Tag Archives: GALPOT

Two Lane Blue Top – Pontiac Le Mans Sport

When I first saw this car I thought cool a GTO from 1970 similar to the one that starred in Two Lane Black Top.

Then when I started to write this blog I noticed the colour coded front bumper did not look like the low impact Endura urethane safety bumpers found on the 1970 GTO, though these could be deleted from factory orders which were then supplied with chrome bumpers from the Pontiac Le Mans.

I also noticed the missing air scoops on the bonnet which was also standard on the GTO, and so it dawned on me that what we are really looking at is not ‘The Humbler‘ with Vacuum Operated Exhaust (VOE) but a 1970 Pontiac Le Mans with a non standard colour coded front bumper.

This Le Mans model is fitted with a 5.7 litre 350 CUI V8 which despite being the base motor of the Le Mans Sport line up will impress the ladies at the local kebab stand plenty, even without the VOE of it’s illustrious GTO sibling. Bearing in mind it costs around US$ 9.54 for an imperial gallon of fuel or US$ 7.93 for a US Gallon in the UK at the moment just starting this car up must be a severe drain on the finances of all but the extremely brave.

Seen earlier this year at the Classic and Sports Car Action Day held at Castle Combe the owner of this car belongs to the Old Skool Trackers a group of enthusiasts whose future outings are posted on the link.

Thanks for joining me on this “Two Lane Blue Top” edition of ‘Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres’ I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !

PS Don’t forget …

Automobiliart GALPOT Seasonal Quiz

December 26th – January 2nd

Win a set of Paul Chenard Greetings Cards

Set 1 Sports & GT Cars

Set 2 Phil Hill World Drivers Championship 50th Anniversary Edition

Set 3 1934 Season

Set 4 Grand Prix Engines of the 1950’s

Set 5 Mike Hawthorn’s Race Cars

The Automobiliart GALPOT Seasonal Quiz will comprise 8 categories.

Overall winner chooses one set of Paul Chenard Greetings Cards from the five sets shown above.

The cards measure 15.24cm x 11.43cm, come in packs of 12 with 3 copies of 4 designs in each set, plus A6 envelopes.

Which set will you choose ?

The free to enter Automobiliart GALPOT Seasonal Quiz will run from December 26th – January 2nd Entries close January 8th 2012, Winner announced January 16th 2012.

Full details on December 26th at GALPOT.

Looking for Automotive Seasonal Gift Idea’s? Visit Automobiliart Now !

Project Sunbird – Ford Consul Capri (335)

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To my mind the Ford Consul Capri has always epitomized the best of 1950’s era design from Ford of Britain, which is a shame because the world had already moved on from those opulent 50’s features when the car was launched in 1961.

The pillar less Capri coupé, like the Consul Classic with which it shares it’s running gear and chassis pan, was designed by Charles Thompson with scaled down influences from Fords Thunderbird and Galaxie Sunliner models.

With a 3 bearing 1340 cc 81.7 cui Ford 109E engine that, when sleeved down to 1092 cc / 66.6 cui was popular in Formula Junior cars at the time, the Capri was considered under powered, and in 1962 Consul Capri’s, like the 1962 model seen here at Goodwood Revival, were fitted with the 1498 cc / 91.4 cui 116 E engine which boosted the top speed to 79 mph with a 0 to 60 mph time of 22.6 seconds.

Body assembly was out sourced to Pressed Steel Fisher who sent the completed bodies to Ford’s Dagenham plant for final assembly. This method of production proved very expensive especially compared to the contemporary Ford Cortina.

Sales of just 19,421 Capri 335’s sold in two and a half years, make this one of the rarest vehicles Ford of Britain ever produced.

The Capri name disappeared from the Ford model palette from 1964 to 1969 when Ford came back with the ‘Car you have always dreamed of’ the more successful Ford Capri Mk 1′ which I’ll be looking at in the New Year.

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

PS Don’t forget …

Automobiliart GALPOT Seasonal Quiz

December 26th – January 2nd

Win a set of Paul Chenard Greetings Cards

Set 1 Sports & GT Cars

Set 2 Phil Hill World Drivers Championship 50th Anniversary Edition

Set 3 1934 Season

Set 4 Grand Prix Engines of the 1950’s

Set 5 Mike Hawthorn’s Race Cars

The Automobiliart GALPOT Seasonal Quiz will comprise 8 categories.

Overall winner chooses one set of Paul Chenard Greetings Cards from the five sets shown above.

The cards measure 15.24cm x 11.43cm, come in packs of 12 with 3 copies of 4 designs in each set, plus A6 envelopes.

