Speciale Kellison J4 Racing 1958 chassis K 58540012

James Kellison was born on 5 November 1932. A combat helicopter pilot in the army, he had always had a passion for cars, and around 1950 a crazy idea crossed his mind: to build his own racing car. He wanted to rival the Porsches, Ferraris and Alfa's of the day.
He picked up pencil and paper, and began designing a racing car. He spent several years perfecting the design, finding materials and devising ways of implementing it. He built a few models, learning how to build them. In 1957, seven years later, Kellison Engineering was born and officially presented the Kellison J4, a fibreglass kit car available in coupé and cabriolet body styles. This is the story of one of the designer's first and most important cars to come.
Our Kellison J4-R is one of the first, and one of the best examples of the breed. This car, the twelfth prototype, was designed over 65 years ago. Then avant-garde and still incredibly beautiful today, straight out of a comic strip, these shapes are unique. This prototype exceeded 200MPH (320 KM/H) on the Bonneville salt lakes. During these exploits, the car didn't need road holding, steering or brakes, the main thing was the power-to-weight ratio in a straight line! A little later, this J4-R prototype was converted into a road-legal sports car. Cruising the West Coast racing circuits, the Kellison put on a familiar show at popular local tracks such as Laguna Seca, Riverside and Willow Springs.
In 2009, it left California for the south of France, where an initial restoration enabled its lucky owner to take part in the Sixties Endurance in 2011, 2012 and 2015 and the Vernasca in 2016. In 2019, a new owner decided to make the car more usable and entrusted the project to me. Major work was undertaken at a cost of more than 50,000 euros, including a reinforced chassis with new crossmembers, new front wishbones, new disc and ventilated brakes, new rims and steering box, spaghetti exhaust, reinforced Saginaw 3-speed gearbox support and optimised gearbox guidance, and its 5.4-litre 90° Chevy V8 developing more than 350 bhp for a weight of less than 800 kilos. Our car is featured in several magazines such as Auto-hedbo, Autorétro , Petrolicious ...
It will be delivered with a French registration document, a large file of press articles, photos and advertisements from the period. Eligible for all quality historic events such as the Rolex Monterey or Sixties Endurance, FFSA papers.