Triumph Spitfire ADU 4B

ADU 4B was one of four racers built in Triumph's experimental department at Canley for the 1964 Le Mans 24 Hours, and the prototype department's build sheets call it "Le Mans No1". It was registered on 1 June 1964, with the commission number X727 and the engine number X935E as built.

The cars looked like Spitfires with a fastback roof, but they were built differently: an aluminium inner structure of bulkhead, floors and sills (rocker panels), with glass-fibre panels riveted to it, on a lightweight chassis. Canley Classics' test for a genuine one is simple: there should be very little steel in it. The Le Mans cars carried long-range aluminium fuel tanks, and Canley Classics says ADU 4B should still have its original. Harry Webster, who ran the programme, had set the engines a target of about 100 reliable horsepower, met with a prototype eight-port head.

Despite its "Le Mans No1" label, ADU 4B did not start the 1964 race. Three works Spitfires ran that year, and Canley Classics' histories account for them as ADU 1B, ADU 2B and ADU 3B.⁠source 3​source 5​source 4​source 6​source 7​source 8​source 9​source 10​source 11​source 12

On 27 March 1965 it raced in the Sebring 12 Hours, in the United States. Standard Triumph Inc., the American company, entered three of the ex-Le Mans cars, prepared under Kas Kastner. ADU 4B ran as No. 67 for Ed Barker, Duane Feuerhelm and Mike Rothschild, and finished 29th overall and 2nd in the GT class for cars up to 1,300 cc; Barker had won the 1964 SCCA G Production national title in a Spitfire. A Canley Classics photograph shows the works mechanic Peter Clarke with it there.

In June it went to Le Mans as No. 60, and Webster was photographed with it before the race. Four works Spitfires started in the 1.15-litre GT class. No. 52 crashed and No. 53 went out early with engine trouble. No. 60, with the Swiss driver Jean-Jacques Thuner and the Finn Simo Lampinen, won the class, and its team-mate No. 54 was 2nd in class and 14th, the last car classified. The only car in the class from outside the team, an Alpine A110, had retired with clutch failure.⁠source 13​source 3​source 4​source 14​source 15​source 1​source 2

After Le Mans the car went to Switzerland in 1965, to the Leyland Triumph Swiss Racing Team. In September Thuner won his category with it at the Mittholz–Kandersteg hill climb, and he was Swiss champion that year. No source read says which of the team's Spitfires ran in its later Swiss races.

ADU 4B stayed in Switzerland with a private owner, and in the 1980s it had an accident and what Canley Classics calls "hasty repairs". In the late 1990s it went to the United States, where it became part of a private Triumph collection and raced for about three years; a Canley Classics photograph shows it there in 2002.⁠source 3​source 4

In 2004 Canley Classics bought the car and shipped it from the United States to Felixstowe. Classic Car Weekly reported the purchase, for an undisclosed sum, and quoted the buyer:

Canley Classics has since worked on the car, and says that work confirmed how the factory prepared the works cars for paint, as it had found when stripping the Macau Spitfire; it keeps the car still. Of the other Le Mans cars, the body of ADU 3B survives in France and substantial parts of ADU 1B and ADU 2B survive; none is complete.

The car built as Le Mans No1 missed the race it was built for, won its class there a year later, and is the one still whole.⁠source 3​source 4​source 16​source 12​source 10​source 11