The Friday Lady and the HRG Special that spelled her death

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May we stand still for a little while by Ruth Ellis today? After all, it was she who, in 1955, became the last woman to be hanged in the UK. And we thought that made her a very fitting Friday Lady. Oh, and hang on — believe it or not, there was also a rare car involved in her unusual case: a beautifully streamlined HRG racer called the Emperor Special. This is its story.

Ellis was a nightclub hostess and was executed after she shot her fiancé, Derek Blakely, in public on April 10, 1955. Blakely was the stepson of Sir Humphrey Cook, patron of ERA, and came from a well-to-do family. He had a great passion for sports cars and had a special racer built around a new HRG 1500 twin-cam engine, said to be good for 108 bhp in road trim. The car was built by a befriended Aston Martin engineer around a tubular spaceframe chassis, mated to VW front suspension, a De Dion rear end and a full-width aluminium body somewhat reminiscent of a Ferrari Monza. Blakely spent most of his inheritance on the car, much to the dismay of Ellis. He must have found it worth the investment, though. On its debut at the 1954 Boxing Day Meeting at Brands Hatch, Blakely finished a fine second to the Connaught-engined Lotus Mk8 of John Coombs. He raced it more than once too — costing him more and more money. His fiancée soon had enough of it.

Days before the Easter race he had entered the car for, she stood outside a pub in Hampstead waiting for him to come out. When he did, she took a Smith & Wesson revolver from her handbag and fired it six times. He died in the car park.

After the trial and sentence, the HRG’s body was supposedly sold by Blakely’s brother, while HRG is said to have requested the return of their special engine. When a film about Ellis’s life was made in 1985, the HRG featured in it. It is also a fact that the car was offered for sale in 1999, carrying another registration number (VPX 66) and a different engine (newspaper clipping here). From the seller’s blurb at the time: “It now has one of the very rare DOHC Singer-HRG engines for which it was originally designed, and is immaculate.”

What happened to the car afterwards? Did any of you ever see it after 1999?

Originally published on August 9, 2021. Updated following new information.

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