cygnusx1 Posted November 29, 2006 Share Posted November 29, 2006 I have to be an "Alfista" the first three years of my life were spent in the back of a '66 Duetto in a homebuilt wooden crib, and my entire family is from Milan. The taste of lead is still in my head. Mom and Dad moved here to NY just before I was born. I 'gotta be loyal to the home town manufacturer! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bjhines Posted November 29, 2006 Share Posted November 29, 2006 HS-30H... I have to say that we have all types and years of Alfas running at several of our events... Some are race built.. almost all are modified to at least B-street standards.. all of them seem to miss a lot of sessions... or entire days... The few race built cars are historic racers... they dust em off and run a few laps and then bring em in after 15 minutes to cool off... granted they are EXPENSIVE little hand made things... considering parts are practically nonexistant... I have never had one pass me.. or even stay with me before... not even close.. I can lap most of them several times in 30 min. if they even stay out that long... They do bear the brunt of a lot of jokes.. but they get slaps on the backs for sticking with the neat little things... The Jag 13 was pourpose built to run the Lemans course.. They never won a race at another course... because they could not turn. I do not want to hurt feelings... but I am always surprised at how slow the little BMW2002s and the Alfas, and the Triumphs really are... I guarantee I could smoke em with amost any modern V-6 midsized sedan... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrJ Posted November 30, 2006 Share Posted November 30, 2006 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OlderThanMe Posted November 30, 2006 Share Posted November 30, 2006 Racerx...I agree with you, Bj Hines: I agree with you too. Zs are plenty faster on the track than a bunch of the other little sportscars of the time. If I were to have a sportscar to cruise around and be nice I would have a little Austin Healy. Not fast at all but it drives, sounds, and looks nice. I'd have my ww2 fighter pilot cap and goggles...lol I prefer the Z because I am in the stage of my life where I need a fast car...ala Z. if you hybridize a healy everybody gets in a wad and mad. With Zs there are enough sitting fields rusting away that getting one and puting an engine in it three times as powerful as stock and you put one back on the road for the good... I tried to buy a little bugeye sprite that has been sitting on a garden for about 15 years. The guy said it was not for sale and he was going to restore it. 4 years later there is no top on the car and the car is about gone with rust. He was offered $2000 for it and he won't sell it... I love the little underpowered european sportscars for what they were intended to do. To go cruise the countryside. Historic road rally Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HS30-H Posted November 30, 2006 Share Posted November 30, 2006 .... all of them seem to miss a lot of sessions... or entire days... The few race built cars are historic racers... they dust em off and run a few laps and then bring em in after 15 minutes to cool off... granted they are EXPENSIVE little hand made things... considering parts are practically nonexistant... I have never had one pass me.. or even stay with me before... not even close.. I can lap most of them several times in 30 min. if they even stay out that long... Well, what can I say whilst still trying to be polite? It sounds as though the drivers / mechanics don't know what they are doing (?). Maybe it would be an interesting experiment to send you out in one of their cars, and find out if its a driver issue, a setup issue, a basic mechanical design issue, or indeed all three. I for one would like to hear the results and your feedback. They really shouldn't be as slow as you describe. The Jag 13 was pourpose built to run the Lemans course.. They never won a race at another course... because they could not turn. No, as I wrote before - the XJ13 never raced. It never took part in a single race, let alone Le Mans. However Jaguar did win at Le Mans ( five times alone in a single decade ) as well as at every other major European track you can think of. They did "turn", and they turned as well as the tyre technology of the day would let them turn; just like all the other top level racing cars of the day. They are still fast ( comparatively speaking ) today in historic racing, and I reckon a properly prepped and well-driven 'C' or 'D' type, or a nice 'Low Drag' E type would scare the sh*t out of you. Sir Alan T! That's such a cool photo (I like the flares!) - would you have any more pics of that Alfa to share please? Thank you. I'll see what I can find. It might be a one-off photo of that particular car though ( John French, Queensland Australia, 1970 ). Well said about the oldies by the way. I think a lot of people forget about the context when they start talking about what is fast and what isn't. Frankly I would damn well expect a modern car to be faster than some of the oldies given the time gap and technological progress involved between now and then. Anybody who slates them as "slow" needs to be asked what they were doing at the time those cars were current. Maybe they could have been standing behind Phil Remington, telling him what he was doing wrong.......... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mike Posted November 30, 2006 Share Posted November 30, 2006 Mmmm... a 100-6 HYBRID. I LIKE!!!!!!!!!!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bjhines Posted November 30, 2006 Share Posted November 30, 2006 I never said they weren't neat... But I am much less inclined to own something because it is rare... in fact as cars become "free" I tend to start aquiring them and messing around with what they can do... Z cars were printed like newspapers... they were all the same except paint color... there are no rare versions that had any real advantages... My perspective matches this site perfectly... I am inclined toward bang for my buck... The Z car is old enough to forgo inspections when liscensed as an Antique... It is sophisticated enough to hang with much newer and more expensive cars... and it has a hood the size of a soccer field.. which means I can easily give it rediculous power... My latest project will be a snarling beast that I can tear up tracks with and still drive to Wal-Mart... LOL... If the Z-car gets hit or finds some Armco barrier.. I can throw another swap meet fender on it for the cost of paint and filler... The thing about the Z cars is.. they have all the benefits of an old car.. with none of the expenses involved... I can still get all the parts.. and we all rob stuff off later cars anyway... The S-30s were light years ahead of the European "classics"... If I had any car to choose to do what I do... there is simply no other choice other than the Z car... