TVR Grantura Brochure and Price List 1961 - all the things you could have had

What you see here is a small budget brochure and price list for a TVR Grantura Mk2a of around 1961. £795 was the price to pay for a Grantura with Ford engine, £93 more you handed over for the MG A engine version and if you wanted the Coventry Climax version you the uplift was roughly 30% compared to the Ford version. That probably explains why so few Climax cars were shipped and why most of them received an MG engine during their life. It's also notable that only the MG version was homologated for racing. But even if you paid the £1045 for the Climax car, that wasn't the end. A full stage 3 race tune would add another £105 to the bill, but even the more moderate stage 2 engine conversion was £63. In comparison to this any other option you could order, like a heater/demister unit fresh air type (£15), windows screen washers (£2), leather upholstery (£10-12) or adjustable Koni shock absobers (£10) were quite affordable in comparison. Many people say the Germans have invented the car you can configure, but the TVR guys already had assembled quite a list of stuff to increase the price of your car. Interesting the fact that you could order a lightweight chassis/body combination, only the lightweight chassis or the lightweight body individually. But similar as today it was more expensive to get less. Adding all the bits you may have wanted together you easily could have ended up with a £1200 or 1300 Grantura, a car probably 5-8 times as expensive as a Volkswagen beetle.

The Petrolhead's wishlist for 2009 Christmas

Here's what I would put on my Christmas wish list for this year:

• Audi, please present and produce a V6 KERS enabled Audi R8
• Ferrari, what about the rebirth of the Dino as a gorgeous V6 sportscar, probably KERS enabled as well, somewhat a mini 458 Italia at half the price?
• Lotus, please build the Elise MK3, but lighter and faster. If done well, this could become the ultimate green sportscar
• Mercedes, Audi, BMW or whoever is interested: what about a hybrid engine family car (i.e. a station wagon) that combines space, look and economy. Why have "green" cars to look like a Toyota Prius, why isn't there a station wagon or van offering both fuel economy and ecology?
• I wish me an European answer to the Nissan GTR, but more beautiful while not being much more expensive
• I also would like to have a race track close by to drive fast in a safe environment, so what about changing the legal framework, creating some jobs here in Switzerland and building a nice little track nearby?
  
• And finally I would really love to play GranTurismo 5 on the PS3, but that's probably the only wish that will be fulfilled in the next months as the launch date currently is set for March 2010 (it was once 2007 for people who remember!)

So, Santa Clause or whoever makes the decisions here, go ahead, impress me!

30 years ago - looking back to 1980 motoring events - the birth of the Audi Quattro

Soon we will have a 2010 on our calendars and therefore it's a good moment to look back 30 years to understand what actually 1980 brought to the motoring world and what cars qualify as "oldtimers" in the coming year.
The biggest sensation of 1980 most probably was the Audi Quattro. It was not the first 4x4 for every day (the Jensen FF was before), but clearly the one that made 4x4 relevant for the sportscar manufacturers. Interestingly the competition didn't see the point. Mind that it took Audi until 1984 to win both rallye world championship titles, in the two years before they won either the drivers or the manufacturers title, while the competition (i.e. Opel Ascona 400, Lancia 037, etc.) was still on rear wheel drive. Mercedes for example didn't at least see any reason to also build 4x4 street cars, as they claimed that ABS is good enough, 4x4 is not needed. Audi thought differently and not only created a brand (Quattro), but also did a lot of pioneering steps for preparing the market. By the way, only the Japanese followed immediately and partially quite successfully.
1980 was also a year where fuel economy and cheap cars were trendy, creating an open market for the Fiat Panda.
And 1980 also was the year were more and more manufacturers finally switched from rear wheel drive to front wheel drive. Opel had done it the year before already with the Opel Kadett, Ford was following in 1980 with the Ford Escort.
Also the Renault Fuego was front wheel driven and a successful attempt to replace the not really loved R15 and R17.
When you go through 1980 catalogs to see what (attractive) cars were sold in that year you will find also:
Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce 2000
Alfa Romeo Alfasud Sprint Veloce 1.5
Alpine-Renault A310 V6
BMW 323i
Citroen 2CV 6 Spécial
Ferrari 308 GTB/GTS
Lamborghini Urraco P300
Lotus Esprit S2
Maserati Khamsin 4900
Reliant Scimitar GTE
Saab 99 Turbo 2
TVR 3000 S (although they were only built in 1978-1979)

But it was also the time of cars such as:
Austin Allego 1500 Special
Datsun Cherry GL Hatchback 120 A
Ford Granada 2800 Ghia$
Lada Niva 1600
Mitsubishi Sapporo
Opel Senator 3000 CD
Zastava 1100 Super
Much fewer people will remember these cars and they rarely make it to classic car auctions, but maybe this now will change.

