Following the tradition of the last few years many of the London to Brighton Veteran Cars were on display on the Saturday before Sunday’s Run in the Regent Street Motorshow.
It offers a great opportunity to get up close to these wonderful old cars and to chat to their owners/drivers but it’s no substitute for dragging yourself out of bed to get to Hyde Park before dawn to see the cars embarking on the run (See separate London to Brighton Post).
Answer: Drag your now beautifully running 911 out of the garage and head out to a Historic Club Race Meeting (other classics will do if you don’t have a 911).
My 911 is now running beautifully after diligent further fettling by Steve Winter at Jaz Porsche. Consequently, I’ve been looking for reasons for a bit of a blast and a trip up to the HSCC event at Silverstone was an obvious choice.
The weather forecast was grim but knowing that Silverstone has it’s own micro-climate which defies logic and predictions of the Meteorological Office I thought sod-it, just go and see how things turn out. The clincher was the promise of a coffee, chat and inspection of a fellow DDKer’s 911 2.2S on my way back to London.
Continue reading Historic Sports Car Club Meeting – Silverstone Sat 18th Oct 2014
The 2014 event was meant to feature the 1970 Le Mans winning Porsche 917K plus it’s two drivers but sadly only Richard Attwood was able to attend as Hans Hermann wasn’t well enough to travel to the UK.
To make up for this however – Jurgen Barth turned up to delight the crowds with a raucous blast up the driveway in the 917 after it was eventually cajoled into running on all 12 cylinders. I’ve jump started a few cars in my time but seeing a 917 being jump started was a first. It was great that perseverance won out as the sight and sound of this car was a visual and aural delight.
Continue reading Classics At The Castle – Hedingham Pre ’73 Porsche Event 7th Sep 2014
A-Z of Car Stuff
This is one in a series of posts on cars, drivers, designers etc. that have interested me over the years. I’ve bored my family and friends with this stuff for years – now it’s your turn!
See A-Z of Car Stuff page for more posts in this series.
To my mind – the things that make the Porsche 917 special are:-
1) Form and function working in harmony. A perfect combination of a lightweight but beautiful body/chassis with a brutally powerful air-cooled flat 12 engine to fling it round race circuits.
2) The 917 took outright speed to new levels at Le Mans and it took outright power to ludicrous extremes in the Can-Am series. It was designed to reach 250 mph and it achieved this on the Mulsanne Straight at Le Mans in K (K=Kurz-heck or short tail) form pretty well straight well out of the box. In Can-Am racing – engine power reached 1100bhp in race mode and a crazy 1580bhp for qualifying!
3) The 917 finally secured Porsche’s 1st outright win at Le Mans in 1970 in the capable hands of Richard Attwood and Hans Herrmann. A further outright win came the following year when a 917 driven by Gijs van Lennep and Helmut Marko crossed the line first.
I think there are many parallels between the development of the pre-war Auto Union race cars (Types A, B & C) and the Porsche 917. Both were bold and radical Porsche designs targeting domination of the new race formulae in which they were about to run. Both had well established and highly proficient competition in the form of Mercedes for Auto Union and Ferrari for the 917.
Both cars went through a phenomenally rapid design and construction phase and both attempted to mitigate risk as much as possible by utilising as many tried and tested concepts, technologies and components as was possible at the time.
This is one in a series of posts on cars, drivers, designers etc. that have interested me over the years. I’ve bored my family and friends with this stuff for years – now it’s your turn!
See A-Z of Car Stuff page for more posts in this series.
1) The name! Let’s face it – if someone asks you what you’re driving these days and you respond by saying with “well actually old chap I’m driving a Gordon Keeble” it’s highly likely to be a conversation stopper. You might as well say – “I’m driving a Milton Keynes”.
2) Beautiful and understated Italian designed GT bodywork. This was a Giorgietto Guigaro design when he was still working for Bertone and it contains some design details which link it to other Guigaro designs for Alfa Romeo in particular. Unusually – the bodywork was executed in fibreglass instead of metal but this doesn’t detract from the overall beauty of the car.
3) Seriously powerful and flexible Chevy Corvette engine, all round disk brakes and De Dion suspension. Depite being manufactured in tiny numbers – there were some great design features on this car and using a race proven engine, Dunlop disk brakes and sophisticated De Dion rear suspension was a master stroke.
4) Its rarity but also it’s influence on cars to follow. Only 100 Gordon Keebles were made of which around 90 are thought to survive. Despite this – certain aspects of Gordon Keeble design had a profound influence on Giotto Bizzarrini in his creation of the Iso Rivolta GT, the Iso Grifo and the Bizzarrini 5300 GT Strada/Corsa.
5) Its tortoise badge. This was a more than ironic touch as the car’s power train meant it was definitely no slouch with 70mph achievable in 1st gear and with a 140mph top speed. Continue reading A-Z of Car Stuff: G is for Gordon Keeble
This is one in a series of posts on cars, drivers, designers etc. that have interested me over the years. I’ve bored my family and friends with this stuff for years – now it’s your turn!
See A-Z of Car Stuff page for more posts in this series.
Well it depends if you’re talking about the designer or the car!
Starting with The Designer:-
1) Giotto Bizzarrini designed/developed some truly iconic sports cars. These included the Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa, Ferrari 250 GT SWB, Ferrari 250 GTO, Ferrari 250 Drogo Breadvan, Iso Rivolta GT, Iso Grifo and the Bizzarrini 5300 GT Strada & Corsa.
