Group 5, IMSA and What would be a Euro Bosozoku car....

[lukeevangelou]

Nov 26, 2013 14:42:27 GMT Garry said:

First car I thought of was the Cortina Mk4 (or 5) from above.

I absolutely love this!

I want it! I also strangely feel like I was born in the wrong era!

I'd love to experience cheap prices like those in that bodywork list!

[buzby]

The yellow Steinmetz brothers Opel Commodore (known as Jumbo) wasn't a DTM Group 5 or IMSA car as such, it ran in the German equivalent of our special saloons/thundersaloons series. It can probably be considered the German version of the Vauxhall Dealer Team's 'Big Bertha'






The Zakspeed Lotus Europa Group 5 was conceived by Harald Ertl while he was contracted to drive the works Capris, it was a TOJ sportscar chassis with a Europa roof panel bolted to it to satisfy the regulations, and was powered by the Zakspeed-tuned 1427cc BDA Turbo from the Capri. It wasn't very successful, only finishing one of the 5 races it was entered in.



The Ford RS200 IMSA GTO:




Built with some works support by Gordon Spooner Engineering in the UK for the Marco Polo Motorsports team to run in the US IMSA GTO series. It was conceived as a challenger to the all-conquering Audi 90s on the basis that the Audis had been developed from the Group B Quattros, so the RS200 should be an ideal starting point. Unfortunately after most of the team's budget was spent developing the car (including many hours with Mike Pilbeam in the MIRA windtunnel), it was not particularly competitive (although it was on terms with the Audi horsepower-wise, it was nowhere near as reliable, and also didn't benefit from an XTrac transmission like the big horsepower rallycross cars) and the team ran out of money for further development. This was not helped by the car being completely written off in one of it's first races, destroying the original composite chassis tub. It was rebuilt in the USA as a mote traditional spaceframe chassis.


Speaking of the Audis...

[HoTWire]

Nov 26, 2013 21:40:54 GMT buzby said:

it ran in the German equivalent of our special saloons/thundersaloons series.

I suspect this series could do with a thread of its own

[bstardchild]

Chevy Monzas (IMSA)

This one I like



This one I love




More info here

[davethepieman]

buzby, seriously - apply for a job with a motorsport magazine.

[Bioshock]

It's all about the look

[EmDee]

Nov 26, 2013 22:01:45 GMT HoTWire said:

Nov 26, 2013 21:40:54 GMT buzby said:

it ran in the German equivalent of our special saloons/thundersaloons series.

I suspect this series could do with a thread of its own

As you wish:
retrorides.proboards.com/thread/151808/drm-pics

^ This thread includes yet another outstanding post from Buzby btw.

I really fancy sacrelising the hell out of an old alfetta gtv to make it look a bit like this:


(More about this Alfetta here by the way)


Also more about the DeKon Monzas (and that other one) here: retrorides.proboards.com/thread/132137/bonza-monza

[WillCarter]

I think it's no coincidence that after reading this thread I dreamed about a weird Mk3 Escort/RS200 mashup. It was basically a Mk3 Escort centre section with a Rallycross style RS200 front and back ends, which as it turns out is probably about the closest you could get to a Bosozoku RS200.

[Rich606]

You would have to have super mega huge balls of adamantium to build a Boso RS200. And an appropriately large bank balance.

Unless you could find one of those God-awful Maestro-based Banham replicas...

[buzby]

Nov 27, 2013 12:51:40 GMT EmDee said:

Nov 26, 2013 22:01:45 GMT HoTWire said:

I suspect this series could do with a thread of its own

As you wish:
retrorides.proboards.com/thread/151808/drm-pics

Not quite - that thread was for the Group 2 and Group 5 cars that featured in the DRM. The Steinmetz 'Jumbo' Commodore was a private development and wasn't homologated so couldn't race in the DRM. Instead it raced in the Sport 500 class in the Interserie races.

Interserie was conceived as a European equivalent of the Can-Am championship, but was really a way for people who had bought old Group 5 and Group 6 Sportscars and GTs (like the Porsche 908 and 917, Ferrari 512, McLaren M8, Alfa T33, and various Marches, Chevrons and Lolas) to continue racing them outside the World Sportscar Championship umbrella. Like Can-Am, the regulations were a lot less strict than the WSC, so the cars evolved with bigger capacity engines and bodywork modifications. By the mid-seventies the grids were beginning to get a bit sparse, so the organisers created a new sub-class called 'Sport 500' that allowed a lot more of the Group 5 'silhoette' saloons that featured in the DRM to compete. It also allowed non-homologated cars like the 'Jumbo' to race alongside them. Later on into the 80s the cars included old F1, F3, F3000 and Indycars fitted with closed-wheel bodywork racing alongside Group C sports prototypes - it was very much 'anything goes' (within reason). It's still just about going now, but it lost it's international status many years ago and is run by the German Automobile Club as a series for obsolete F3 cars.

