It isn’t everyday that cars like this Sawin Ford “Big Car” come up for auction, surprisingly they tend to be quite affordable with the estimated value on this one being $10,000 to $15,000 USD.
Not a lot is known about the car other than the fact that it was built during the 1930s in the midst of The Great Depression, the racing cars of the era had to be reasonably economical and so many were fitted with 4-pots from the Ford Model B. Some performance upgrades were often implemented and this one is fitted with a Lion high-compression cylinder head, giving it a total power output of 85hp from its 200.5 cubic inches.
The car is listed as a “Sawin”, this company was a Rhode Island based racecar fabricator throughout the 1930s and almost exclusively built Midgets – this is one of very few known “big cars”. The car has a relatively simple steel and aluminium construction with drum brakes on all four corners and a suicide type front axle with the spring and front axle mounted ahead of the front-frame crossmember.
When it comes to proper vintage race cars I’ll wager you’ll almost never see something this fantastic at this blue-collar-affordable price, if you’ve been looking for a single-seater for vintage racing, hill climbs or even just as a living room decoration, click here to visit Bonhams and read more.
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