Which set will you choose ?

The free to enter Automobiliart GALPOT Seasonal Quiz will run from December 26th – January 2nd Entries close January 8th 2012, Winner announced January 16th 2012.

Full details on December 26th at GALPOT.

Looking for Automotive Seasonal Gift Idea’s? Visit Automobiliart Now !

Fahr’n Fahr’n Fahr’n – Opel Manta S

1 Reply

In 1982 I found myself studying at Paderborn University, Germany as part of an exchange programme from Trent Polytechnic, Nottingham, England not far from where my cousins lived, one weekend I hitched over to visit them to find that one of them had bought a ten year old Opel Manta similar in colour to the ’73 model seen here at the Atwell Wilson Motor Museum, but with the bigger 90 hp motor and if I am not mistaken a vinyl roof.

On the Sunday my 19 year old cousin kindly offered to spare me the hitchhike back and gave me a lift in his car, not only that but he pulled in at a service station on the A44 Autobahn and let me drive the car the rest of the way back to college.

It was an unforgettable drive, the first time I had driven on the wrong side of the road, the first time I had driven a car with a gear stick on the wrong side and perhaps most importantly the first time I had legally driven at an indicated 165 kph ! Just over 100 mph.

The experience was terrifying, thrilling, liberating and mesmerising in equal measure, I did not want the journey to end, not unlike the early techno pop song Kraftwerk song Autobahn.

Opel’s fastback Manta was based on the more mundane saloon / sedan Opel Ascona though it was actually launched in 1970 some months before the bread and butter Ascona model.

Manta’s and their drivers are popular objects of fun in German culture with drivers being characterised as wearing shades, that why Manta’s need 8 head lights, gold chains the only thing that remains when a Manta burns and having red rally stripes on the walls of their garages because Manta drivers forget to pull their arms in when driving into said garages.

The first series Manta was in production up until 1975 with examples being sold in the United States through Buick Dealers. I don’t think you need to understand too much German to understand how the Manta was marketed in this link.

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

PS Don’t forget …

Automobiliart GALPOT Seasonal Quiz

December 26th – January 2nd

Win a set of Paul Chenard Greetings Cards

Set 1 Sports & GT Cars

Set 2 Phil Hill World Drivers Championship 50th Anniversary Edition

Set 3 1934 Season

Set 4 Grand Prix Engines of the 1950’s

Set 5 Mike Hawthorn’s Race Cars

The Automobiliart GALPOT Seasonal Quiz will comprise 8 categories.

Overall winner chooses one set of Paul Chenard Greetings Cards from the five sets shown above.

The cards measure 15.24cm x 11.43cm, come in packs of 12 with 3 copies of 4 designs in each set, plus A6 envelopes.

Which set will you choose ?

The free to enter Automobiliart GALPOT Seasonal Quiz will run from December 26th – January 2nd Entries close January 8th 2012, Winner announced January 16th 2012.

Full details on December 26th at GALPOT.

Looking for Automotive Seasonal Gift Idea’s? Visit Automobiliart Now !

Hybrid Test – Honda CR-Z Sport

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As my landlady braces herself for the request from her teenager to take driving lessons, I thought it might be neighbourly to look out for some options to ease the pain, one of which was to find out about the Motability Leasing Scheme which he will be legible for.

With this in mind last week I saw an Ad on Facebook offering test drives in the Honda CR-Z and pressed some buttons filled in a form and booked a test drive with Bristol Honda (South) on the Bath Road which was to take place less than 48 hours later.

Steve the Sales Executive phoned me up the next day to confirm the appointment and at the appointed hour I showed up handed over my drivers license for copying and we discussed how Motorbility worked and I was given a useful information pack which my Landlady has found most useful and has allayed many fears regarding her sons coming of age.

One of Steve’s colleagues thoughtfully brought the CR-Z I was to test round for me to have a look at and I was impressed with what I saw, the profile is reminiscent of the CRX models of the 1980’s, but all similarities cease thereafter.

The CR-Z is a billed as a Low Emissions High Exhiliration hybrid with a 112hp petrol engine and an 14 hp electric motor powered by batteries that are charged using an energy recovery system that uses the heat from the brake discs each time they are used. This is similar to the kind of technology that is mandatory in Formula One these days.

In the UK the CR-Z is available in 5 different colours with 3 different levels of trim S, Sport and GT, the model featured here has the unique to the £18,735 (otr) Sport model privacy glass at the rear and fabric upholstery trim combination.

