Above: both cars belonged to the Argentinean playboy
Martín Macoco Álzaga Unzue. This photo has been taken in
Paris. The big car, on the right, is his Sunbean GP
modified in France as a single seater (this car lived in
Argentina until the late 60s and is now at the
Indianapoiis Museum). The other is the Amilcar (finished
its days modified with a Ford V8 supercharged engine and
Lancia front end).
All the cars in the picture were of Martin de Alzaga
Unsue. The place Buenos Aires , the big racer is a
Sumbeam.
The unbearable doubts about the 6-cylinder Amilcar in
Argentina
With Simon Moore's recent articles on the 6-cylinder
Amilcar for The Automobile issue, and specially with his
last letter to the editor on Macoco's Amilcar C6
competing in the city of Mar del Plata, I couldn't help
but recalling the old mystery around these models in my
country.
My father dedicated a great part of his life to the
investigation and restoration of this French brand. He
also owned one of these Amilcar Grand Prix that arrived
to Argentina and were supposed to have belonged to
Martín "Macoco" de Alzaga Unzué. Sadly he died many
years ago and left very little about this in writing. He
made some comments about the history of this brand only
in a few articles that he published during his years
working as a journalist for different automobile
magazines. But more than anything he left us with all
his doubts which are the same that I still have.
As a child he remembered going to a car agency located
at Juan B. Justo Av. and Santa Fe Av., pretty close to
his home, where a 6-cylinder was for sale. He used to
fantasize his father was going to buy it for him some
day and so he consistently went to see "his" car. He
even got the salesmen to trust him so that he was
allowed to sit inside and take the wheel to feel the
power of history. One day, just like many others, he
went to see it but it was not there anymore. This had
been Chuzo Gonzalez' car, which was then exported to
Germany in the late 50s or early 60s, according to some
subject matter experts. Here is where the mystery
begins.
I have been trying to reveal this enigma that raises
little interest in my country for some years. The data
that I have managed to collect is meager but here is
more or less what it is. According to the book Fuerza
Libre by Guillermo Sánchez, in 1925 there was an Amilcar
representative office in Buenos Aires with a man called
Raúl Chiesa in charge. Apparently there was a large
number of these cars and many of them were seen racing
in the old circuit in the district of San Martin. It is
uncertain whether there were only small 4-cylinder
models, which my father managed to find many, or also
some 6-cylinder. According to most wise monkeys only the
first ones participated but some of them were seen with
a compressor. In the early 70s my father interviewed
Macoco for Corsa magazine. From that moment on he
started building a friendship with the dandy who stated,
based on what he remembered, that he brought two from
Europe in the 20s. Legend has it that one day he walked
by the Amilcar agency in the Champs Elysées in Paris and
saw two in exhibition. When he asked for the price he
was told a very high one, equivalent to a Rolls Royce at
that time. Macoco's answer was "Ok, I'll take both...".
Nobody was ever able to prove this but the truth is that
he had two which according to Guillermo Sánchez were a
C6 and a C0. According to Macoco one was the Voiturettes
Grand Prix 1925 winner and the other one was a 'replica'
of the first one. I guess he referred to the C6 compared
to the C0 with metal instead of ball bearing bedplates.
I'm not sure what he was referring to with this but he
participated in some races in Europe with one of these
two, like the Behovia race in Pyrénées-Atlantiques where
he made the second place behind a 12-cylinder Delage. He
then came back to Argentina. There are doubts as to
whether he brought one or both cars. From what I was
able to deduce, he brought both. Macoco agrees, but
there are people who believe he might have been
"confused" and brought only one. In Simon Moore's
picture published in The Automobile magazine we can see
the car he used the most at a race in the city of Mar
del Plata, which was then adapted a Ford V8 motor, first
a 60 and then a HP 85. This car was slowly destroyed
through time due to various modifications that it
suffered in different lower categories. It is known that
the last V8 was added a Mc Culoch compressor and that it
ended up with a Lancia Augusta front wheel assembly. The
last known information about this car is that it
belonged to Enrique Moyano until he died. Then, like the
old man said, "it was literally swallowed up by the
earth". The other one may have been rescued by my father
following Macoco's directions, from what he remembered.