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HS30-H Posted November 30, 2006 Share Posted November 30, 2006 ... Z cars were printed like newspapers... they were all the same except paint color... there are no rare versions that had any real advantages... Well, that might be your perspective based on your local market models - which is fair enough and quite understandable. However there were S30-series Z models that offered certain advantages in comparison to others - but they were not sold in the USA. In fact, if some of these models and the parts they used had never been produced, the in period racing efforts of quite a few teams would have been hamstrung for lack of appropriate parts and the legality in homologation to use them. We should not shut our eyes to that fact. My perspective matches this site perfectly... I am inclined toward bang for my buck... I understand the HybridZ ethos, and I don't have any problem with it at all. I think it makes complete sense. But radical modification of a car to the extent we are talking about here ( in 2006 ) is really not comparable to what was going on in period and within the rules of the race classes of that period. We have to agree that comparing one with the other is fairly pointless in many respects. Once we start modifying properly, we can pretty much make almost anything perform radically better than it did when it left the factory. ... The S-30s were light years ahead of the European "classics"... If I had any car to choose to do what I do... there is simply no other choice other than the Z car... I think you are comparing the S30-series Z ( first released for sale to the general public in the last weeks of 1969 ) to cars that were - essentially - originally designed anything up to twenty years before that. You are not really comparing like-for-like. The Z had the benefit of being designed and productionised at a golden time; a nice light unibody and some relatively good and up-to-date suspension design, but without the constrictions of safety legislation that came a few years later or the perceived need for 'Luxury' appointments. Design Concession ( with cost-cutting being hugely influential on the design ) left us with a great base to work with. To compare that with cart-sprung, ladder-chassised products from Europe - produced in countries effectively still recovering from wartime devastation even into the 1960s - is fairly pointless I think. That's my feeling anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dr_hunt Posted November 30, 2006 Share Posted November 30, 2006 Ok, enough discussion about personal likes, why one car is as good as another, etc, etc. There's mechanics that talk the talk, but have cars slower than crap, that's a fact! Just because you race it doesn't mean it's fast! Let's get back to pic's of the cool old skool cars. They were cutting edge at the time and damned impressive IMO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OlderThanMe Posted November 30, 2006 Share Posted November 30, 2006 Maserati Sebring series 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sven Posted November 30, 2006 Share Posted November 30, 2006 Amazing Maserati. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
srgunz Posted December 1, 2006 Share Posted December 1, 2006 More E Type Jags Triumph GT6 Aston Martin Naked Aston Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OlderThanMe Posted December 1, 2006 Share Posted December 1, 2006 What is with the exhaust on that triumph? Is that for good scavenging? I would imagine that it would act as a diffuser but for the exhaust and help pull the gasses out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMortensen Posted December 1, 2006 Share Posted December 1, 2006 Yes, lots of racing cars have megaphone exhaust tips. Even the old BRE Z used dual exhaust with dual megaphones. Also very popular on Porsches in my experience. Used to work on one that had headers into megaphones. LOUD. REALLY LOUD... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OlderThanMe Posted December 1, 2006 Share Posted December 1, 2006 I have seen smaller ones like the VW stinger type like on the BRE cars. I just have not seen the huge ones like on that car. You can get stingers for like $15 each from a VW catalog...I may get a pair of them. The big one there was just sort of rediculous. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
veritech-z Posted December 1, 2006 Share Posted December 1, 2006 I heard an anecdote from a guy that used to oval track an older corvette. He said he'd angle his exhaust so that it would be exiting in the direction of the wall, that way the echo would make for this super loud, intimidating rumble. Psych warfare, basically. Maybe this is something like that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OlderThanMe Posted December 1, 2006 Share Posted December 1, 2006 true... I heard a dune buggy in town with a teepee high exhaust with the stinger at about 70 degrees from the ground. You can hear the thing from a mile away and it has a ~60 horsepower 1.6 liter N/A aircooled engine...LOL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
z-ya Posted December 1, 2006 Share Posted December 1, 2006 Bob Sharp car with dual megaphones: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavyZ Posted December 1, 2006 Share Posted December 1, 2006 Naked Aston This car is, well, simply amazing looking. I can't imagine all that went into the car to make it look like it does and perform like it does (assumption). Big bux is all I see. Man, I seriously like it. BTW, the Jags with the Torque Thrusts rule too Davy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavyZ Posted December 1, 2006 Share Posted December 1, 2006 This is such an awesome photo --- thanks for posting that DrJ! Davy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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