1913/18 Monarch

This car is at Foulstons chicane during a Four Lap Handicap Race at the Vintage Sports Car Club's Richard Seaman Memorial Trophies meeting at Oulton Park in June 1993.

It's the 1913/18 Monarch of Mark Walker about which the programme of the event says: '.....Mark Walker's 1913 American Monarch with a 1918 V8 Curtiss aero engine was built by Mark himself, with the assistance of the Beaulieu Autojumble, and will undoubtably be one of the fastest cars in the race.' The car also appeared at the Seaman Trophy meeting the previous year when the programme had this to say:

'The 4-lap Handicap for Edwardian Cars features Mark Walker's 1913 Monarch which caused a sensation at Mallory Park last month! Having built the car, Walker made a winning debut but had to battle wheel to wheel with Roger Firth in the 1913 Theophile Schneider.

Monarch was a short-lived marque which built cars designed by Robert Hupp (late of Hupmobile) in Detroit from 1913 to 1916. Into the chassis, which Mark bought in the US, he put an OX5 Curtiss V8 aero-engine of 8.2 litre capacity. This was also acquired in the US and was originally fitted to Curtiss JN4 or 'Jenny' training aircraft, as well as to the British DH6, during the First World War. Plain to see are the exposed rockers, each operating both an exhaust and an inlet valve per cylinder, as on the four-pushrod Salmsons and the Fiat with which Nazzaro won the 1907 French Grand Prix. Walker completed the car with a Panhard-Levassor gearbox and other parts, such as the radiator, sourced from the Beaulieu Autojumble.'