It was never the most publicised championship even in it's heyday, and information and pictures are hard to find. Here's another of the the more unusual 'Sport 500' cars that featured though, the Ligier JS2 Maserati (mid-engined 3-litre V6 from the SM):


A couple of the Group 5 cars that featured mainly in the italian scene:
Fiat 124 Spider Abarth Group 5



This particular car was developed from the 124 Abarth Group 5 by Austrian Fiat dealer Heinrich Unterholzer with a prototype 2.0 16V engine giving 240bhp and ran in the hillclimb/bergrennen championship:



Fiat SE031/131 Abarth Group 5:



Developed from the 131 Abarth rally car with bodywork styled by Bertone and fitted with the V6 engine from the 130 Dino (enlarged to 3.5 lites and delivering 270bhp) connected via a torque tube to a rear-mounted flywheel, clutch and ZF transaxle from the DeTomaso Pantera for optimum weight distribution. It won the 1975 Giro d'Italia, beating, amongst others, Group 5 Statoses and an Alfa T33, and Group 4 911s, Panteras and Ferraris.
More here.

[EmDee]

buzby for president!

[Rich606]

Nov 27, 2013 18:33:08 GMT Rich606 said:

You would have to have super mega huge balls of adamantium to build a Boso RS200. And an appropriately large bank balance.

Unless you could find one of those God-awful Maestro-based Banham replicas...

...Well would you look at what's just cropped up on eBay?



Thanks to Mr ExJarkle for this popping up on facebook.

Anyone out there got approximately £8000 more money than sense?

[hak074]

What a thread! Awesome era of race car the Grp5 and IMSA stuff. Some of my favorites. My Tomica Monte Carlo and Stratos are among my favorite toys.



Is this grp5?


And thanks for the lesson on the RS200. A version of that car I never knew existed. Love it!

[PhoenixCapri]

To go properly left field, here's the car that was owned and raced by some family friends back in the 90's and even into the noughties I think. Tony Sugden was the driver, and a top bloke - they were an unstoppable team for a good while. We used to go watch (and I'd "help out") quite a bit, especially at Cadwell.

I blame the lot of them and this crazy thing for getting me hooked on cars, especially fast ones. FYI it's Costworth Turbo powered and I think the only original part that linked it to what it was based on was the wind screen (something to do with them being cheap and the silhouette regs?)



I can still picture the noise as it jumped over the Mountain at Cadwell, and the endless spitting of flames. Can anyone guess what it's based on?

[EmDee]

Dec 5, 2013 15:46:22 GMT PhoenixCapri said:

Can anyone guess what it's based on?

Oooh! Nice find! Skoda 110R?

[PhoenixCapri]

Almost 130RS if I remember right. Want it badly now I see it again

Sent from my GT-I9305 using proboards

[buzby]

Dec 5, 2013 5:57:36 GMT hak074 said:

Is this grp5?

Yes that's a Group 5 car (as is your Stratos). It's a model of the Porsche 935-78 'Moby Dick' (a nickname that originated due to it's white long-tailed bodywork). It was a specially-developed version of the 935 Group 5 racing car that was built by the Porsche factory team purely for the Le Mans 24 Hours. A loophole in the regulations was exploited which meant that almost all of the original chassis could be cut away and replaced with a steel spaceframe, lowering the body for better aerodynamics in the process. The long tailed bodywork was tailored especially to provide the optimum aerodynamics on the long straights, and even the weight distribution was offset to the right-hand side as Le Mans is a clockwise circuit so has more right-handed corners.





Before Le Mans, with drivers Jacky Ickx and Jochen Mass it competed in the Silverstone 6 Hours (a race for for Group 5 sportscars) as a warm up and won comfortably from pole (it's pole time and fastest lap times were only 4 seconds slower than James Hunt's corresponding laps for the previous year's British GP),

At Le Mans it was driven by Manfred Schurti and Rolf Stommelen, and was fast enough to qualify 3rd in the race, up amongst the supposedly superior Group 6 sports prototype cars like the factory Porsche 936s and Renault Alpine A442s, and set the fastest speed on the Mulsanne Straight at 235mph (being able to overtake the Group 6 cars in the process). However, reliability problems early on in the race led to it only finishing in 8th place, with 3 Porsche 935/77 cars from Porsche's customer teams finishing ahead of it (the race being won by the Renault Alpine A442B of Didier Pironi and Jean-Pierre Jassaud).

After Le Mans was entered in a couple more races in the 1978 season - the Vallelunga 6 Hours (where it failed to finish due to a fuel injection system problem) and the DTM round at the Norisring (where it did not start as it was ill suited to the twisty counter-clockwise track). It was retired to the Porsche Museum, though the blueprints were made available to a couple of Porsche's trusted 'customer' teams - Joest Racing and Kremer Racing. Reinhold Joest used the plans to build two officially-sanctioned replicas, which were campaigned in the US IMSA series by Moretti Racing/Momo Corse and John Fitzpatrick Racing (Rolf Stommelen was sadly killed in this car in 1983). The Kremer brothers used some of the factory data in the design of their 935 K4, but this was a very different design to 'Moby Dick'.

