attention to a blog (besides ours) that you ought to visit regularly. Long Island resident Howard Kroplick conducts the Vanderbilt Cup Races blog and also has a published history on the early Long Island Motor Parkway. It’s really well done and you never know what you’ll find.
Such as this here. Dating from 1910, this is only known example of the S.P.O. remaining in the world. It’s French. The acronym stands for Ste. Francaise de Petit Outillage, which started out as a parts supplier before building a tiny number of complete cars with proprietary T-head engines. This one, like all S.P.O.s exported to the United States, has a he-man roadster body and canvas fenders.
According to Howard, it may have been in the 1910 Wheatley Sweepstakes, a support event to that year’s Vanderbilt Cup on Long Island. That S.P.O. finished fifth, crewed by driver John Juhasz and mechanician Joe Melzer. The current owner is Rick Rawlins of California, whose tastes run from old-school woodies to the original Surfink by Ed Roth. He has photos tracing this car’s existence back to the 1930s, when it was in the collection of famed operatic tenor James Melton. The S.P.O. has a Juhasz carburetor, making one wonder if it’s the 1910 Wheatley veteran.
Meanwhile, David Greenlees over at The Old Motor has been digging up some S.P.O. information in an attempt to identify the S.P.O. in a few photographs of the Old Orchard Beach race. Anybody able to help him out?
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