The Birth of Jomar

Ever hear the name TVR? Well, without Raymond Saidel, Trevor Wilkinson may never have brought TVR to the production car phase of its life. In 1950, Ray Saidel sold his share of the Sky Service of New England (a charter flying service he had started after WW II) and took control of the Merrimack Street Garage, when his father Morris Saidel passed away. Ray kept flying for pleasure and as a member of the civil air patrol, while at the helm of Merrimack Street garage. As an Oldsmobile dealer, Ray was excited about the new Oldsmobile Rocket V8 engine! As required, he purchased the new 1952 display engine. In those days, it was a fully functional motor on an engine stand in the showroom of the Merrimack Street Garage.

By May of 1953, Ray wondered what to do with his display engine and as his interest in foreign cars was starting to take root. Ray noticed an advertisement in the British magazine Motor that had been placed by Sidney Allard. Some correspondence later and J-3201, a J2X Le Mans, was on its way across the pond to the Merrimack Street Garage. The car arrived and mechanic Sam Guimond was Ray’s choice to install the engine.

Once the engine was installed, Ray and Sam went for a checkout ride in the Allard. Dual, side-exhaust pipes and no mufflers meant that not only was the car very loud, but with the Olds Rocket V8, it was very fast as well! When they returned to the shop, Sam Guimond abruptly quit.

“I don’t want to work on that car, it’s a monster”, Sam told Ray.

Ray assured Sam that he didn’t have to work on the Allard and it became Ray’s daily driver, as seen in the picture above of Ray in his Civil Air Patrol uniform. But by the close of 1953, Ray’s red Allard had captured his heart and he sold his other sweetheart, a red North American Navion he had flown for almost 3 years. Ray had traded his wings for the allure of speed on the ground.

By October 6^th, 1954, Ray had joined the SCCA and a neighbor, John Nacashin, had convinced him to bring the Allard to Thompson, Connecticut, to watch some races.  However, by October 31, 1954, Ray entered his J2X Le Mans in a race at Thompson in full road trim, with a full windscreen, luggage rack etc. The Allard wore # 39 and, in his first race, Ray finished 2^nd behind Walt Hansgen’s C-Type Jaguar Special, but ahead of Jackie Cooper’s Modified Cooper.

At this point, Ray was severely bitten by the racing bug, so he formed Saidel Sports Racing Cars as a division of the Merrimack Street Garage. Although the racing season in New England was drawing to a close, Ray saw that the SCCA had an ice race in January, which was within two hours of his hometown of Manchester, New Hampshire. The town of Franconia was cool most of the year, but in January it was downright frigid. The SCCA had started running this race a couple of years’ prior in 1952. That year, the race was held on Echo Lake. In 1953, the race was held at the Franconia Airport in a sea of mud one day and then on a frozen mass the next day. This year, 1954, Echo Lake was chosen again but unfortunately a mild few days led to water causing flooding on the ice surface.

The next year, 1955, SCCA chose Lovetts Field on the west side of Canon Mountain on Rt 18 near Lovetts Inn as the site of the race. In 1956, Ray would return to the Franconia ice race but this time racing a Saab chasing Gaston Andrey to a 2^nd place finish. But that is a story for another time involving a feud, a trunk-mounted cannon and a frozen can of paint.

By the end of the 1955 season Ray was the “C” Modified Points Champion for the New England Region. The Allard was “a monster” and its suspension had its high speed limits on tracks like the Glen and others. Even though Ray was doing well he thought he could do better by modifying the hood of the Allard and made his own with more downforce. But he was also now thinking about building his own car and so began contacting other manufacturers like Dellow, Elva and TVR. Dellow had a track record and a trials car that would hold up to whatever any U.S. tracks could throw at it.

He ordered two Dellow Mk V chassis and thus first two Jomars were fashioned.

Ray enlisted the work of several of his mechanics who would end up doing double duty for Merrimack Street Garage. During the day, Norm Leeds and Lou Turner worked on customer’s Oldsmobiles and at night they hand-hammered aluminum bodies with Ray. These first two MK I Jomars were where Ray cut his teeth building bodies.

For these Mk I’s form met function and to quote Lou Turner, “weight is horsepower.” Everything was drilled—bulkheads, backing plates, motor mounts, pedals, frame parts—nothing was excluded. As the first Mk I was being completed in December of 1955, Ray was placing an order for the new TVR chassis. While Ray and Gus Ehrman did well with the MK Is ,powered by the anemic 1172-cc 100E motor, when the TVR chassis arrived Ray loved it! Fully independent suspension and a Climax Engine (7/C/101, TVR had started this next series of 7C chassis at 101). He ordered a 2^nd chassis (7/C/102) immediately. He wanted a bare chassis that he could use his artist’s trained eye to fabricate something fast to the eye as well as the track. The Jomar team again set out with a new body and the outcome was very sharp indeed. By August 1957, the MK II was ready for testing! Unfortunately, the TVR chassis had many flaws, the handling was poor, the steering geometry was wrong and suspension design flaws broke king pins and sidelined the Mk II.

George Weaver, owner of Thompson Raceway, allowed the team to test the car any day they wanted, and test they did but failures were common and after one such test the crew returned to the shop to measure the frame layout. One side was longer that the other. The chassis hadn’t even been jigged. Repeated problems caused Ray to resort to racing the Mk I’s and trying to solve the MK II chassis issues during the week. By the end of the year, Ray had a fix that he communicated back to TVR and as a result he would never race the MK I again. That winter they built another aluminum body for chassis #2 and it would be sold on March 18, 1957, before it was even painted!