2) He created one of the most fantastic and enduring V12 engines. The V12 engine created for Ferruccio Lamborghini was an up-scaled version of Bizzarrini’s design for an unused ATS engine. The Lamborghini V12 remained in production from 1964 (when it initially powered the Lamborghini 350GT) until 2010 (when in much expanded and highly developed form it powered the Lamborghini Murcielago).
3) He was a brilliant hands-on development engineer. Bizzarrini masterfully combined insightful test driving technique with his engineering skills to effectively and directly convert issues into engineering development solutions. This approach was epitomised in his rapid development of the Ferrari 250 GTO and he subsequently applied the same principles to other cars he created and developed.
Moving onto The Car:-
4) The wonderful Bizzarrini 5300 GT Strada/Corsa. This Livorno (Bizzarrini’s hometown) manufactured car was built for an all too brief period between 1965 and 1969 resulting in just 133 examples. This beautiful car was a wonderful amalgam of Italian style, inspired engineering and reliable/powerful Chevrolet grunt. Thankfully many survive and some are still enthusiastically raced at historic events.
I’ve always liked Donington as a racing circuit. Like Brands Hatch – its setting in rolling countryside makes it much more visually interesting for spectators than the airfield-flat-frozen-tundra of Silverstone.
I used to visit Donington regularly many years ago to attend historic racing events and it’s really great to see this historic racing tradition being successfully revived over the last couple of years under the Wheatcroft family’s fantastic stewardship.
From the vast array of earth moving vehicles parked at the entrance and evidence of what they’ve been doing inside the circuit – its clear that Donington is slowly but surely being remodelled after the disastrous attempt to convert it into an F1 circuit simply to pander to Ecclestone’s pathological hatred of Silverstone and the BRDC.
The Donington atmosphere is also as it was – open, friendly and catering really well for classic car enthusiasts by providing cheap ticket deals for car club members, free access to the paddock/garages, Car Club reserved parking in the infield and opportunities for owners to drive their beloved classics around the circuit on parade laps during breaks in the racing. Continue reading Donington Historic Festival – Sun 4th May 2014
Sat 5th April 2014
In BM/BD years gone by (Before Marriage/Before Daughter) me and my mates used to regularly attend club races at Silverstone, Donington and Brands Hatch. They were always incredibly friendly and enjoyable events with full access to the paddock, the garages and the grandstands around the track. It was great to be able to wander around chatting to drivers, owners and other enthusiasts and it was a privilege to see some lovely old motors being flung around the circuit as if the driver’s lives depended on a good finish.
I’m pleased to report that my latest visit to the AMOC event at Silverstone on Sat 5th Apr clearly shows that cheap (£10 a ticket), friendly, well organised and open access motor racing experiences can still be had.
This is in stark contrast to the increasingly remote and expensive F1 experience and even to events such as Goodwood Revival which have become a little too puffed up with their own self importance. Don’t get me wrong – there are some great cars (and bikes) at the Revival but it seems to be more dominated these days by professional/celebrity drivers rather than enthusiast/gentleman/amateur owner/drivers.
Surprisingly – the World Endurance Championship has managed to stay relatively sensible and down to earth in terms of expense – £20 a ticket for this year’s Silverstone round is very reasonable for 6 hours of full-on racing. The WEC events also maintain a good degree of roving access to the pits and open grandstands for the paying enthusiasts. Long may it remain so!
Coming back to my AMOC day out – it a was a really great if bone jarringly freezing experience.
Continue reading Aston Martin Owners Club Event – Silverstone Sat 5th April 2014
Mon 21st Apr 2014
I woke up knackered after a long and bloody freezing day out the previous day at Silverstone (Sun 20th Apr) for the 1st round in the 2014 WEC.
Lashings of coffee set-up me and the brother-in-law to watch the BBC iPlayer highlights of the Chinese Grand Prix. After not too many minutes into it however – I became excruciatingly bored watching the procession of cars with precious little overtaking action. After losing interest completely I wandered off to look at my piccies from the Silverstone WEC race.
What I ask you is the point in fighting to see whatever snippets of non-live televised F1 boredom the BBC has to offer when for a relative pittance you can get yourself off the sofa and out of the house to watch the most brilliant races within a race at the WEC at Silverstone or other venues in the WEC programme. The sight and sound of LMP1 and indeed LMP2 cars repeatedly scything their way through the non-too-slow field of LMGTE cars is truly awesome with inter and intra class battles unfolding all of the time.
The end result of the inaugural 2014 WEC race (a bit early due to bad light and increasingly heavy rain) was also interesting with Toyota taking 1st and 2nd and Porsche 3rd after both Audi R18 cars crashed out.
Stuff F1 – from now on in I’m going to focus on the new breed of endurance cars – well I would if the media took a blind bit of interest in televising and/or reporting on it!
Continue reading World Endurance Championship – 6 Hours of Silverstone 2014
Fri 28th Feb 2014
After the dyno running-in and set-up of the engine, Steve and I both thought all we would have to do is insert the engine back in the car, connect everything up and away we go.
It didn’t quite work out that way, there were a few snags, but Steve and Dave thankfully sorted out the last few issues and I headed up to Wembley on a cold and wet Friday afternoon to pick up the car.
Continue reading 911 2.2S Engine Rebuild – Part 13: 911 Repossession Completed!
