David V. Uihlein MG-special
"David Uihlein was a sports car enthusiast living in Wisconsin. At the age of 16 he landed a summer job in the Milwaukee shop of racing legends Carl and Tudy Marchese. Following his formal education and an apprenticeship at the family brewing business (Schlitz), Uihlein decided it was time to build an American sports car that could beat the Europeans. Working with the Marchese’s, an Allis-Chalmers engineer named E.J. Healy, and famed race car constructor Weikko Leppanen, the project came together using largely MG TD components. The car itself looked like an Indy Roadster with fenders and the body was made from aluminum. The chassis was a heavily modified MG TD item.
The interesting part about the Uihlein special is its engine. The bottom end is an MG TD 1250-cc XPAG unit, chosen for its reliability and also because it was significantly less expensive than an Offy engine. On top of this block sits a hemispherical head with dual overhead camshafts. The head and cam housings are cast in nickel-alloy steel. The stock cam was left in the block to drive the oil pump and distributor while the two overhead camshafts are gear driven. Dual S.U. carburetors feed the fuel mixture to the intake ports on the left side while four ports lead to four straight pipes on the right side of the engine. The hemispherical head allows valves that are approximately 40 percent larger than original. Published reports of the time claimed the Uihlein engine would produce 90-bhp, significantly more than the 54-bhp of a standard XPAG engine, although the compression ratio was not reported. Don Marsh, a Columbus, Ohio racer who drove MG’s in the early 1950s remembers seeing the bright purple Uihlein special at a race at Cumberland in the mid-fifties. “We were pretty worried about it, with its special engine. But it wasn’t very fast and we had no trouble beating it.” Don was driving his lightweight Lester-MG that is now owned by Marv Primack in Chicago.
David Uihlein’s intention was to offer a competition model built in Milwaukee to customers and to also provide the twin-cam head in kit form so that others could build their own twin-cam T-types. Neither plan came to fruition and today David Uihlein, a noted collector of classic cars and Miller Indy cars, still keeps his Uihlein Special in his private collection"
(mgvr.org)
