Description
Special Kellison J4 Racing 1958 chassis K 58540012.
James Kellison was born on 5 November 1932, a combat helicopter pilot in the army; he has always been passionate about cars. Around 1950, an idea ***** crossed his mind: to build his own race car. He wanted to rival the Porsches, Ferraris and Alfas of the era.
He picked up pencil and paper and began to design a race car. He spent several years perfecting the design, sourcing materials and imagining ways to implement it. He built a few models to learn how to build them. Thus, in 1957, seven years later, Kellison Engineering was born and officially unveiled the Kellison J4, a glass-fibre kit car offered in coupé and cabriolet bodies. This is the story of one of the first and most important cars to come from the designer.
Our Kellison J4-R is one of the early ones, and one of the finest examples of the breed. This car, the twelfth prototype, was designed over 65 years ago. So forward‑looking and still incredibly beautiful today, straight out of a comic book, these shapes are unique. This prototype exceeded 200 MPH (320 KM/ H) on the Bonneville Salt Flats. In those exploits, technically the car did not require road-holding, nor steering and brakes; the essential was the power-to-weight ratio in a straight line! A little later this J4-R prototype was converted into a road-legal sports car. Traversing race tracks of the West Coast, the Kellison offered a familiar sight on popular circuits in the region such as Laguna Seca, Riverside and Willow Springs.
In 2009 she left California for the south of France; an initial restoration allowed her delighted owner to take part in the Sixties Endurance in 2011, 2012 and 2015 and the Vernasca in 2016. In 2019 a new owner decided to make the car more usable and entrusted me with the project; major work was undertaken for more than €50, 000: a reinforced chassis with new crossmembers, new triangulated front suspension, new ventilated disc brakes, new wheels and steering box, spaghetti exhaust, reinforced Saginaw 3-speed gearbox mount and its guidance optimised, its 90° Chevy V8 of 5. 4 litres developing more than 350 horsepower for a weight under 1000 kilos. Our car has been featured in several magazines such as Auto‑Hebdo, AutoRetro, Petrolicious …
It will be delivered with a French vehicle registration certificate, a substantial dossier of press articles, photos and period advertisements. Eligible for all quality historic events such as Rolex Monterey or Sixties Endurance, FFSA paperwork.
Price on request.
