The tiny Smart ForTwo, recently introduced in the U.S. car market, gave a less-than-stellar performance in its first crash test by the federal government's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. via CNN Money
A while back I posted about the Walter Martin PMY-2 H Modified Crosley-based racer and thought that story rather complete. However, our friends over at the Minutia blog posted a video of some H Modified racers leaving the starting line, which got me to searching for more H Modified info, which led me (after Tam’s Old Race Cars’ pages on H Modifieds) to the Sports Racer Network and its profile of H Modified racers, including Walter Martin’s three creations. And it appears I didn’t have the whole story earlier.
According to the Sports Racer Network profile on Martin, he did indeed teach shop, but at a trades college in Roaring Springs, Pennsylvania, and worked with his students to build the car above, the FCA-1, a Crosley-based car, but with a body molded in industrial shop towels and white glue. The college didn’t want Martin building any more sports cars at the school, so he left, and that’s when he began building the first PMY, which some historians call the PMY1, but which Martin instead felt should have been called the PMY2 because it was his second endeavor. That’s the car that showed up at the Crosley nationals. For that car, also Crosley-based, most of the body was formed from aluminum, while the nose and tail sections were formed from paper mache. And despite Martin’s feelings, a tag on the dash to this day reads PMY1.
Here’s where it gets a little confusing. Martin’s followup car still used a Crosley drivetrain, but featured several notable improvements, not the least of which was an entire aluminum body. Historians have dubbed this car the PMY2, but Martin apparently tagged it as the PMY3.
Both of the PMY cars remain in existence, and the latter even appears to compete in vintage racing, but the FCA car remains missing. The wheels of the FCA1 and the PMY1 appear similar; could Martin have rebuilt the FCA1 as the PMY1?
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