Welcome to GALPOT Weekley #16, this week my competition season kicked off with a 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.
My potted history of MG Cars continued on Tuesday with a look at Andrew Moreland's
supercharged MG PA.
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.
The 501st GALPOT blog featured a
Kurtis 500S a sports car frame with an Indy winning heritage.
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 :-)
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.
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 !
The week started with a trip to a soaking Prescott where the 2012 Avon Tyres MSA British Hillclimb Championship got underway, Scott Rayson driving the mighty Chevrolet Special sand racer above did not come close to making the top 12 run off but was the fastest of the four sand racers present.
Colin Cooper took no shortcuts when he hand cut the tubing for his Kayne Special III seen above at Oulton Park, the car was designed for towing his Kayne Special II to events but it turned out to be a handy competitor on the hills and in speed events.
On Wednesday I looked at the Ford Corsair 2000E, one thing I forgot to mention was that in 1967 Eric Jackson and Ken Chambers took part in an epic race racing their Ford Corsair from Cape Town to Southampton against the RMS Windsor Castle. There are many myths about the events surrounding this competition for the full accurate story I highly recommend reading the Damn Long Way posts and disregarding almost everything else that has been posted on the internet regarding this http://damnlongway.com/blog/records/racing-the-windsor-castle/. Following up this story it has transpired that the story of the Corsair setting records at Monza is a myth that appears to have started in the Ford publicity department. I have amended the original Corcair post in the light of these findings.
Thanks to Kerry Williams Thursdays GALPOT blog paid a trip to last weekends Classic Motorsports Mitty presented by Mazda at Road Atlanta, which taught me about the BRE TR 250K which I had never seen or even heard of before.
For Ferrari Fridays blog I visited the set of Ron Howard's movie 'Rush' a film about the rivalry between James Hunt (#11 McLaren) and Niki Lauda #1 Ferrari, the scene above is a reenactment of the 1976 Spanish Grand Prix from which John Watson in the #28 Penske has just retired with a blown engine.
The Lotus Europa Special, featured on Saturdays GALPOT blog, was originally conceived as a limited edition with for a production run of just 200 but the demand for the model led to a total production number of 3130 big valve Lotus Type 74's.
Today's post review's last Saturday's Bristol Italian Auto Moto Festival where one of the stars of the show was this Lancia Volumex powered FIAT X1/9.
Over the Bank holiday weekend I have already visited the Auto Italian Car Day at Brooklands and will be visiting Castle Combe tomorrow and will be posting blogs on these events along with features on the Patent Monocoque Killeen K1 once owned by Colin Cooper in the days ahead.
Thanks for joining me on GALPOT Weekly #29, I hope you will enjoy the links and that you will join me again at 'Gettin' a li'l psycho on tyres' blog during the week ahead. Don't forget to come back now !