Anyway it is stunning that for example the Lamborghini Urraco was priced at 5 times the cost of a Volkswagen Golf GL 1500, and for the Lotus Esprit you could have bought 4.5 Golfs. Today, no Lambo is available below 8 Volkswagen Golf equivalents, while at least the small Lotus are in reach for a Golf buyer (at 2-3 times the Golf price).

Buying a British Sportcar in the early 60ties ...

Buying cars in the form of a kit was very popular in the early 60ies. Not only TVR, but also Lotus and many other manufacturers shipped their cars a kits and were avoiding some taxes this way. This made a huge difference for the buyers, but also offered them the challenge to finish the manufacturer's job.

Well, this meant a lot of things. First, of course, you had to check whether the kit delivered to your home was complete. On the first picture you see the parts list and the attempt of the buyer to tick off the parts actually delivered.

But even if everything was delivered this didn't mean completing the car was a simple task. Obviously this owner of a TVR Grantura had to "reinvent" the wiring diagram (by hand, see second picture) to make sure everything was correctly connected. In other cases a serious amount of adjustments or welding may have been needed. Especially as many cars were delivered without the gearbox and engine.

The good thing though was that the owner really know what he was driving and probably was able to fix things better than people buying finished cars. A bad aspect may have been on the other side that unskilled owners made a lot of shortcuts or mistakes that had caused bad consequences later during the life of the car.

Group B Rallye Cars - unbelievably quick and powerful

Many people remember the Group B Rallye Cars, the Audi Quattros, the Peugeots and the Lancia Delta Integrales. Some with four wheel drive, some with mid engine, all with turbo, roughly 900 kg and 400+ HP. Rockets on gravel. Impressive. Have a look at this wonderful video!

TVR Grantura Restauration - stage three - one step forward two steps backwards

Here's another update from the TVR Grantura Restauration. In November it looked like we made progress quickly. Now things have become more difficult. To set the context it needs to be understood that this is a fiberglass car where body and chassis are bonded together. Over fifty years many things have happened and it's not that clear whether you can just cut off the body from the chassis without totally braking it. So, to give the body more strength we added a number of support tubes. While doing this, it became more and more clear that a few things are terribly wrong here. The right side of the car suffers from serious stress.
Sometimes during its "career" the body must have "fallen down" a bit and since then it's not symmetrical any more. Many stress cracks clearly indicate that this has been a problem for quite some time. Also we found out that some fairly important pieces were missing, for example the rear end of the chassis and part of the rear end of the body as well, not to forget quite a few of the chassis tubes.
Other things were just not placed correctly or not really mounted. Looking back I have been really lucky to not having driven the car before taking it apart.
With all of these things missing and that many things being wrong there was an additional need to find information on how it should have been.
Luckily enough we were given access to a sister car, neither in pristine order nor "concours", but highly original. So, using this other car, we are able to "reconstruct" the missing pieces and making sure that at the end our car will look right. So quite some time was spent analyzing the sister car with a yard stick and a digital camera.
With all this experience we have now much better chances to rebuild our car correctly. So the next step now is to partially "reconstruct" the rear end of the body. After this finally we should be able to cut off the body from the frame. But this is another story and will most probably be told in January I hope.

How cars of other intelligent species may look like

There's only a limited chance that the conditions on any other planet than earth may have fostered live, evolution and the development of intelligent species. Now, let's assume the people there had a similar history to ours and finally came into the age of individual mobility. How would there cars look? Here's an example from Planet 51. Well, it's quite disappointing. Despite being light years away and having gone through a very different evolution cycle the cars of greenish Planet 51 people look pretty much like what we had in the 60ties, let's say with a Ford Thunderbird. Even the steering wheel is on the left side, so it can be assumed that they drive on the right side of the road. Is all of this caused by the lack of imagination of the film director or does evolution have to happen like this? Is there kind of a Darwin type of theory that intelligent species will always develop eventually colorful multi-seat convertible cars to be driven on the right side of the road with a steering wheel?
Think about it, I think we are up to something that might qualify for the Nobel price!

Looking for a car as a present and being on a budget?

