Sunday 5 February 2012

GALPOT Weekly #16

Welcome to GALPOT Weekley #16, this week my competition season kicked off with a navigation exercise.

BPMC Navigation Exercise

Bob Bull kindly took me along, in his 'daughters' supercharged Mini Cooper S, as a navigator for the Bristol Pegasus Motor Clubs January Navigation Exercise. See how I got on by following this link.

MG PA, Loton Park

My potted history of MG Cars continued on Tuesday with a look at Andrew Moreland's supercharged MG PA.


Ford Escort Mexico, Oulton Park, Gold Cup

Wednesdays blog featured a special Ford Mexico that turned out to be a multi purpose vehicle having been used as a racer, run around and wedding car by it's original owner John Webb.

Kurtis 500S, Silverstone Classic

The 501st GALPOT blog featured a Kurtis 500S a sports car frame with an Indy winning heritage.

Ferrari 312 T2, Brand Hatch, Sven Platt

Photo Courtesy Sven Platt.


Ron Howard is making a film called "Rush" at the moment about the extraordinary 1976 Grand Prix season one of the vehicles that should feature in the film should be the Ferrari 312 T2 as driven by Niki Lauda and Clay Regazzoni that I looked at on Ferrari Friday. I wonder if Ron's legendary attention to detail will pick up that Niki's new car for the 1976 British GP, seen above, appeared in practice with his name missing from the side of the cockpit ? Details that maketh the film for us anoraks :-)

Indy 1964, Ed Arnaudin

Photo Ed Arnaudin courtesy Steve Arnaudin.

Yesterday I looked at the first monocoque chassis car to appear at the Indianapolis 500 since the Cornelean driven by Louis Chevrolet in 1915. The Lotus 29 chassis 29/3 driven by Jim Clark led 28 laps in the 1963 Indy 500 before getting beaten by Parnelli Jones and then the following year the car was rechristened the Pure Firebird Special and given to Bobby Marsham to drive, see photo above. Find out what happened next on this Lotus 29 link.

Buckler MK 5, Rare Breeds, Haynes IMM

Derek Buckler like Colin Chapman started out building a successful competition special and then built a small company making copies of it on the back of his success. Derek allegedly gave his first model the Buckler Mk V name so that customers would not think this was his first design.

Coming up next week I'll be looking at a commercial Terraplane that I had no idea even existed until a couple of weeks ago, on Tuesday I'll be looking at an MG that was prepared in Wandsworth for hire to racing drivers at Brooklands and on Thursday I'll be taking a behind the scenes look at Fords 2013 Fusion NASCAR Sprint Cup challenger which already seems to have gone along way to achieving it's aim of re engaging the public.

Thanks for joining me on this GALPOT Weekly #16 edition of 'Gettin' a li'l psycho on tyres' I hope you'll have fun following the links above and that you will join me again at 'GALPOT' during the week ahead. Don't forget to come back now !