CHASSIS REGISTER

1978 LOLA T492 HU21

All pictures courtesy of Klaus Tweddell unless otherwise stated.

HU21 in its new 2021 livery.

HU21 is one of the original 5 cars that the Carl Haas Dealership imported to start the S2000 class in North America in 1978. It is believed to be the oldest surviving of those 5 early cars.

The car was originally purchased by the late Mark Daniels of Milwaukee and raced with the SCCA. As the class was slow to build up, the SCCA required that Mark initially race it on the "B" Sports Racer grid in 1978, and then on the "A" Sports Racer Grid in 1979 (the SCCA had abandoned the "B" SR group at the start of 1979). It was only for the 1980 season that the number of Sports 2000 cars had built up sufficiently to have their own SCCA grid.

The car's race history during this period is shown on the extracts from Mark's Log Books for that period, as kindly passed on by his son, Mark Jr., also a Sports 2000 racer. The logbooks show extensive use up to September 1982, at which point Mark sold the car - he turned out for the 1983 season in a Tiga Sports 2000.

The buyer was Chuck Kessinger of Burbank, Ca., who was a well known west coast driver who drove works Alfas and Maseratis in the 1958-60 Sebring 12 hour races where he shared driving duties with fellow drivers such as Jim Hall, Carrol Shelby, Dan Gurney etc. It is thought that Chuck raced the car very little, but did do a SCCA event in 1985, and the car was then raced a few times by Chuck's son, Corey, but overall, was very lightly used.

In 2000, Conny Klintera spotted the car in pieces while visiting Chuck and made an offer for it, as well as the second Alfa 750 Veloce ever produced. Conny then began the process of reassembling the car and in 2002, Conny sold the car to Nick Slevin of Newport Beach, Ca. who raced it successfully on the West Coast with HSR West where the car was the S2000 Class Champion in 2004.

Nick also acquired a more powerful engine, a Cosworth YAC DOHC two liter engine with two Weber carburetors and had 210 horsepower and with 235 foot pounds of torque to allow the car to run in American Cities Racing League, a Pro Sports Racer Series that allowed cars to race under specifications similar to the original "B" Sports racer or FIA Group 6 specifications. Thus, 30 years after it was designed, has come full circle to the original design decision to produce the 490 series cars as a replacement for the Group 6 racers!

The car was sold to Walter Davies, of Toronto, Canada in late 2007 and Walter campaigned it in the North East as a Sports 2000 equipped with a two liter Ford Pinto engine of 140 horsepower and the four-speed Hewland Mark 9 transaxle.

In 2012 the car passed to Steve Baker in England and then, in 2019, to Tom Stoten and two years later, in 2021, HU21 found a new home in Germany with new owner Klaus Tweddell.

HU21 in its pre-2021 livery. (Picture courtesy of Paul Fox)



(Picture courtesy of John Wright)