GP Ballot used to hunt bears?

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Sometimes the surprise comes from the most unusual places. The interesting main picture has been discovered recently hanging on the wall of a little village´s restaurant in center Spain. This one wasn´t the sole interesting picture at the restaurant; there was also one showing another sporting 1920s cars... also used as "hunting car". Both pictures have a little caption with the same text: "14-3-1916, Gregorio Obeso, Fiat Valilla". Gregorio Obeso perhaps is the name of the original owner, but as almost every of our readers could recognize, these photos don´t show any "1916 car"... nor any Fiat Balilla. The second 1920's  photo shows a beautiful Ballot 2LT with a "skiff style" body and first registered in February 1924, but much more interesting is our main picture. This sporting car seems to be a very early Ballot, still with the rounded radiator; perhaps one of the first GP cars like the vehicles used in the Indy circuit years before entering of in the production of street cars. The number plate is not apparent, but we can observe the short wheelbase  chassis, and the beautiful skiff body ready for three places...occupied in this case by three deceased bears. The "street legal" conversion also included light "fly" wings, one of them used to carry a boar. Undoubtedly the photo commemorates the end of a very successful hunt day... but would you use your ex GP car for this kind of task? In the prewar era it was common to transform racing cars into "every day" vehicles, but the case of this Ballot is perhaps excessive.

(Text and pictures Francisco Carrìon)

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