Love is... hanging on for dear life in a racing three-wheeler — Happy St. Valentine's Day!

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That's right, it’s Saint Valentine’s Day today, so if you haven’t bought that bouquet of flowers or box of chocolates, or booked that romantic dinner yet, you’d better hurry.

Maybe, though, you'd prefer the simple pleasure of taking your dearly beloved out for a drive. Last year, we gave our own special recommendation for how you might do that, and it involved a much-modified AC Sociable...

When Diana Ross sang "You can't hurry love," that may have been because she tried to go courting in an AC Sociable, but the truth is that love can progress very rapidly indeed. This year, our featured couple are continuing the three-wheeled theme, but their romance is moving along far more speedily, as the photo shows. It was taken at the Mont Ventoux hill-climb in France in August, 1922. We see one Monsieur Mahan going uphill in a cloud of gravel, and we are assuming that the young lady hanging out so dramatically to distribute some of the weight is Mrs. Mahan, but we’re not sure. They certainly look like they'd make a nice couple.

The car is said to be a Morgan, entered in the class of up-to-1,100 c.c. vehicles, but that’s not a JAP engine, is it? Could the contrivance instead be a French licence-built ‘Morgan-by-another-name’ Darmont instead?

Words: Jeroen Booij
Picture: Bibliothèque Nationale de France

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