Once I had entered the CR-Z my immediate sensation was one of security as my Marblehead acquaintance Red Farmer might have observed I was sitting in a ‘cage’, a safety cage that is and that is good when compared to one city car that I have driven this year. Despite the fact that the CR-Z is a two plus dog only automobile I had no feeling of claustrophobia, in fact the exact opposite I felt as comfortable sitting in the CR-Z as I do in my Landladies German estate / station wagon.

Being the first time I had ever driven a Hybrid I was not at all too sure what to expect, it turns out that driving a CR-Z is pretty much like driving any other kind of car, electronics deal with the management of the two power sources, you can preset the electronics for economy, normal and sport modes of performance and I certainly noticed the difference in the acceleration between the different modes. I understand that uniquely among hybrids the CR-Z is the only one available with manual transmission, and in this instance it’s a super smooth six speed.

Over the course of the couple of miles I drove the car I was not able to discern how the car handles but I did observe the suspension felt reassuringly secure and that the steering felt as good as any I have ever experienced, reassuringly direct without being in anyway twitchy and it gave a good feeling for what was going on between the front wheels and the road.

Overall I was very impressed and I’d love to drive one of these models some more, particularly I’d be interested in doing some like for like tests between the Economy, Normal and Sport modes, ever since I first drove a Mk 1 Golf GTi with a fuel economy gauge I have been as fascinated with the fuel consumption I can achieve on a long journey as I have with journey time.

I’d also be fascinated to see how well the CR-Z performed in a production car trial or gymkhana, I suspect it might do really well.

On the strength of what I experienced I’d have no hesitation recommending the CR-Z to anybody who regularly drives in an urban environment or has to regularly negotiate heavy traffic, as I would any car that attracts a zero rate road tax.

My thanks to Steve and everybody at Honda Bristol (South) who made my visit real a pleasure.

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

PS Don’t forget …

Automobiliart GALPOT Seasonal Quiz

December 26th – January 2nd

Win a set of Paul Chenard Greetings Cards

Set 1 Sports & GT Cars

Set 2 Phil Hill World Drivers Championship 50th Anniversary Edition

Set 3 1934 Season

Set 4 Grand Prix Engines of the 1950’s

Set 5 Mike Hawthorn’s Race Cars

The Automobiliart GALPOT Seasonal Quiz will comprise 8 categories.

Overall winner chooses one set of Paul Chenard Greetings Cards from the five sets shown above.

The cards measure 15.24cm x 11.43cm, come in packs of 12 with 3 copies of 4 designs in each set, plus A6 envelopes.

Which set will you choose ?

The free to enter Automobiliart GALPOT Seasonal Quiz will run from December 26th – January 2nd Entries close January 8th 2012, Winner announced January 16th 2012.

Full details on December 26th at GALPOT.

Looking for Automotive Seasonal Gift Idea’s? Visit Automobiliart Now !

Parts Bin Special – Aston Martin Virage

Wheels & Studs – Lotus 23B

3 Replies

The Lotus 23 is a 900 lb / 408 kgs sports racing car, with a nominal passenger seat, built around a wide version of the Lotus 22 chassis frame with identical suspension to the single seater.

Customers had motors installed, from 750 cc / 41 cui to 2 over litres / 122 cui, that were manufactured by Coventry Climax, Lotus, Ford, BMW, Saab and even Ferrari amongst others.

In 1962 over 130 Lotus 23’s were built that are known to have been entered in over 600 national and international events and recorded over 110 outright victories and a more than a further 130 class victories up to the Kyalami 9 hours in 1981.

The Lotus 23 has two important footnotes recorded in the annals of Motor Racing history, both dating to 1962 first Jim Clark qualified a Lotus 23 6th for the 1000 kms race at Nurburgring, a race which included an impressive array of powerful Ferrari’s Porsche’s and Jaguars. The race started in the rain and the nimble Jim and the 100 hp Lotus 23 shot away from the Le Mans type start into the lead and remained there ahead of Dan Gurney in a Porsche until lap 12 of 44 when he was overcome by fumes from a split exhaust manifold and crashed, without injury. Phil Hill and Olivier Gendebien eventually won the race in a Ferrari 246S.

For Le Mans in 1962 Lotus entered two cars one 750 cc / 45 cui and the other 1 litre 61 cui which is said to have upset several French teams causing the organisers to throw the Lotus team out of the race first on the grounds that the front and rear wheel hubs had 4 and 6 studs respectively, when this was rectified the organisers threw the cars out again because the front a rear wheels were different sizes meaning the spare wheel which had to be carried could not be fitted to front & rear axles. This was the final straw for Colin Chapman who vowed “We will never race again at Le Mans!” a promise he kept until his death in 1982.

