One of a kind- the Bosley Mark I

 

Cars were much simpler in the nineteen fifties, and a man with the vision and mechanical skills could build his own sports/racing car. Richard W Bosley a nurseryman from Mentor Ohio was such a man; a charter member of the Northeast Ohio chapter of the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA), Bosley sold his Jaguar XK-120 to finance the construction of his sports car which began in September 1952. 

Bosley used 4-inch diameter .0625 wall steel tubing to build the Mark I’s ladder-style chassis, and used 1950 Ford front suspension and a 1948 Mercury rear axle with three trailing arms.

 

For a powerplant, Bosley used a 331-cubic Chrysler ‘Firepower’ hemispherical combustion chamber overhead-valve V-8 engine, equipped with a B.S. Cunningham Company intake manifold with four Zenith downdraft carburetors which boosted the engine’s output to a reported 225 horsepower. The Mark I used a New Process Gear four-speed manual transmission with a fifth gear overdrive and a clutch from White 3000 series truck.

 

 

Bosley designed and built the Mark I’s swoopy fiberglass Ferrari-inspired body himself, and the completed car rides on a 102-inch wheelbase, is 70-inches wide and stands a remarkable 48 inches high, but weighs a hefty 3,360 pounds.

 

The filler neck for the car’s 55-gallon fuel tank, visible in the photograph below, is located at the rear of the car’s roof. Bosley somehow convinced Ted Halibrand to sell him a set of center-lock magnesium wheels for street use which he shod with Pirelli tires.  Finished in March of 1955, Bosley drove his creation to Sebring Florida twice where he worked as a volunteer course steward.

 

 

Unfortunately, the Mark I never achieved Bosley’s dream of entering production; he spent $9,000 to complete the prototype and he realized the economics just didn’t pencil out. In 1957, he traded the completed Mark I to an Illinois car dealer for a well-used engineless Chevrolet Corvette SR-2 race car chassis which Bosley used to create his second masterpiece, the Interstate. The Bosley as shown at the Petersen Automotive Museum is owned by the Margie and Robert Petersen Collection.   

       

The speedometer and tachometer are

customized Ford police interceptor units,

 the balance of the gauges are Stewart-Warner

 

 

All Photographs by the author