What is an Allard?

What is an Allard?  A better question would be, who is Sydney Allard? And an even better question would be, what makes is this person important?

The best way to answer these questions is to pretend you’re Sydney Allard.  You live in England the first half of 1900.  About 1929 you want to start competing in car racing.  You get your hands on a Morgan 3 wheeler, change it to a 4 wheeler, and win some local races.  However, you needed more power to win the larger races.  If you’re Sydney Allard, you filled the need yourself by combining  existing components to arrive at a more capable car.  The cars were an assembly of the best available racing parts, similar to the AC Corba.  Allard had an American size engine in a British or European body style.  The car I drew is the first Allard I have ever seen in person.  So they are rare in the United States.  Although Allard's were a British make, they were not mass produced and marketed on the scale of the MGs and Triumphs.


Continued from above...

So that is the view from 30 thousand feet and the set up for an interesting write up.  Usually, I would take a breath and then dive down to 10 thousand feet, pull the shoot and gently land a nice story.  Basically I would make a commitment to craft the story that accompanied the drawing.  This time, I have a change in plans.  I have to make an adjustment to the way I do my blog.

In my first few drawing post ups, I would just give a short description.  That developed into a longer write up as I added stories and research.  I would carve out the path to tell the story.  Then edit down the weak sentences and build the steps to the peak of the story.  I am hooked.  It is so much fun.  I love the challenge of writing.  Writing feels like building a tangible object.

To craft my writing, I use tools I have learned and tools I imagine.  An example of the tools could be simple stuff like spelling.  An example of my imaged tools would be the phrase “power surgery”.  I used that in my last writing when describing how Tony cut the car down to 3 wheels.  Or “You may crack a small smile” when looking at the automotive sculpture post.  Or I may add motion as “The dust cleared and I floored it!  Brrrrraaaaaaaa….” in the racing quad post. 

Anyone can judge talent but I put a lot of effort in.  If you are write something…  I hope you put some effort in as well so I can read it.  Come on!  It’s like a tasty meal vs. a bland one.  Take your time, get the best ingredients, and don’t leave the readers resorting to adding ketchup.  Hmm…  Imagine you could add salt or ketchup to the books you read.  Gross.  The writing should be a good craft from the start.  Anyway…

That level of effort takes more time.  I found myself delaying the publishing of the drawings until I was satisfied with the write up.  And the write ups got longer and longer.  It turns out that the writing takes longer than the drawing.  I would like to get back to doing a weekly drawing & publish.  I don’t think that the drawings should wait to get published just because I love crafting the story.  To rectify this from now on I will publish the drawings weekly and create a separate blog for the stories I want to tell.

Maybe the stories will be monthly…  I will have to think about my set up.  I would like to carve up a nice context for the stories.  So you will have to wait for that.

In the mean time, enjoy this drawing of an Allard.  Use the questions at the top to guide your research if you are interested.  Thanks for reading.