Let's assume you still haven't got an idea for a christmas present for someone who is a real petrolhead and you are on a budget of let's say € 600k to 800k. What could you do? Well yes, you could take a look at one of these car sites such as www.mobile.de and see whether there's something in this segment.
And yes, there is! Actually a good hundred cars or so would fit your budget, great. And there's quite a choice too. A range of Ferrari Enzos, a number of Maserati MC12s, many Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwings, some BMW 507, even Bugatty Veyrons still make it into that bracket. But there's also one exceptional car within this group, a Porsche Carrera 906. It may be a bit overpriced, but it's clearly distinctive! I certainly would know what of the lot I would prefer as a present. But sadly enough this is pure fiction and not a true story. Maybe next year, dear Santa?

Is there a difference between renovating your bathroom and restoring your car?

Being in the process of experiencing both, the restoration of a car and the renovation of a bathroom, I wondered whether there is really a difference between these two things. Well, to start with, there are clearly many similarities!

(1) In both cases you will find a lot of rusty tubes and major mistakes and shortcomings that were caused by people doing working long before you.

(2) In both cases you remove layers and layers of history to get to the real issues.

(3) In both cases you spend a lot (some people would say an insane amount) of money to establish a new base that should hold for the next 20+ years.

(4) In both cases a lot of the work done will be covered in later phases by paint or other cover materials.

There are some differences also, though.

Your family will love you more for what you do with the bath than for cherishing an old race car.

Talking to the car mechanic is so much more fun than discussing with the house renovation specialists. And finally, many more people will be able to see the result of the car restoration work than your renovation effort with the bathroom, for obvious reasons.
If you still need some good advise, then here's one: Don't try to do the two things in parallel and don't start the adventure if you aren't prepared for what may come up when you remove all these layers of history ....

Fiat 850 Sport Spider - a highly successful 60'ties sportscar

On today's streets you very rarely can spot a Fiat 850 Sport Spider, despite the fact that they built 124'660 of them between 1965 and 1973!
It shared most components with the family version of the 850 and the coupé produced in parallel. With this is had its 843 or 903 ccm engine mounted in the back and was of course rear wheel driven. Independent suspensions for all wheels, disc brakes in the front made it fairly safe and controllable (for the time).
What was though unique about this car was the shape designed by G. Giugiaro (working for Bertone at this time). The Sport Spider was a very lovely two seater convertible car.
With a bit more than 700 kg and roughly 52 HP it was not extremely fast (0-100 km/h in around 16 s), but it was fast enough to overtake the Volkswagen Bug or other mainstream cars of that time. And it was affordable, which was a key success factor. It was cherished by women and therefore often called the "assistant's Ferrari".
The 850 Sport Spider was the first "classic" I owned. The blue one was a real wreck, I drove it only for a week and had then to get rid of it. The second one (in red) was already much better, but even this was in need for a restoration. When I owned it in the early 80ies people still greeted each other from convertible to convertible. One of the best things about these cars was the engine noise. The blue one could be heard much before it actually could be seen, it was so noisy.
Today Fiat 850 Sport Spiders in good condition fetch serious money in the five digit range.

It's Calendar season!

It's Calendar season again. Media companies, car manufacturers, tuners and many other organizations and companies have been presenting their 2010 Calendar. Some of them are really great. We all know the Pirelli Calendar. The 2010 version seems to go a bit back to the roots and focus on what it was always about. A nice calendar comes from Aston Martin showing the various models in a mostly wild and impressive environment. Cool stuff!

Picture of the week - Ford Thunderbird

The Ford Thunderbird was a direct response to the Chevrolet Corvette. With its elegant shape and the focus on luxury plus sport it was an instant success and sold much better than the Corvette. It came in many color combinations and even today they make a remarkable appearance in any oldtimer gathering. It's certainly not the type of car that would fit to the handling criteria mentioned in my last blog post, but they are great to look at. And for many that's enough.

What actually is Handling? And does it equal fun?

