Rally ABC Sports - one of the most beautiful sports cars of its era
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Summary
From 1927 to 1930, the French car manufacturer Rally built a two-seater sports car that proved its worth both on the road and in racing. In keeping with the cycle car tradition, the company dispensed with unnecessary luxury and created a car that was easy to drive and lightweight. One of the 100 or so Rally ABCs built will go under the hammer at Bonhams on October 6, 2017. This vehicle report portrays a Rally ABC Sports from 1929 and describes the history of the model and the specific vehicle.
This article contains the following chapters
- Rustic technology
- Racing successes
- Idea generator
- Only around 100 examples
Estimated reading time: 4min
Preview (beginning of the article)
France had a rich and prosperous cycle car industry. Many small manufacturers built these inexpensive and lightweight minimal cars, which also benefited from tax advantages until 1925. One of these car manufacturers was the company Rally, founded in 1921 by the engineer Eugène Affovard Asnière. He began with a small car that relied on the power of the Harley-Davidson V2 engine. In 1927, he presented the Rally ABC at the Paris Motor Show, a car that no longer met the minimum requirements of a cycle car (max 350 kg, 1.1 liter displacement, gearbox and brakes), but had one major advantage: it had an "underslung" chassis. This meant that the axles were located above the chassis beams, so to speak, resulting in a significantly lower center of gravity. This innovation was so important to the manufacturer that it was immortalized in the vehicle designation. If you pronounce "ABC" according to the French pronunciation, it sounds like "abaissée", which means "lowered".
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