Tag Archives: Club

Easy Handler – Ford Gran Torino

Slovakian Rampage – K-1 Attack

My star car of the day at The Avenue Drivers Club meeting last Sunday was without doubt the K-1 Attack a vehicle I had never even heard of before much less actually seen.

K-1 is a Slovakian manufacturer who started out making replica kit cars of some predictable exotica from Ferrari and Lambourghini in Bratislava in 1990. This business was frowned upon by Ferrari in particular.

Dick Kvetnansky K-1 then branched out into building it’s own roadster kit car the Attack with the design accredited to Juraj Mitro who lists time spent at VW’s design studio in Wolfsburg on his CV.

Apparently the first drawings for the design were made on a napkin in a sushi restaurant in 1997, turns out this is not the first head turner to originate from a Slovakian designer the Bugatti Veyron lines are credited to Juraj’s fellow countryman Jozef Kaban.

The K-1 can be made to use any number of front wheel drive power and front wheel drive transmissions, sitting in the back of Oliver Ashley’s example seen here is a 250 hp Honda Type R motor.

Oliver who lives in Bristol spent three and a half years and around £70,000 pounds putting together the worlds first right hand drive K-1 attack, apparently there are three others known to be in the UK.

Performance of the Attack is dependent on the power unit, if your into head turning exotica you could start by looking into building a vehicle like this at the Attack Forum.

Thanks for joining me on this ‘Slovakian Rampage’ edition of ‘Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres, I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !

The Misfit – MG C GT Sebring Replica

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During the endless mergers that took place in the British motor industry after 1945 many models like today’s MG C GT owe more to merged corporate parts bins than to fresh from the ground up planning.

The rational behind the MG C roadster and GT models was too build a vehicle to replace the six cylinder Austin Healey 3000 whose ancestry can be traced back to the Austin Healey 100-Six launched in 1956.

The recipe for the new MG-C was to use the MG B body shell first seen in 1962 and fit it with the 3 litre / 183 cui six cylinder Austin C series motor that was more commonly found in the Austin Healey 3000 sports car and Austin Westminster saloon/sedan.

Unfortunately the cast iron block C series motor has 2 cylinders more than the motor around which the MG B was designed around and the C series motor was a good deal taller than the MG B 4 cylinder. This meant the chassis cross member that held the 4 cylinder motor had to be replaced, the front suspension strut suspension replaced with torsion bar suspension, the front bulkhead had to be modified and when all was said and done to accommodate an automatic transmission option the engine was not placed as far back as the engineers would have liked to achieve a 50/50 front rear weight balance.

The new MG C also had to run on 15″ wheels in order to keep the oil sump off the ground, but all in all the engineers were pleased with their 120 mph creation which had a respectable 53/47% front to rear weight balance.

Unfortunately the press panned the car in essence for not being different enough from the MG B but also because they found the handling tended towards understeer / push. It has been noted in some circles this characteristic may well have been exacerbated by the fact that the MG C was so much smoother than the MG B that journalists might not have been aware of the speeds they were traveling when experiencing the understeer push phenomenon.

Completely oblivious to the handling criticisms Prince Charles took delivery of an MG C in 1967 and this car has apparently been passed onto Prince William. The car seen here has been turned into a replica of the triple carburetor MG C’s raced at Sebring in 1968 and 1969, though the tailgate spoiler was not used by the works cars of 1968 and 1969 which were racing in the same class as full blown racing cars like the Porsche 907 and 908 models.

Of the 9002 MG C’s manufactured between 1967 and 1969 4458 were hard top GT’s. With the merger of British Motor Holdings with Leyland owners of the Triumph brand in 1968 the Triumph TR 6 was chosen as the newly merged corporations 6 cylinder sports car of choice and so the MG C died an early death, though in 1973 an even larger, but much lighter, engined MGB GT V8 would appear.

Thanks for joining me on ‘The Misfit’ edition of ‘Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres’, I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !

Coffee, Croissant, Vintage & Classic – Avenue Drivers Club

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The Avenue Drivers Club was formed in 2009 by a small group of enthusiasts of cars that will do at least 100 mph and the Avenue Café on Queen Square, Bristol. Every second Sunday of the month they meet at 9 am at Queen Square for coffee and a chat.

Being Bristol the 100 mph criteria is not strictly adhered to, as I found out yesterday when I was pleasantly surprised to find several interesting Vintage vehicles, like this 1925 Talbot 10/23, which would struggle to reach that 100 mph speed under their own steam.

Like wise The BSA Ten powered by a twin cylinder air cooled engine from 1925/26 would struggle to reach 100 mph and if it did the owner would not know about it as his speedometer fell out on the way over to the meeting.

