Singer Racing Series

A couple of years ago, I began digging around to see if I could unearth some homegrown history on Singers. Beyond the mention of Bill Vaughn, New York based Singer Importer, Dealer and Promoter, Nasoc didn’t possess any information to speak of, except for copies of a few sales brochures and various road tests published by some of the prominent car magazines of the era.

Some basic, but intensive, googling yielded a few interesting shots of Singers on the track, which gave me hope there might be more. In addition, a few names started to pop up in association with our favourite marque. However, while I had a few names, getting contact information was another matter.

Through various leads from vintage racing enthusiasts, I discovered a lot of the original drivers associated with sports car racing in the Fifties were using some pretty modern means of communication to keep in touch with one and other – Yahoo and MSN. One thing led to another and one of these fellows contacted me to share a few memories and some old personal photos. This led to more names, more photos and more shared memories.

I thought one of the ways I could best share this interesting history and these photos was through a desktop calendar, which I produced for the 2007 Calendar Year. It consists of 12 rare images of drivers such as Dick Van Laanen, Lammy Lamoreaux, Jack Martin and Bill Vaughn in their racing machines on circuits such as Santa Barbara, Pebble Beach, Pomona and Bridgehampton. Particularly noteworthy are the images of two little known Singer Specials – Dick van Laanen’s Hunter powered Twin Cam and Bill Vaughn’s precursor to the SMX.