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8 Aug 2001, 05:46 (Ref:127425) | #1 | ||
Veteran
Join Date: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,221
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Building them new...
Historic racing, this one...
In Australia it is permitted to build 'Historic' race cars provided they are built with automotive components of the correct vintage and they are built 'in the manner of' cars of that period. This is one bit of evidence that this is a good idea... a Buick engine with 4 carburettors nestling in a Chrysler chassis, Bob Larkin being the owner. Doesn't it look great? Of course, a lot of these cars finish up looking a lot better than the real cars of the era, but at least there is something out there representative of the cars that raced in the pre-war days. The freedom ends with 1940, by the way. |
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8 Aug 2001, 06:36 (Ref:127437) | #2 | ||
Ten-Tenths Hall of Fame
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Join Date: Nov 1999
Posts: 3,797
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I'm in two minds about this.
(Great creation by the way, though.) The VSCC in Britain scrutinised fresh specials very carefully, because of the risk of viable restoration project cars being used as donors for hybrids of no discernible racing pedigree. Alvises and Rileys are the most vulnerable to this process. The market value of an Alvis Silver Eagle fabric saloon is far outweighed by its restoration costs, but a special can be fabricated on the chassis for a fraction of the price, and will quite possibly be quicker than a genuine vintage sports car which is trying to compete against it. Where it falls down is in the case of a friend of mine who found himself with a terminally rotten and engineless Lagonda 2.6 of about 1955. The chassis was a prime candidate for a monoposto special, and so he had fun making one, and then motorised it by dropping in the Jaguar XK140 engine he had in his yard for a decade or so. Trouble is, his car is ineligible for just about any race series there is. Fortunately the "run what you brung" spirit of the Bentley Drivers Club race meeting means that the car gets an airing very occasionally, but otherwise it is a lovely engineering exercise with very little usability. It's tricky, this one. |
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8 Aug 2001, 08:21 (Ref:127456) | #3 | ||
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Join Date: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,221
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In practice, Tim, we've seen more of this sort of thing in cars that aren't able to be 'made in the likeness of.'
Cars of the fifties aren't allowed to be built up, but a number of genuine specials are running either in a form they got rebuilt into a bit later in their racing history, or they were modified at a time when Historic Racing was new here and have been allowed to get away with it. One of these is Lou Molina's Vulgarilla, an MG Special that was in fact the Platypus MG in the fifties with an Austin Healey engine and monoposto body. It was Lou's concern for the genitalia over top of the driveshaft that had it changed, apparently! The photographed car sports a grille modified from an International truck, inverted, by the way, and has a Chrysler gearbox. This is more typical of the creations that come of the allowance to build these cars. An old British Chassis is a good start, but a lot come on American chassis, with an American engine generally, because they are large and loud, and a body of some kind or other. This is more or less like this car was, and so typical of many... This was built in the immediate post war years with a Ballot touring chassis from the twenties, along with its running gear, and an Oldsmobile engine and gearbox from the mid thirties. The body style was meant to emulate Peter Whitehead's ERA, which it did nicely. One car recently finished has a 5.7 litre aero engine from the twenties in a Buick chassis of the same era, while one of the really quick ones is considered to be having a bit of a lend of the rules for Group J (pre-1931), an Amilcar chassis with an AC six that goes very well, thank you. I would like to see it happen for cars through to the mid fifties or so, but some say this would just lead to an abundance of Jag-engined things, of which we have a couple of real ones anyway. Yes, I can see how it might be a drain on some of the PVT cars in your land, but here there is too many rubbishy old things about that can be more readily obtained that it's not such an issue. |
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