This is really worth a separate article about this very active man.
However, I'll provide you with a brief synopsis with some photographs and information on his biography which is now into it's 5th. revised edition.
Wing Commander Ken Wallis and his cars
Ken Wallis, or to give him his full title - Wing Commander Kenneth H. Wallis CEng., FRAeS, FRSA, RAF (Ret'd), has crammed a lot in to his extraordinary life.
Although cars and, to a lesser extent motorcycles, have featured prominently in his life, it is in the world of aviation that Ken Wallis is best known.
Following a distinguished military career in the British Royal Air Force after he gained in pilot's licence in 1937 - he flew Lysanders and Wellingtons during WW II with several hair-raising escapades - he went on to achieve a respected list of achievements in the technical and research fields for the RAF.
After he left the RAF for good he turned his full-time attention to developing his own design of ultra-light autogyro (a wingless aircraft with a helicopter type of rotor that was unpowered).
During this time he had gained all 20 world records for autogyros in speed, range and altitude.
One of Wallis' autogyros named "Little Nellie" became famous for helping James Bond to escape and shoot down his pursuers in the film You Only Live Twice . It was noted for its extreme agility.
Turning to the automotive field, Wallis was no less inventive with two very special cars to his name.
When he was 11 years old he already had a home-built motorcycle that he used to ride around the lawn upsetting the neighbours.
However his real interest was in cars.
When he was 17 he acquired an Austin Seven with a fabric Gordon England sports body. That was wrecked when he overturned it when racing against a 12/50 Alvis.
During these early days Wallis also owned a brand-new Raleigh three-wheeler and a Bentley 3-litre saloon that he converted to a two-seater and eventually exchanged for an Alvis 12/70.
To get exactly what he wanted however he decided to build his own special. Based on an Austin Seven and elongated by using two overlapping chassis. It was a low rakish open sports car with long flowing wings and an alloy body that Wallis crafted himself. This car was sold during the war and replaced with a 4.5-litre Invicta and a Rolls-Royce 20/25.
In 1948 he decided that the only way to achieve a satisfactory result was to build the ultimate special, one that would provide him with the car he really desired.
He purchased a 1924 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost that had been cut-down to make a tow truck for the princely sum of 60 pounds sterling.
His plan was for a sporting car with coupe de ville coachwork, light in weight yet strong enough to counteract the flexing of a 1920s chassis.
Extensive modifications were carried out the Rolls chassis and running gear in order to accept the new lightweight body. Ken Wallis spent the next two years hand-crafting the bodywork from Duralumin except for the mudguards which he entrusted to a London specialist to form the correct double curvature.
The result was a car that looked as though as though it had been commissioned from a leading carrosserier.
Wheelbase was 12ft 6in and the long bonnet stretched 7ft 6in. Many former aircraft parts were incorporated in the
detailed design.
One eye-catching aspect of the car was the design of the headlamps. The headlamp pods were converted from the covers of the two-stroke starting engines in the nose of WW II bombers. The four headlights were from ex-RAF Aldis signalling lamps.
The car won a prize at the 1954 Rolls-Royce Enthusiasts' Club Concours.
Ken Wallis covered 30,000 miles in the car with its original engine. A modified 1925 unit eventually replaced it.
In 1956 Wallis sailed across the Atlantic taking the special with him to the USA where it was used as a second car. As he had to return to the UK in 1958 he sold the car before he left.
It eventually wound up in the collection of Bud Cohn of Beverly Hills, California in the 1960s.
Apparently the car was sold again in 1979 and it was only in the late 1980s that it was known to be owned by Paul Talbot, a Los Angeles property dealer. Presumably the car still resides in California today.
For those interested in reading more the 5th Revised Edition of his Biography has just been published -
The Lives of Ken Wallis- Engineer and Aviator Extraordinaire by Ian Hancock (ISBN 978-0-9541239-6-3)
This is not quite the end of the story of the extraordinary Wing Commander Wallis and his cars though as I have just found another small (literally) automotive related venture that he came up with during the war.
He designed a table-top system for miniature racing cars using the back of window black-out boards in the officers' mess for the track during daylight hours. Electric power was transmitted through metal foil sunk into the track and picked up by metal bands in the cars' tyres. A raised wire under the steering was transmitted to a Bassett Lowke electric motor and the accelerator was a rheostat. The cars slid and drifted realistically with this system unlike the Scalextric one that appeared in 1957. Unfortunately Wallis departed for the USA in 1956 before patents could be established on the invention.
I would like to acknowledge that much of the information for this brief article was extracted from a longer article by the authoritative automotive journalist Giles Chapman.
I will post a few accompanying photos separately.
