Caddy LMP...Where is it Now?

[Tim Northcutt]

I forgot to post this last week...

When Wayne Taylor was on "Windtunnel" last week, he closed the interview with news I had not heard...

He has one ot the Cadillac LMPs in his garage at home!!!


My question:

Which Caddy LMP?

The one Riley built, or the 2nd edition???

and would Cadillac ever release it for competition???

[Waco Racer]

A couple of years ago a salesman at a local Cadillac dealership told me that his General Manager got to go to a meeting in Las Vegas and drive one of the LMP cars. He showed me a picture of him driving the car and it was one of the original Riley & Scott cars. I just figured that Caddy was using them as dealer perks. I believe they missed out in not letting a good team campaign the LMP02 cars.

[class4v]

The team was good, the guys behind Protostar were all real experienced people. The problem of the LMP02 was development ( car was built in a record tempo) and a not very powerfull engine.

[jhansen]

Tim, I bet it's one of the older Riley cars. If I had to guess I'd say the later models are collecting dust somewhere. But at this stage, it really doesn't matter. To bring them out now would be silly. But GM should have raced them in 2003 and in 2004. The car would have been winning races by now. But we've been down this road before and this horse is well and truely dead.

[Nordic]

I think GM are still working on the caddy in secret, they still have not managed to get the boot large enough to hold a set of golf clubs.

[Tim Northcutt]

Originally posted by jhansen
Tim, I bet it's one of the older Riley cars. If I had to guess I'd say the later models are collecting dust somewhere. But at this stage, it really doesn't matter. To bring them out now would be silly. But GM should have raced them in 2003 and in 2004. The car would have been winning races by now. But we've been down this road before and this horse is well and truely dead.

I agree....because it would be good for only one season, unless you hired the designer of the 2002 chassis to do a hybrid kit for it...and then you would only get one more year out of it....

Now a small budget team like AutoCon could benefit from getting a hybrid package for their R&S, because it would give them two years of added life with that chassis, and maybe they could work a deal with Riley to be a "test data" team for a possible "New ACO Specs" prototype...and the two years would buy the time to develop and test the new specs car as well as give them the time to raise capital or get partners involved in funding such a long-term effort...

But to do the Caddy thing for one year at this stage would be a waste....

2003 and 2004 was when that car needed to be on the rack...and we know that did not happen...

[Aysedasi]

Originally posted by jhansen
The car would have been winning races by now.

Hmmm. I'm a smidgeon less confident than you about that........

[Tim Northcutt]

Well...they had podium finishes in 2002 in their last five races...including Petit....

I think that with additional work, it would have been very conptetive, and possibly a winner...

Wayne Taylor wanted to work a deal at the end of 2002 to campaign it as a privateer in 2003, and GM said "No"....

He knew what he had with the new 2002 chassis and engine (as it evolved) and felt it "could" get even better...

So I would have some confidence in jhansen's statement....

[jhansen]

It wouldn't have been a Le Mans winner. But I think it's quite fair to say that it could have been as competitive as say the Dyson Lolas have been. I could see the '02 Caddy being quite quick at certain tracks.

[Tim Northcutt]

Originally posted by jhansen
It wouldn't have been a Le Mans winner. But I think it's quite fair to say it could be as competitive as say the Dyson Lolas have been. I could see the '02 Caddy being quite quick at certain tracks.

I definitely agree with that assessment....

[simon c]

Loved the noise the 2000 cars made at LM - after rerouting the exhausts (i think).

[billnchristy]

Wonder where the DAMS Motorola Caddys (the black Rileys) that ran in 2000 are? I believe all 4 were entered right, the 2 factory and the 2 french cars.

[Graham Goodwin]

One of the original cars was parked in the entrance hall to the Racerock restaurant in Orlando during Sebring Week this year - Don't know whether its now a permanent exhibit

[vinnie]

One of the cars totaly burned in 2000. I think this one is wrecked.