Not too sure what the function of these accessory is it appears to shine red yellow or green lights forwards and rearwards and one was mounted either side of a 1933 Morris Cowley. If you know what purpose these lights were designed for please chime in below.

GALPOT regulars may remember this Austin 10 choking on a clothes peg from an earlier blog, turns out the full name for the car is Austin 10/24 Ripley Sport. This car is thought to have been first owned by the Debyshire County Constabulary in black.

Despite my many recent Tuesday MG blogs I have not yet been able to establish exactly what model MG this nifty little 1936 racer is, if you know please chime in below.

In the running for car of the day was this absolutely immaculate 1953/55 Bristol 403, the condition of this car really has to be seen in the flesh to be believed, I can imagine this car will still be turning heads in 60 years time.

Another vehicle falling into the sub 100 mph bracket was this 1962 Austin Gipsy a would be competitor to the otherwise ubiquitous Land Rover this one with a 110″ wheelbase. There was also an immaculate Series One Land Rover and an early ‘proper’ Range Rover in attendance.

Representing Triumph was a 2000, 2500PI a GT6 and this 1966/67 TR5PI which rather took my fancy.

At the more powerful end of the scale was this 1969/70 Aston Martin DBS, with an even more powerful Ferrari 365 GTB/4 parked up behind it.

Among many things I learned yesterday was the existence of Fisher cars, I mistook this for a Ginetta G4, it is actually a Fisher Fury powered by a 1 litre / 61 cui motorcycle motor.

Car of the day was without doubt this K1 Attack, another vehicle I had never heard of before which originates from Slovakia and is powered by a Honda Type R engine. Sundays blog will reveal more about this car. Only 4 are thought to exist in the UK and this is the only one with RHD.

At the end of the meeting which lasted a very short 3 hours David Roots, who told me about the Avenue Drivers Club a couple of weeks ago kindly gave me a highly entertaining ride home ‘aboard’ his unique Lenham ALFA Romeo.

My thanks to David and everyone else who brought out their pride and joy I simply did not have time to include in today’s blog, can’t wait for the next meeting on the second Sunday in May.

Thanks for joining me on this Coffee, Croissant, Vintage & Classic edition of ‘Gettin’ a li’l pscho on tyres, I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !

12 04 12 Errata I originally had the cool white car down as a Attack K1, it’s actually a K1 Attack and it is not powered by a motor cycle engine but a Honda Type R, apologies to all concerned.

Special Equipment – Lotus Elan Coupé S/E

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A couple of weeks ago you may remember I attempted my first navigation exercise with Bristol Pegasus Motor Club membership secretary Bob in his ‘daughters’ Mini Cooper. Today I am looking at Bob’s own car his Lotus Elan Coupé S/E otherwise known as an Elan S3 FHC (Type 36).

Like the racing Lotus 26R the Elan Coupé S/E has a fixed hard top unlike the original Lotus 26 Elan’s which were all convertibles.

The first 36 Coupé’s were introduced in September 1965, with a 105 hp version of the Lotus Twin Cam 4 cylinder engine.

An S/E version as seen here became available in July of the following year with a 118hp ‘L Block’ version of the Lotus Twin Cam.

S/E Coupés are distinguished from all earlier Elan models by the repeater lights on the front wings and stainless steel trim on the sides.

Bob’s car was built in 1967 by which time Lotus had won two of an eventual seven Grand Prix constructors titles with the Lotus 25 and Lotus 33.

The Elan S3 body was the first Elan to have a boot lid that extended all the way to the tail of the car.

It is estimated that approximately 1,200 Elan S3 FHC’s were built between 1965 and 1968 when the S4.

My thanks to Bob for his help with this blog.

Thanks for joining me on this ‘Special Equipment’ edition of ‘Getting’ a li’l psycho on tyres’ I hope you will join me again tomorrow’. Don’t forget to come back now !

Hire Car – MG Bellevue Special

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The MG Bellevue Special appears to have started life as one of the 745 MG N series sports cars built from 1934 to 1936. The first NA series chassis around which this particular vehicle was built was originally supplied with a twin carburetor 56 hp six cylinder motor upgraded from the Wolseley Hornet.

In two seater guise this car was prepared by Walter ‘Wilkie’ Wilkinson of Bellevue Garages in Wandsworth London as a racing hire car for use at Brooklands in the 1935/36 seasons.

In 1937 Walter converted the car into an ‘offset’ single seater using earlier MG K-Type axles, brakes and wheels and the sleek aluminium body along with a rack of six Amal carburetors. The six carburetors were later replaced with a supercharger.