This second chassis (TVR chassis # 7/C/102) was right-hand drive (like all the race chassis), and came with a Coventry Climax Stage II engine (# FWA400-6-6811), fitted with twin SU carbs, and was the first to have upgraded Alfin brake drums. Ray was so impressed he used a picture of this bare chassis to advertise the new Jomar Mk IIs.

The ad must have made an impression on a young race car driver from North Andover Massachusetts, becasue on Marth 18th 1957, the second Jomar Mk II was sold to Robert Columbosian. Columbosian had raced against Ray that January in the SCCA Franconia ice races and they had become friends. Ray told “Columbo” (as he was called) about the new chassis that was coming in.  Pictures of the car at MSG in primer with Columbosian at the wheel indicate that the car was sold before it was even painted in its bright red with a white stripe down the center.

1957 was a HUGE year for Ray and team Jomar. He, and Bob Columbosian were racing every weekend and some weekends at more than one track. Their successes against the country’s fastest Lotus catapulted Jomar to prominence in racing circles and this success prompted Ray to ask TVR for a fully-bodied road car to market with the success of the racecars. Ray ordered more racing chassis and several roadcars, which gave TVR a cash infusion and a market, and the rest, as they say, is history!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb72XkDj-aA

Chassis 7/C/102 was entered by Bob Columbosian in approximately 25 races and was heavily damaged at Lime Rock Park on July 7, 1958, when it was reportedly hit by several cars. On the first lap, after three corners, Columbosian spun and Fred Spross’ AH 100 had no place to go as he hit the Jomar. Fred was the middleman in an echelon formation of Austin-Healeys and his car crushed the Jomar’s alloy bodywork and broke the front suspension. One of the other Healeys hit the rear of the Jomar, as well. Columbosian had been suffering some DNFs with the Jomar during this time period, so his eyes had already wandered to a Lister Corvette. The Lister now looked like a good opportunity, with the crippled Jomar out of action, for the rest of the season.

Chassis 7/C/102 Race Record

As a result of the crash, the Jomar was parted out. The frame, suspension and body panels went back to Ray Saidel. The chassis was stripped and stored in the attic of Merrimack Street Garage. The engine, transmission and rear end were sold to a chap in Massachusetts and eventually split up.

Several months later, the aluminum body panels were given to Johnny Boyd of Buffalo, NY, who had purchased chassis 7/C/109 (bare racing chassis) and a new Stage III Climax engine to make up his own Jomar MK II. Johnny raced this car successfully until he decided to upgrade the frame and have it rebodied by Bill Sadler. That car’s whereabouts are currently unknown.

Fast forward 5 decades…

As a youth working in the dealership, I always dreamed about the three Jomars stuffed into the basement and their rebirth someday. Returning to Merrimack Street Volvo, in 1989, I was on a mission to revive Saidel Sports Racing Cars and the Jomars. With the help of my father (Ray Saidel), Lou Turner and Dave Verville (a master in his own right), that dream became a reality. Restoring the Jomars, led to the resurrection of several chassis and the need to fabricate body panels. Although this work was done elsewhere, all other restoration work was done in-house by Merrimack Street Garage, aka Merrimack Street Volvo. Chassis 7/C/102 was stripped completely, but needed frame work, as well as parts. Luckily most of the parts that had been stripped off of both 7/C/101 (which had suffered a similar fate at the hands of Ray Heppenstahl at VIR) and 7/C/102 were loaded on shelves upstairs behind a pegboard wall at the Merrimack Street Garage.

Walt Armstrong, a TVR friend of mine, purchased the rear end and some tubular parts from Derick Durst, who had a foreign car shop in Dighton, Massachusetts and alerted me to the find. Derick had owned the Climax engine, transmission and rear end, as well as some boxed aluminum frame pieces. The transmission was sold, and the rumor was that the Jomar engine had ended up in a Lotus. Several years after purchasing the rear end from Walt Armstrong, I found a gentleman by the name of Terry Rhodes who had purchased the engine, originally to go into a Lotus XI that he hoped to get on the track someday. Years later, Terry sold the Lotus and the Jomar Climax. Terry also said that the deal was facilitated by Sasco Sports, who I later contacted and they were kind enough to ask the owner to contact me. After some research, many thanks to Dave at Sasco Sports, a connection was made.

The owner of the Climax verified the engine serial number matched with our original invoice and we worked out a trade. According to all, the engine had not been run since the accident (1958) as it never did get installed in the Lotus, which itself was/is in the process of restoration. When I received the engine and took off the head I saw the original Hepolite pistons with the hand-ground reliefs Lou Turner had made so that the valves would not hit the piston tops, after the Jomar team had shaved the head for higher compression. Years ago, Lou had shown me how to take a valve and using a hack saw cut lines across the valves face creating the look of wire spokes on a wire wheel and more importantly creating a cutting tool. The valve was then put into a head and both were laid on top of the engine block with the piston at top dead center. The valve stem was now installed in a drill and the drill/valve cut the fly cut into the piston to the desired depth.

The engine is now restored and the Jomar is once again on the track.

2017 unfortunately saw the passing of both my father, Ray Saidel and Lou Turner. They are both sorely missed but both were able to spend several decades once again doing what they loved…racing, seeing old friends and swapping racing stories.