[GT-Eins]

By the way: has somebody an overview how many chassis of the Cadillacs have been build in Total?
From R&S Version I know 4 that raced - are there additional spares or test chassis?
And how many were build of the LMP02 beside the 2 that raced?
:confused:

[class4v]

In the making of the movie Michel Vaillant, there are sequences filmed inside the DAMS workshop, there you can see some body work elements (black ones with Motorola logo on it) of the R&S Cadillac. Don't know if there are some chassis left there. Concerning the LMP 002 IMO there were only 2.

[MulsanneMike]

6 R&S Cadillac tubs were manufacturered. This is strecthing the memory, but I believe the crash test chassis was repaired and sat aside as a spare. The Andy Wallace Sebring car that crashed was repaired and became a show car, and the DAMS car that burned was completely destroyed (monocoque).

[Javi]

How many parts were taken fron the R&S Mk III to the LMP caddy?, In Mulsanne´s corner (what a wonderful website...), it states for the 2000 car that "using the Mk III as a baseline", but, to what extent? Was there a real new new design effort behind the 2000 caddy?
Somehow I liked that car, pity it was so uncompetitive.

[Dauntless]

I have a RC model of the Mk I Caddy LMP...which I still consider one of the best looking open top sports racers ever.

[MulsanneMike]

Originally posted by Javi
How many parts were taken fron the R&S Mk III to the LMP caddy?, In Mulsanne´s corner (what a wonderful website...), it states for the 2000 car that "using the Mk III as a baseline", but, to what extent? Was there a real new new design effort behind the 2000 caddy?
Somehow I liked that car, pity it was so uncompetitive.

Frankly next to nothing carried over. New everything, uprights, suspension, etc. The MkIII was the performance baseline as far as the mark to exceed was concerned. And yes, the 2000 Cadillac would have been substantially different. To my knowledge nothing got beyond the CAD screens before GM cancelled the project, but all one has to do is look at the MkIIIC, and how quickly R&S was able to move that car along, to make the inference that it benefitted somewhat from the dead-in-the-water 2000 Cadillac.

[Javi]

For 2000 Le Mans, there were 2 cadillac teams, the "works" team and the DAMS team. I assume they had equal equipment, but the DAMS were faster. For the rest of the ALMS season, the works team appeared for some races, but at least on the very last one (adelaide), I think it was the DAMS team again running the caddies. Does anyone know if it´s true and why? Was the R&S team dismissed by then?

[MulsanneMike]

Ooops, in my above post, read "2000 Cadillac" as 2001 Cadillac...The car that was to follow on would have been a pretty substaintail reworking of the car that rolled out in 2000. But then Cadillac canceled and went with Nigel Stroud's 3GR group for '01-'02. And to reiterate, the original 2000 R&S Cadillac was a clean sheet of paper design borrowing nothing from the MkIII.

[MulsanneMike]

Yes, DAMs ran the cars at Adelaide in '00. Don't know for sure though why. I can only imagine that GM didn't want to pay for an away race at that point in the game. DAMs could basically do what they wanted with the cars though I have little doubts that Cadillac at least helped somewhat financially. Though I'm sure they didn't spend anything like they would of had the factory team gone over.

[Javi]

I always have thought (´til now) that the 2000 caddy was based upon the MkIII, and that was the reason for being so aerodynamically conservative. I am not an expert on this (Mike is), but if you compare the caddy with its stablemates, like the R8 audi, even the Reynard 2KQ or the Bk2/10 Lola, those cars had a much more modern approach to air management than the caddy seemed to have. also, I can not see why the open front grille was operational, isn´t it aerodynamically uneficient??. Given that that they started from scratch, why being so conservative?

[MulsanneMike]

The Cadillac had a modest aero program. Something like 14 day total spent at Swift's tunnel in CA. Of course Cadillac wanted a car that had some reflection back to their road car line, so that was a limiting factor (at least a couple of days were burned when the GM stylist [Kip something-or-other] was allowed to dick around with the model in the tunnel). Things like the functioning grill were a real ****-fight with GM insisting on it and Bob Riley objecting to it. Of course he who pays the bills always wins...certainly GM didn't know anything about race car design and they admitted as much when they gave Nigel Stroud carte blanche with the '02 version. Bascially the R&S Cadillac came down to too small a budget and too much GM involvement. That all changed when Stroud and 3GR took over and the results showed. Too bad GM couldn't have figured that all out earlier.