The Lotus 23B seen here at the Goodwood Revival is driven by Chris Goodwin who finished third in the Madgwick Cup.

T22222 is an Austrian registration number that appeared on chassis 23-S-68 that was driven by Austrian hotelier Alban Scheiber on hillclimb events in 1963.

Chris Goodwin is yet another of my former racing instructors at Brands Hatch, who is better known as a sportscar racer, TV presenter and McLaren Automotive’s Chief Test Driver and Bruno Senna’s Manager.

My thanks to Lutz ‘r.altos’ M for the information regarding Alban Scheiber.

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

PS Don’t forget …

Automobiliart GALPOT Seasonal Quiz

December 26th – January 2nd

Win a set of Paul Chenard Greetings Cards

Set 1 Sports & GT Cars

Set 2 Phil Hill World Drivers Championship 50th Anniversary Edition

Set 3 1934 Season

Set 4 Grand Prix Engines of the 1950’s

Set 5 Mike Hawthorn’s Race Cars

The Automobiliart GALPOT Seasonal Quiz will comprise 8 categories.

Overall winner chooses one set of Paul Chenard Greetings Cards from the five sets shown above.

The cards measure 15.24cm x 11.43cm, come in packs of 12 with 3 copies of 4 designs in each set, plus A6 envelopes.

Which set will you choose ?

The free to enter Automobiliart GALPOT Seasonal Quiz will run from December 26th – January 2nd Entries close January 8th 2012, Winner announced January 16th 2012.

Full details on December 26th at GALPOT.

Looking for Automotive Seasonal Gift Idea’s? Visit Automobiliart Now !

Shooting Brake – Ferrari FF

2 Replies

Until the beginning of this year, so far as I know, you could count the number officially sanctioned Ferrari Shooting Brakes as absolutely nil until the Sultan of Brunei came along and ordered seven 456 ‘Venice’ shooting brakes around the turn of the millenium.

There had been several unoffical such vehicles stretching back to Count Giovanni Volpi who challenged the mighty Ferrari 250 GTO on the race track with a 250 GT SWB (#2819GT) converted into the legendary ‘Breadvan‘, there have been several other attempts you can judge the success or not of these ‘creations’ on this link.

On March 1st this year that changed when Ferrari launched the $300,000 Ferrari FF a 7 speed, dual clutch, 208mph, 650hp, 4 wheel drive leviathan.

The 6.3 litre / 385 cui 65 degree V12 motor is connected to a conventional gearbox to drive the rear wheels and a unique power take off unit to drive the front wheels that is activated only when the manettino dial on the steering wheel is in ‘comfort’ or ‘snow’ modes.

Just how use full the 16 cubic feet, or 28 cubic feet with the rear seats down, load area remains to be seen, but I guess if painters and decorators start rolling up for work in one of these models I’ll start retraining for new career.

It might be a while before I find the time to visit Maranello to give one of these a spin, but until then my friend Michele Rahal managed to bag the first ever public US seat time in an FF with the wonderful Dana Alloway by his side and a camera on the dash, enjoy this linked clip to find out what your missing if you have not had time to pop into your local Ferrari dealer recently.

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

PS Don’t forget …

Automobiliart GALPOT Seasonal Quiz

December 26th – January 2nd

Win a set of Paul Chenard Greetings Cards

Set 1 Sports & GT Cars

Set 2 Phil Hill World Drivers Championship 50th Anniversary Edition

Set 3 1934 Season

Set 4 Grand Prix Engines of the 1950’s

Set 5 Mike Hawthorn’s Race Cars

The Automobiliart GALPOT Seasonal Quiz will comprise 8 categories.

Overall winner chooses one set of Paul Chenard Greetings Cards from the five sets shown above.

The cards measure 15.24cm x 11.43cm, come in packs of 12 with 3 copies of 4 designs in each set, plus A6 envelopes.

Which set will you choose ?

The free to enter Automobiliart GALPOT Seasonal Quiz will run from December 26th – January 2nd Entries close January 8th 2012, Winner announced January 16th 2012.

Full details on December 26th at GALPOT.

Looking for Automotive Seasonal Gift Idea’s? Visit Automobiliart Now !

Gettin' A Li'l Psycho On Tyres

Art Tidesco blogs on all things motoring

Tag Archives: GALPOT

Two Lane Blue Top – Pontiac Le Mans Sport

Project Sunbird – Ford Consul Capri (335)

Fahr’n Fahr’n Fahr’n – Opel Manta S

Hybrid Test – Honda CR-Z Sport

Parts Bin Special – Aston Martin Virage

Wheels & Studs – Lotus 23B

Shooting Brake – Ferrari FF