Happy St.Patrick’s Day! Here’s The Lucky Shamrock, The First Car Ireland Built

It’s St.Patrick’s Day! So, happy St.Patrick’s Day to those who celebrate, whether you treat it like the solemn holy day of obligation that Wikipedia tells me is the case in Ireland, or if you just use it as an excuse to get liquored up and brag about how you’re practically from Dublin because you’re 1/73rd Irish or something like that. However you do it, I hope you have a blast, and it’s a great excuse to talk about the first indigenous Irish car, the Shamrock. I feel like almost every automotive publication has come back to this car on some St.Patrick’s Day, but why fight it? It’s a rite of passage.

The Shamrock was introduced in 1959, and could be considered the last fiberglass sports car to be introduced in the 1950s, if there’s any sort of notoriety to be gained by that. The origin of the car, specifically who started it all, is usually attributed to 27-year-old Wilbur (often mistakenly called William) Curtis, though at least one source credits a James F. Conway for reasons I’m unclear about.

I’m going to go with Curtis here, since far more sources reference him, who got the idea to start the company while visiting Ireland, where he had roots. He wanted to “help the country and its people,” and the way he thought best to accomplish this was to build a factory to make a surprisingly long, underpowered fiberglass car that Motor Trend called “the Irish T-Bird.”

Honestly, I’ve heard worse ideas.

Curtis reached out to Formula 3 driver Alvin “Spike” Rhiando, who may have been Canadian or possibly American or Mexican or German – no one seems entirely certain – to design the car. I’m not entirely clear why Rhiando was asked to design the car. He had only quite limited experience designing vehicles, though he did seem fond of fiberglass, and had designed a fun fiberglass-bodied scooter named the Thor, so perhaps that was enough for Curtis. Maybe he was a friend?

The design of the car wasn’t exactly stellar. While it does sort of resemble a Thunderbird and was clearly inspired by American car design, it also adopts some of the worst traits as well. Consider the overhangs: the wheelbase of the Shamrock was 98″, about four inches longer than a VW Beetle’s wheelbase, but extends out significantly at the front and rear, for a total length of almost 17 feet.

On the production cars (only nine or 10 were actually made, so we’re being generous with the word “production”), that skirt over the rear wheel is fairly modest; the prototype’s was much more covered, which meant the rear axle had to be removed to change the rear tires. I’m glad they decided to tweak that.

The drivetrain for this roughly 1900-pound plastic car was an Austin B-series 1489cc engine from cars like the A55 Cambridge or Nash Metropolitan. That engine made about 52 or 53 horsepower, so the performance of the Shamrock wasn’t exactly what one would call sparkling, but it worked. Motor Trend guessed that it’d be “adequate, but not outstanding.” Girl, same.

Those taillights were from a Vauxhall Cresta PA, and the windshield was from a Vauxhall Victor, in case they looked familiar to you.

Curtis looked into setting up a factory in County Kerry, but didn’t get much support, so in 1960, a factory in Castleblayney, County Monaghan was built. There were plans to produce as many as 10,000 cars selling for $2495 each (that’d be about $27,000 today), but whatever those plans or hopes were soon withered away, and the nine or 10 cars built would be the only Shamrocks to roll out of the factory. By 1961, the project was effectively dead, and the remaining parts were allegedly dumped into Lough Muckno, a nearby lake.

Since the bodies are fiberglass, they wouldn’t have rusted away, so maybe some enterprising divers can salvage those parts to build one or two more Shamrocks! Just putting that out there.

Here’s a nice little video about the Shamrock showing some actual driving:

Ireland would go on to have more failed-car fame with the DeLorean about 2o or so years later, making the country one of the world’s best for exciting automotive failures, and I think that’s worthy of celebration.

Happy St.Patrick’s Day!