Out of tune? Singer's ill-fated experiments with fibreglass

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Singer seemed to be on to a fairly good thing with the Roadster. Launched in 1939 and immediately cut short by the war, production restarted in 1946 and continued until 1955, which wasn't a bad run considering that, by that time, it was looking a bit dated. It proved appealing to the American market, though, with its stereotypically English and almost excessively twee appearance, which was fortuitous considering that post-war recovery of the British motor industry depended on overseas exports.

Sooner or later, though, Singer knew it would have to modernize, and in 1953 it explored the possibilities of the rebodying the Roadster chassis with up-to-date, enveloping bodywork. A fairly snazzy prototype was made, which somehow got turned into the SMX, a dumpy little car which was unceremoniously dropped after about 10 had been built. For all that the SMX never had the makings of a sales hit, it was innovative in its use of fibreglass bodywork, which was then more or less untried in the British motor industry.

The idea for the SMX was attributed to Bill Vaughan, Singer's sole American distributor who had previously commissioned a Glasspar body for a Roadster and exhibited it at the 1952 International Sports Car Show, but his inspiration came from a man called Perry Fuller, who was one of a number of Americans to have remodelled Singer Roadsters with fibreglass sports bodies, some of which looked better than others.

We don't know much about Fuller or how involved with the motor industry he was, but we find this excerpt in the 23rd April, 1953, edition of America's Jet magazine: 'Perry Fuller, former aeronautical design consultant and African mask maker [his parents were both of African heritage], was hired by Singer Automobile Company of England to restyle the firm's new fiberglass cars. The talented designer was signed after he appeared at the National Sports Car Show in Manhattan's Grand Central Palace with a Singer car which he styled himself. Fuller is son of noted sculptor Meta Warrick Fuller and the late Dr. Solomon Fuller, noted Boston brain surgeon.'

The strange thing is that there is no mention of Fuller's name in any Singer company records. What exactly happened? We don't know, but we do know that a photograph of Fuller's fibreglass special appeared in one American magazine which announced it as the new Singer SM Roadster. Bill Vaughan raced (and crashed) the car on at least one occasion, after which his prototype, the 'pre-SMX', which resembled Fuller's car albeit tidied-up a lot to make it more æsthetically pleasing, appeared on the scene.

We have only ever seen one photograph of the 'pre-SMX' and we can't find it on the internet, but research undertaken by Canadian Singer historian Peter McKercher led him to the conclusion that the Fuller special and Vaughan's pre-SMX were, in fact, one and the same car.

Sadly, no trace of either car survives, and nothing is known about what happened to them after 1953. It's all very mysterious, but maybe one of you readers can tell us more.

Words: Zack Stiling; photographs sourced from Undiscovered Classics
 

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