About tough to crack car puzzle #158: 1959 Asper 20TR3

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Despite several attempts, not one of you provided the right answer to last week’s mystery car question. Someone suggested a HWM, another few of you thought the body must have been a Microplas Mistral. This was our initial thought too. But there are some noticeable differences. Regular player Till Jauernig wrote: “First I thought it’s a Buckler DD2, but this is not Australian. Then came the Mistrals in mind (later ones where made in Australia). Have they something to do with each other? Well I think so, but don’t know. Then I found the Mistral Jaguar XK 120 - well, perhaps?!” The Mistral does link to New Zealand but not Australia as far as we know. But it’s not a Mistral body that was used to create this one. One more possibility came from Reg Harris, who was certain it was a Bolwell Mk4. Reg wrote: “Made in Melbourne, Australia by the Bolwell brothers, Campbell, Graeme and Winston. It was made in open roadster and coupe body styles with the majority of the 55 made being roadsters. It was based on 1500cc Cortina mechanicals. Later Marks were all coupes and buyers could be selective for the engine, many being Holden grey motors. The last, the Mk8 were mostly fitted with Ford V8 engines.” Good thinking, but it wasn’t that either.

This car, ladies and gentlemen, is the Asper 20TR3. It’s a one-off made by Geoff Taylor, who based his creation on a two-year old Triumph TR3 and used a KM300 body, made by Fibreglass Cars Australia Company of Concord, New South Wales (ad with picture of a KM200 here). A Judson compressor was added to the two-litre mechanicals and the car was campaigned heavily throughout the 1960s, mostly by racer Geoff Munyard. It was only in 1993 that the car was restored to its original condition by a man named Peter Kleineberg, also in Australia. How it ended up in Switzerland remains unknown to us.

(Words Jeroen Booij, pictures Carloft.at / Jeroen Booij)



    

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