PinkElephant1

Jim Chaffee's "Pink Elephant III"

This well-known Corvette-powered southern California Special is now owned by Chris Wickersham. Here's his "information page" about the car.

The "Pink Elephant III" today. Wheel wells were added in the late 1960s to cover the wider wheels & tires used in that era.

Chaffee gets crossed up at Paramount Ranch in 1957 in the MG-powered Pink Elephant 1. Ken Miles looks for room to get by in John von Neumann's Porsche Spyder Porsche Spyder.

Racing historian Ron Cummings offered this info on the "Pink Elephants"

"The Pink Elephant at Paramount Ranch is the Pink Elephant I, a Devin body
on a stock MG TD Mk II that Chaffee built and raced. He previously raced the
production TD before going modified. The Pink Elephant I raced for many
years in the CalClub. Chaffee was a Devin dealer.

The Pink Elephant II, by the way, was built using an old Miller two man
Indy frame. I think Chaffee sold the Miller parts and put the Chevrolet
motor into III.

The Pink Elephant III was built on the Healey chassis about 1960-61. I
seem to remember it first racing with the Healey motor, later with the
Chevrolet. I looked at the car at Chris' lately and it is mostly a Healey
chassis.

I forgot to mention the Pink Elephant IV. It was a Devin body on a Triumph
chassis. The car ran the Triumph motor. I seem to remember the car being
painted more of a red color rather than the typical Chaffee pink. After
one or two races the car was entered simply as a Devin-Triumph and lost
it's Pink Elephant name. I think Chaffee built the car for one of his foreign
car garage, in Ontario California, customers".