An unidentified Lea-Francis 14hp Sports in the USA
An unidentified Lea-Francis 14hp Sports in the USA

A Club member shared this photo with the LeaFlet Editor a few years ago and was published in the LeaFlet in 2019, but it remains a bit of a mystery.

It is a wonderful photograph of a 14 Sports at an American raceway. Through the wonders of AI, it has been suggested that the location could be Englewood Speedway in Colorado, but there is very little information in the photo to pin down the location, so despite the best efforts of modern technology this is little more than a guess.

The date on the California licence plate is 1949 and on the badge bar is a Brooklands BARC badge with an RAC, BRDC badge and one which we do not recognise. Given the car is right-hand drive and the location of the photo we wondered if this was the car Ludgate and Rose took to the US when they were promoting the Lea-Francis engine for midget race cars, but we thought that car was silver/grey and the photos of it show no badge bar.

If anyone can shed any light on the photograph we would be very interested to hear from you.

Comments powered by CComment

We know everybody knows websites use cookies, but the law requires we interfere with your browsing and put a box here so you can tell us you know and permit us to use the cookies so the site functions as it should.