We had a thread a while ago about the Kremer 935 K3 (the Kremer development of the factory Porsche 935-77, Moby Dick's predecessor), I made a post with some of the details of some of the more exotic unofficial replicas of the 935/78 that appears in the IMSA series:
Click here

[EmDee]

Preach on Brother Buzby!

Dec 5, 2013 19:11:24 GMT PhoenixCapri said:

Almost 130RS if I remember right.

Ahhhh, that'll be the one then. They're pretty similar to be fair!

[buzby]

Dec 5, 2013 15:46:22 GMT PhoenixCapri said:

To go properly left field, here's the car that was owned and raced by some family friends back in the 90's and even into the noughties I think. Tony Sugden was the driver, and a top bloke - they were an unstoppable team for a good while. We used to go watch (and I'd "help out") quite a bit, especially at Cadwell.

I blame the lot of them and this crazy thing for getting me hooked on cars, especially fast ones. FYI it's Costworth Turbo powered and I think the only original part that linked it to what it was based on was the wind screen (something to do with them being cheap and the silhouette regs?)



I can still picture the noise as it jumped over the Mountain at Cadwell, and the endless spitting of flames. Can anyone guess what it's based on?

Ah, The legendary Tony Sugden and his equally-legendary Skoda (the second one) - not strictly a Group 5/IMSA GT car though, it was purposely built for the 'Special Saloons/Special GT' class in British clubmans racing. For Group 5 you had to retain roof panel, windscreen, side and rear windows of the original car (the bonnet, doors and boot also had to be the same shape as the original car's, but could be swapped for lighter materials). For Special Saloons/Special GT, the only link to the original car had to be the windscreen, and that the engine was on the same side of the firewall as the original car.

As obsolete open-wheel Formula and sports prototype cars could be had reasonably cheaply in the seventies and early eighties, they became popular for use as a base chassis in Special Saloons, with a fibreglass body plonked on top with the original windscreen fitted. As these chassis are mostly mid- or rear-engined and the engine location had to be the same as the original car, then the bodies that were used were based on road cars with the same layout, i.e. Imps, Beetle/Karmann Ghia/411 Fastbacks, Suzuki SC100 and of course the Skoda 110/130.
Mick Hill's Trojan Formula 5000-based 5-litre Chevy V8 Beetle:

Colin Hawker's 'DFVW' F1 Cosworth DFV-emgined 411 Fastback:

David Enderby's 1700 BDA Karmann Ghia:

Mick Hill's Lola CanAm-based 7.6litre Chevy ZL1 V8 Skoda 130RS:

The Kawasaki 1000-powered Bowlby Suzuki SC100 (built by Ben Bowlby as a university project - he went on to become a designer at Lola and designed the Nissan Delta Wing)



Back to Tony Sugden though. The Demon Tweeks 130RS was Tony's second Skoda and the third he had driven. The first Skoda he drove was owned by Jim Price, built from a Chevron B23 2-lite sports car and was fitted with the Cosworth BDE F2 engine from Tony's Escort special saloon:

Jim drove a sister car built from a Chevron B19 and powered by an older Cosworth FVC F2 engine. At the end of 1980 Jim apparently got into some financial trouble and disappeared with the VAT man seizing the cars. Tony then bought a Lotus Esprit-bodied car from Jim Evans. It was built by John Leek around a bespoke tub and using the suspension and gearbox from a March 762 F2 car. This was fitted with Tony's BDE engine with the addition of a turbo:


Around 1985 it was re-engined to a use a 3.4-litre Cosworth GAA V6 and raced in the Thundersports championship form 1985-87:

At some point after this it got Skoda bodywork back (I can't find a picture, but this is the same style of bodywork it had):

The car was then sold on in 1990 (eventually being broken up for the now-valuable March parts and the gearbox going into a Ultima). The 'Demon Tweeks' car was then built around the chassis of a Sports GT car with a Cosworth YB Turbo. It was initially red, white and blue and sponsored by his longtime partners AET, then repainted white and blue before being repainted in the Demon Tweeks 'house' colourscheme:



Tony raced into his late sixties before retiring after the end of the 2003 season (and was still winning races too). The car was sold on to Chris Crawford, who had previously ran a 7-litre V8 Esprit.

[PhoenixCapri]

Now that ^ is a top notch post!

I used to love nosing around John Leek's workshop, one of those awesome barn type places full of old race car bits and a lot of victory wreaths. I seem to remember my mate (John's nephew) building a beetle with a 70's F3 rear wing - was so awesome in a totally a 90's way, if that makes any sense.

Thinking about it John and that workshop may have a lot to answer for......