Does anyone know what happened to the Jones and Treutlein Crescent Coupe Topolino?
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JayTee, ‘Crecent Coupe’ evolved into ‘Chicken Coupe’ around 1972/73 after Mike Treutlien’s partner Cliff Jones left the set-up following a major eye operation which prevented him from racing the dragster anymore. Jones eventually sold his share of the partnership to Keith Dancey in 1973 hence the change in the name and the colour from orange to metal flake black.
The last known recorded appearance was the rained out 1973 Fireworks meet at Santa Pod with Dancey as the named driver. However, the last recorded win for the Coupe was the DRN Trophy meeting in October when Treutlien put away Ken Cooper’s flathead dragster to win Senior Dragster, 10.6 to 11.3. After that, it all remains a mystery other than Keith went on to race his own rear engined dragster several seasons later.
Built in America, ‘Crescent Coupe’ found its way into Europe when legendary cartoonist Pete Miller had designs on racing the car in Sweden where he had decided to live. In those days it had a 392 Chrysler and was sponsored by Crescent Speedboat Engines (note the name check). Much later, Pete sold the car to Dave Riswick and Dennis Priddle for £200 less engine, wheels and rear axle. They kept it for a short while but when bigger and better things began to happen and Mike and Cliff jumped at the chance.
Mike had been involved in motorsport for a long time as an engine builder for Formula F5000 circuit cars and the Walsall based team of Steve Thompson. He started his drag racing career with a couple of drivers behind the wheel of the John Woolfe Racing ‘Whistler’ Reliant Scimitar GTE altered managing a best of 11.6 before building his own car, a full race 1293cc Mini Cooper running 15 second E.T.’s.
Cliff’s involvement was with the rodding scene and was one of the principal oragnisers of the NDRC Rod Register in the earlier seventies. Cliff was also part of the organising team a long with Alan Wigmore running drag race events at Blackbushe under the NDRC banner.