But the true data came in 1968 when somebody wanted to
publish it for sale in the Corsa Magazine although it
never happened. The car, with no engine, appeared in a
car scrap yard outside the city of Buenos Aires, in the
district of Temperley, with some modifications due to
time and highly corroded but nothing too bad. It was
complete. The engine was the most difficult part.
My father visited the various garages where the
former owner remembered to have taken it to rectify but
then never picked up. Time went by and from one garage
to the other my father finally arrived at a rectifier
where again he asked for that weird engine. "Oh, an old
aluminum one?", the mechanic asked. "Yes, yes, that
one", Sánchez Ortega replied. "You're in luck, we were
just about to cover it with cement", said the mechanic
while walking him towards the back part of the garage
where there was a huge electricity post hole. It was
being filled up with garbage and metal objects to pour
liquid cement afterwards. In the dark back, an engine
with the word Amilcar on it could be spotted on the
camshaft caps. With the help of wizard Pichón Rocha they
were able to make it work after a huge effort. Rodolfo
Iriarte, witness to this story, remembers there were a
lot of parts that could not be fixed and that the engine
connecting rods were Ford and had been welded. The only
solution they could come up with was to put in Mini
Cooper connecting rods and customized pistons. This
atrocity of the Ford connecting rods was Jorge Malbrán's
idea, he confessed, when Chuzo owned the car and
participated in the first Club de Automóviles Sport
[Sports Car Club] races. So, is this the car owned by
González and it was never exported to Germany as it was
believed? Or was it just the engine that was left and
the rest gone?
En segunda fila Chuzo y su Amilcar en una largada del CAS en la
costanera
But the story is more complicated. Juan Jiménez Cabrera,
an Uruguayan from Montevideo, imported a C6 to his
country in 1929. Here is where the third one comes in.
It is known that he participated in several races with
it, among them at the Rambla Wilson in his city. In the
mid 30s he sold it to Jorge Montero who raced some more
years and also ended up adapting a Ford V8 to it. It is
important to understand that these engines were very
complex for the local mechanics and getting parts was
very difficult or nearly impossible. The option to
"Americanize" the mechanism was very tempting and it
allowed for an excellent hybrid with the power and
reliability of an American engine and the
characteristics of an European Grand Prix chassis. After
that nothing else was known about this car. According to
some hypotheses, it may have been exported to Argentina
but the truth is there is no record of this.
Enrique y Santiago con chasis Amilcar en Pergamino
Chasis en construccion en Pergamino 80s
My father's C6 restoration took years and there were a
lot of bad moments. With the help of his friend Desmond
Peacock from England and many others in Buenos Aires,
they managed to make it "roar". A big part of the help
on this job was done by Héctor "Chiquito" Solmi in the
farm shed in the city of Pergamino. He mainly did all of
the chassis work. Once it was completely restored, the
car looked amazing and sounded incredibly (when it did
start) but there was a big problem. My father was 1.90
mts tall and the car was almost the size of a toy. The
only way he found to get in it was by removing the
seats, and doing strange movements with his big belly he
slowly managed to squeeze in. Getting out of there was a
problem. He participated with this car in some of the
Club de Automóviles Sport [Sports Car Club] races with
no big accomplishments or satisfactions. This resulted
in his selling the car and the C6 was sent back to
France after 60 years. This was the last model in the
country.
So the doubts are: Did Macoco bring two C6 to Argentina?
Was one of those a C0? Which one belonged to Chuzo
González? Was it the Macoco's replica or the one in
Montevideo? Was it one that Macoco brought afterwards
and didn't remember? Did Raúl Chiesa bring one for his
agency? Was my father's car one of them with the other
one's engine? So all in all, how many 6-cylinder Amilcar
were there on these shores?
Evidence suggests that my father's was the one
that belonged to Chuzo González, mainly because of some
bodywork characteristics. So which one was exported? The
one in Uruguay? Was the second one owned by Macoco
exported and my father's was the one from Uruguay? Or is
it that none of them was ever exported in the 60s? I'm
going crazy!
My father also owned a CGSs that he used for many years
and several other 4-cylinder model projects. Most of
them were taken back to Europe and I am sure they have a
more precise history tracking. Maybe our friends from
the Amilcar Register can help me with this mystery
around the 6-cylinder Amilcar that set foot in Argentina
and once and for all I will be able to sleep in peace.
Santiago E. Sánchez Ortega