It was Wilbur Curtis’s dream to see convoys of Shamrock cars cruising around the streets and highways of America. Instead, the Irish-made car is a collector’s item, and a cautionary tale if you are thinking of investing in something you have no knowledge of.
It all started when the wealthy American businessman visited his wife’s family in Ireland around 1957. He was the inventor of the glass coffee pot and had made his fortune manufacturing coffee-making equipment. Shocked at the poverty in 1950s Ireland, he decided to do something about it. The plan involved inventing a new luxury convertible that would be manufactured in Ireland and exported to the US. It would be an Irish version of the Thunderbird but cost half the price. He envisaged exporting 10,000 cars a year, at $2,495 a pop.
The first Shamrock prototype was built 65 years ago in Guildford and shipped off to the US to generate interest, while he worked on opening his Irish production plant. The Irish connection was hyped up in an article in Mechanix Illustrated magazine, which has been reproduced by the Vintage News Daily website. Faith and begorrah, every Irish cliché you can think of was shoe-horned into the article. “It doesn’t run on poteen and there’s divil a leprechaun under the hood but the Shamrock is as Irish as Paddy’s pig – and a good deal faster,” the writer enthused.
The promotional images released by the company in April 1959 will also raise eyebrows, but for a different reason. They include several photographs of a woman sitting in the boot of the car, because of course the first question any car buyer asks is: does the boot comfortably fit a grown woman? This model looked very comfortable anyway as she prepared to close the boot lid on herself and her floral dress.
But the car had bigger problems than its questionable promotional photographs. It was designed by a Midget car racer, Alvin “Spike” Rhiando who appeared to have made some basic design errors. The body was fibreglass, which made it lighter, but the 1.5 litre engine was still too small for the 17-foot-long car, so it was not powerful enough for the Americans.
When it featured in a 2001 Top Gear programme, the presenter Andy Wilman said the tiny chassis meant it handled like “a mouse with an ironing board on its back”. And the shrouded rear wheels meant you couldn’t change the rear tyres without dropping the entire rear axle unit.
Although he was said to have Irish heritage, poor Wilbur did not have the luck of the Irish as he tried to get his project up and running. He wanted to open the factory in Tralee but his vision was not enthusiastically embraced by the powers-that-be in Kerry so he shifted his attention further north and opened his factory in Castleblayney, Co Monaghan, in 1960. But he couldn’t get any American distributors and he pulled the handbrake on the enterprise less than a year after the factory opened. Reports vary on how many cars were produced but vintage car enthusiast Paddy Byrne from Drogheda believes it was only nine.
It was his Shamrock car that featured in that Top Gear programme. It now has 3,500 miles on the clock and is still tootling along. He has also started refurbishing another Shamrock. Even though the cars are as rare as hen’s teeth, he is adamant that neither one is for sale.
And while motoring enthusiasts might have disparaged the car design, he ignores the doomsayers. “You will get the critics but I don’t mind them because I have something that they haven’t got,” he says.
Wilbur Curtis may have discovered there was no pot of gold at the end of this particular rainbow, but when he died in 1987, the obituaries put his invention of the fibre-glass car only second to his invention of the glass coffee pot when listing his achievements.
A few of his Shamrocks did make their way to the US. In 2002, the LA Times hitched a ride with one proud owner, Dick Midkiff, who had painted his car a dashing shade of green, in homage to his Cork relatives.
He told how his unusual car had caused more than one accident, with people driving over curbs when they saw it. “One woman ran into the back of the car in front of her and totalled her car while watching us,” he said with some satisfaction.
Paddy Byrne estimates that it will take a few months to get his second Shamrock roadworthy. So if there is an increase in cars being rear-ended in Drogheda next year, we will know why.