Spero's streamlined special: a look at the lost White Bird Austin

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Little by little, we found out a bit more about this most unusually-shaped special, built, according to somebody, "with a body made from a canoe turned upside down." That’s not the case, as we found out soon enough. The wheels give away its Austin Seven base, but there’s more to it than that. Behind the wheel, cigarette casually hanging between his lips, is H. C. ‘Nobby’ Spero. Spero who was an avid Seven racer in the days prior to the 750 Motor Club; he raced a special named Mrs. Jo Jo before 1930 and won the President's Gold Plate race with it at Brooklands on August 5th, 1929.

That must have left him wanting for more and our guess is that that's how this ultra-streamlined special came to be. Spero understood that special cars deserve special namegos and called his newest racer White Bird, having supposedly based it on his earlier Seven special. Spero competed with the car in 1930 and the second picture shows it at the B.A.R.C. Interclub Meeting at Brooklands on May 24th that year.

Motor Sport magazine saw it a month earlier but wasn’t impressed, describing it as follows: “H. C. Spero’s somewhat peculiar streamlined Austin appeared in this race, but was not as fast as its appearance would lead one to believe. Captain Waite’s very standard looking car of the same make travelled at a most astonishing speed, and through the afternoon gave some of the larger motorcars something to think about.”

In the mid-1950s, Spero continued racing, now with the ex-Whitney Straight Maserati 8CM monoposto which he shared with Dan Margulies in early V.S.C.C. events, and later the ex-Musso Maserati 250F. Spero died in 1970. What happened to his White Bird remains a mystery.

Words: Jeroen Booij; Pictures: Jon Brooke-Langham
 

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