The other day I discussed with a friend of mine what Handling actually means. He did a bit of research and found a "definition" in a 1996 CAR magazine issue. They spelled out five criterias then:
1. Grip: absolute lateral grip does matter. Tackling a corner fast is more fun than tackling it slowly
2. Steering: A good steering gives crisp, accurate response at the start of a corner and then responds proportionally afterwards. As the front tyres get a greater cornering load, the steering should weight up, gaining more self-centring force. Then, as the front tyres begin to slide, the steering should get lighter, so you know what's going on. This is what "steering feel" is all about
3. Progression: The tyres should not grip completely and then suddenly let go. Their slip-angles should build up gradually to tell the driver what's going on
4. Controllability: Even at the limit, when there's no more grip to be had, the car should respond crisply to inputs from steering and throttle, and in the steady state it should be balanced - understeer or oversteer should not predominate. Throttle response should be progressive and predictable
5. Stability: the car should not be thrown off its line by bumps. Under braking the car should follow the bidding of the steering wheel, rather than tramlining, or being deflected by the road's bumps and cambers

A bit later in 2002 Road & Track described "handling" this way:
"Handling is really the sum of the driver and the vehicle. The driver provides the input and the vehicle responds with feedback. Without an easy way to characterize the driver, we are left to study the vehicle response, or the vehicle dynamics".
They also went back to a guru of handling of the 50s, who put forward the following criteria:
1. Steering response to be fast and well damped, with the car showing minimum roll angle and roll/yaw coupling
2. Steering ratio appropriate for the speed range and adequate for emergency maneuvers
3. Smooth steering control force with progression in normal driving, definite on-center feel and moderately fast return
4. Minimum steering backlash, springiness and shake
5. Minimum change in car direction, pitching and control response with road roughness
6. Modest aerodynamic and tyre/road steady-state stability over speed range
7. High side forces, or ultimate cornering adhesion
8. Satisfactory skidding characteristics: adequate skid warning, gradual rear breakaway and easy natural recovery
9. Minimum change in behavior with braking and acceleration

Now it's quite funny to read this when you think it comes from the 50ies and you mentally compare an early Austin Healey with let's say a Nissan GTR.

But this brings me actually to another point: We probably all agree that the handling of modern car is superior to what we had in the 60ies or 70ies, there's been a lot of progress and it's amazing how fast you can corner these days thanks to modern tyres, suspension design and electronics. But, does better handling also mean more fun? Does handling actually equal fun? Is a modern Audi R8 really more exciting to drive than let's say a Alfa Romeo Giulia GTA?
You know what I will say. My answer is "no". Old cars offer in my eyes much more entertainment at a fairly safe speed. Taking one of my older race cars on a track like the Salzburgring is great fun and cutting the lap time in half isn't making it really better.

The 2010 Alfa Romeo Giulietta - it's not called Milano

Alfa Romeo has just announced the 2010 Alfa Romeo Giulietta, formerly known as Milano (or maybe 149). I am very glad, they changed their opinion and actually didn't call the car Milano. As some of my readers may remember, the JWF Milano GT, built from 1962 to 1969 already used this name. And most people who know the car refer to it as "the Milano". So by Alfa changing the name, there's no confusion anymore. Good!
Looking at the new Giulietta - yes, we also had this name before, but at least with an Alfa - it looks quite okay to me, though I don't really like these headlights. From an engineering point of view it's yet another re-bodied Fiat-Lancia-something, as most of the recent Alfa Romeos have been. Sad. Well, at least most of them and specifically the 8C sitting on the Maserati mechanics are good looking cars. But why can't we have something that matches what was the Alfa Romeo Giulia as we loved it in the 60ies?

Top Gear on the car maker that made the highest number of great cars

Last Sunday night Top Gear presented the top 10 car makers coming from votes of their viewers (or so). Anyway the question was: What car makers made the highest number of great cars. Great cars means not just good cars, but cars to remember, cars that are exceptional. Well, the top ten Richard and Jeremy showed (see picture) were not what you would expect. Ferrari was on the tenth place, Ford on first. But Richard and Jeremy didn't agree neither. They themselves named Lancia (they were not able to pronounce it correctly of course) as being the car maker with the most great cars.
And they presented quite some evidence. You may not agree with all the (seven) cars they called great, i.e. the Monte-Carlo or so. But clearly they got some cars right, i.e. the all time icon Lancia Stratos, the Lancia Fulvia, the 037 and the Delta Integrale. They missed some of the others (i.e. Aurelia, etc). But they also showed some great rallye pictures and made the point that there's no other car maker winning the Rallye World Championship more often than Lancia. Also Lancia is responsible for many engineering's first in the car industry. Not all of them really made sense, but there was certainly a lot of creativity! Today Lancias are not what they were. Today Lancias are basically rebodied Fiats and some of them are pretty ugly on top of that. It's a sad story. But, hey, there are still Fulvias available at acceptable prices, and even good Betas are rarely beyond 20k. And for the same money you can also get a Delta Integrale with true rallye pedigree. So, get them, as long as they are affordable!