Wilke Wilkinson, a founder member of the British Racing Mechanics Club, went on to prepare the Le Mans Winning ‘D-Type’ Jaguars of Eccurie Eccose in 1956 & 57 and moved on to work with the BRM Grand Prix team where Graham Hill and Jackie Stewart were the drivers in residence. This car seen driven by Ian Baxter at Prescott and Luton Park has recently been sold, the asking price was £175,000.

Thanks for joining me on this ‘Hire Car’ edition of ‘Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres, I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !

Supercharged Map Reading – BPMC Navigation Exercise

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At long last the 2012 motor sport season has got under way, though not in quite the way I have ever experienced ever before. A couple of weeks ago I was informed that Bristol Pegasus Motor Club (BPMC) Membership Secretary Bob Bull was looking for a navigator to take part in the January BPMC Navigation exercise. I got in touch with Bob and he kindly agreed to take me along on Friday despite the fact that I have not read an Ordnance Survey map in something approximating 4 decades, since being introduced to the modern talking route finder a couple of years ago I have rarely had use for any kind of map at all !

This event was organised on three levels Beginners which included Bob and I, Novices for those competent at reading maps who were given an additional false origin exercise, a tulip reading exercise, a map feature reading exercise and herringbone reading exercise. Finally for the Experts there were map reading, false origin, tulip not in the correct order, map feature an a herringbone exercise. I’ll come back to the more difficult exercises in a future blog.

Photo Courtesy Dick Craddy

Bob kindly came and picked me up on Friday night in his ‘daughters Mini Cooper S’ a tidy supercharged model that would be ranged against the Mazda 6 of BPMC Chairman Andy Moss with co driver Chris Goodchild (above) ,

Photo Courtesy Dick Craddy

the Peugeot 106 Rallye of Chris Thompson and Alan Dillamore …

and the Ford Fiesta driven by Martyn with his teenage daughter Katie Davies doing the co driving. We all met with the event organiser Dick Craddy at map reference 494 943 on O/S Map 162 for a 19:30 start.

Bob and I arrived at the lay-by nice and early and wondered if we might try navigating by stars on what was a clear and dark night on the Welsh Boarder.

Once everyone had arrived and signed on Dick went through some basics about not using anything other than normal driving lights, observing the highway code at all times and he warned us that the local constabulary had been informed of our presence and that we should expect to see them at anytime, before handing us our instructions. In our case a list of fifty 6,7 and 8 figure map references with questions about features we could expect to find when we reached them.

Photo Courtesy Dick Craddy

Before setting off we plotted the map references and after the first dozen I realised I had forgotten to label them so we had to start again, nothing like starting at the bottom of the learning ladder. After what must have been nearly an hour I had about half the references plotted and Bob put the Supercharged Mini in gear and off we set towards our first map reference a junction in Mynydd-bach where we had to find out how many miles the sign post to Brynbuga read before heading in the opposite direction towards Shirenewton !

So far so good but then things soon started to get complicated, somewhere between reading the map and looking for clues as to where we actually were I missed a junction and we found our selves on a single lane track facing Chris Thompson coming from the opposite direction ! Chris kindly backed up to let us pass, somehow, it still escapes me how, we managed to do a figure of 8 and ended up back in Shirenewton. Doh ! we retraced our steps and found the junction we missed, found the correct answers to the questions and headed on toward Llanvair Discoed and found the answers to around a dozen questions before deciding to call it a day and heading to the final meeting place a pub next to Tintern Abbey. Note to self not all pubs are marked on an Ordnance Survey Map as PH (Public House) or Inn.

Needless to say we did not do very well coming in well and truly last, but Bob kindly offered to redo the exercise with me in a couple of weeks. They say practice makes perfect so if all goes well we will be back for crack at the next Navigation event a little the wiser.

If you live in the Bristol area and fancy having a go at this entertaining low cost sport why not check out the Bristol Pegasus Motor Club site join the club for just £10 and give it a go. The next BPMC organised Navigation Exercise is on March 16th.

Congratulations to Andy and Chris who easily won even with a deduction for being previous winners !

My thanks to Bob for his patience and taking me along, Dick for organising the event and providing some of the photo’s for today’s blog.

Thanks for joining me on this Supercharged Map Reading Edition of ‘Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres’, I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !

Gettin' A Li'l Psycho On Tyres

Art Tidesco blogs on all things motoring

Tag Archives: Club

Easy Handler – Ford Gran Torino

Slovakian Rampage – K-1 Attack

The Misfit – MG C GT Sebring Replica

Coffee, Croissant, Vintage & Classic – Avenue Drivers Club

Special Equipment – Lotus Elan Coupé S/E

Hire Car – MG Bellevue Special

Supercharged Map Reading – BPMC Navigation Exercise