I want some!
Yes, that's a beige Austin Metro. Read all about Slater's turbocharged monster Metro project here!
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Banded Wheels 101 and Metro Madness
There's a great thread on Retro-rides all about the process of banding your own wheels. Click to read.
I want some!
Yes, that's a beige Austin Metro. Read all about Slater's turbocharged monster Metro project here!
I want some!
Yes, that's a beige Austin Metro. Read all about Slater's turbocharged monster Metro project here!
Thursday, March 01, 2007
The Ultimate Mk1 Golf? I think so!
There are many people in the retro-car world that not only have a single, defining vision of an amazing auto-creation but also have the motivation and skills to build it too. Leaf through old CCC Magazines, Hot Car, Retro Cars or PPCs, and you'll find page after page of bizarre hybrid creations. V8 Fiat Pandas, Jag V12 engined Capris, all manner of weird and wonderful. Some are truly inspired, many are utterly awful.
Franco Sbarro, however, takes this to a whole different plane. He's been building some of the maddest, most eccentric and remarkably original cars in Switzerland since 1971. Many of them have been destined for oil-sheiks and wealthy eccentrics, some are one-off concepts to demonstrate some radical new thinking, or simply create a stir.
My favourite of all is the Sbarro Golf Turbo. I first saw it in a book when I was maybe 13 years old and it utterly captivated me, and it still stands today as an incredible creation.
Click the image below for a large-size readable copy of an article taken from CAR magazine in 1980.
How cool is that? 3.3 litres of aircooled flat-6 Porsche power, all wrapped in a very subtle Mk1 Golf bodyshell. And of course, that hinged floor - a trick he used again in later creations.
If I win the lottery, I'm getting on an aeroplane and heading straight to his front door, where I shall remain until he promises to build me a replica. Not an exact replica though, those 911s produce a heck of a lot more power and torque these days...
Franco Sbarro, however, takes this to a whole different plane. He's been building some of the maddest, most eccentric and remarkably original cars in Switzerland since 1971. Many of them have been destined for oil-sheiks and wealthy eccentrics, some are one-off concepts to demonstrate some radical new thinking, or simply create a stir.
My favourite of all is the Sbarro Golf Turbo. I first saw it in a book when I was maybe 13 years old and it utterly captivated me, and it still stands today as an incredible creation.
Click the image below for a large-size readable copy of an article taken from CAR magazine in 1980.
How cool is that? 3.3 litres of aircooled flat-6 Porsche power, all wrapped in a very subtle Mk1 Golf bodyshell. And of course, that hinged floor - a trick he used again in later creations.
If I win the lottery, I'm getting on an aeroplane and heading straight to his front door, where I shall remain until he promises to build me a replica. Not an exact replica though, those 911s produce a heck of a lot more power and torque these days...
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
The Vauxhall Black Prince
I found this old advert in a 1972 copy of Autocar Magazine, and was intrigued:
So I posted it up on Retro-Rides, and AlistairK came up with plenty of information about it:
The Black Prince was built for Vauxhall by Gordon Keeble sports cars on a new FD Venotra body in 1971 as a proof of concept. It used a 327 Chevy corvette engine (near enough 5.3 litres) 4 barrel carb high comp etc as used in the Corvette really. This was backed with a ZF 5 speed gearbox, the same type as fitted to certain Aston Martins apparently. A different final drive and limited slip diff was used, although in the stock Ventora case. A bunch of special features were added, including a Sony 4 band radio which was removable from the dash and usable as a portable radio, aux dials, Lucas Square 8 fog lights, a matt black bonnet, dash mounted ice detector, map lights and some other goodies. The Vauxhall "Griffin" badges were replaced with Gordon Keeble's tortoise logo.
Rumour has it that they also built one with an automatic trans. This comes from a contemporary road test which claims that Gordon Keeble had an auto one under constrution at the time the magazine tested the manual one. However no other reliable source claims a second car was built. I knew a guy at Vauxhall who worked there at the time claimed the second car was called The Black Princess.
I doubt Vauxhall ever intended these cars for production as why do a trial V8 car in a model which by then was already scheduled to be dropped in favour of the FE range launched in February 1972?
Vauxhall did do a V8 FE (6 or 8 were built) these were badged up as Viscounts and were killed off by the fuel crisis. They used a 4.4 Holden supplied V8 and that's the reason Big Bertha was built, originally it was intended to race that to promote the FE Viscount...
As for the Black Prince FD. It was broken up in about 1989 by a guy who wanted to use the running gear in a Cobra kit car.
Shame. He'd had it running on the road before and I spoke to the guy's nephew who remembers it doing big ol' wheelspins up the road with smoke coming off both back tyres the length of the street. I think he was the guy who bought it off the advert I assume is in this thread (pics not working for me) or maybe it was his dad who'd bought it - I forget.
So I posted it up on Retro-Rides, and AlistairK came up with plenty of information about it:
The Black Prince was built for Vauxhall by Gordon Keeble sports cars on a new FD Venotra body in 1971 as a proof of concept. It used a 327 Chevy corvette engine (near enough 5.3 litres) 4 barrel carb high comp etc as used in the Corvette really. This was backed with a ZF 5 speed gearbox, the same type as fitted to certain Aston Martins apparently. A different final drive and limited slip diff was used, although in the stock Ventora case. A bunch of special features were added, including a Sony 4 band radio which was removable from the dash and usable as a portable radio, aux dials, Lucas Square 8 fog lights, a matt black bonnet, dash mounted ice detector, map lights and some other goodies. The Vauxhall "Griffin" badges were replaced with Gordon Keeble's tortoise logo.
Rumour has it that they also built one with an automatic trans. This comes from a contemporary road test which claims that Gordon Keeble had an auto one under constrution at the time the magazine tested the manual one. However no other reliable source claims a second car was built. I knew a guy at Vauxhall who worked there at the time claimed the second car was called The Black Princess.
I doubt Vauxhall ever intended these cars for production as why do a trial V8 car in a model which by then was already scheduled to be dropped in favour of the FE range launched in February 1972?
Vauxhall did do a V8 FE (6 or 8 were built) these were badged up as Viscounts and were killed off by the fuel crisis. They used a 4.4 Holden supplied V8 and that's the reason Big Bertha was built, originally it was intended to race that to promote the FE Viscount...
As for the Black Prince FD. It was broken up in about 1989 by a guy who wanted to use the running gear in a Cobra kit car.
Shame. He'd had it running on the road before and I spoke to the guy's nephew who remembers it doing big ol' wheelspins up the road with smoke coming off both back tyres the length of the street. I think he was the guy who bought it off the advert I assume is in this thread (pics not working for me) or maybe it was his dad who'd bought it - I forget.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
A rare sight
A Fiat Strada Cabrio so close to water! It's a first generation prototype one too, the production car was built from '83 to '85 and was based on the facelifted second-gen model.
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