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J4CKO
7,608 posts
70 months
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Martin350 said: I've mentioned this on a different forum some months ago, please forgive the repeat, but I like it.
When a jouralist was being taken for a tour of the Lamborghini factory by Ferruccio himself, he asked him
"Mr. Lamborghini, how come all of the women who work in your factory are so beautiful?". Ferruccio replied "Because they cost the same as the ugly ones!"
Staying with Lamborghini, I've also read that when the Miura was first being produced and the press were driving them all the time, they had a 'special' engine which was always fitted to the brightest coloured car and put back on the end of the production line, behind one or two darker coloured cars.
When the journalists and photographers turned up Lamborghini would say "Pick a car."
The photographer always wanted the best coloured cars so the road testers usually ended up in the car with the 'special' engine.
It's rumoured that TVR used to do something similar. Yes, I have heard this, they always made sure the journos got the "Sepcial Engine", a working one 
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Vitorio
464 posts
13 months
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Twincam16 said: My favourite possibly apocryphal Italian supercar story is the one where FISA turned up at Lancia to confirm the Stratos's Group 4 homologation for rallying. In order to do so they needed 400 roadgoing examples.
The homologation committee were taken to a warehouse containing 200 unregistered cars and told to inspect them. After doing so, Cesare Fiorio said 'before you see the others, let's have lunch', where they were plied with lots of fine Italian wine.
During which the workers moved the 200 cars from one warehouse to another. After the lunch the FISA committee were slightly sozzled anyway, and the rest of the inspection passed without incident.
To this day no-one knows exactly how many examples of the Lancia Stratos were actually built. Lol, i hadnt heard that one, sounds absolutely briliant. I dont know if i could stomach these kind of antics first hand, but all these stories just make me want to move to italy, preferably sometimes around the 1960s 
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EDLT
14,593 posts
76 months
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Twincam16 said: EDLT said: Twincam16 said: rohrl said: Like an MX-5? I meant something more like a Ford StreetKa, based on a fairly ordinary supermini but with an exposed cockpit that heightened the sensation of speed. Problem with the StreetKa is that it looked far too much like the Ka it was based on. Also, it was FWD - it would have been better if the powerplant was reversed and transversely mounted in the back. It would also have been twice the price and be completely impractical. Brilliant! Firstly, as has been mentioned, MG managed it with the F, as did Toyota with the MR2, and it works out cheaper than engineering a new FE/RWD platform when you have a load of FE/FWD cars in your range. Secondly, since when did this become BusinessHeads: Humourless Pragmatism and Dourness matters and any idle speculation as to what might make a great car must be immediately beaten down with unromantic bottom-line-weilding don't-waste-my-time-with-your-idealism commercial 'sense'? When it became a discussion board. I don't have to agree with you idealism or your naive ideas about engineering. And the MR2 didn't have a boot.
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rohrl
3,938 posts
15 months
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Vitorio said: Twincam16 said: My favourite possibly apocryphal Italian supercar story is the one where FISA turned up at Lancia to confirm the Stratos's Group 4 homologation for rallying. In order to do so they needed 400 roadgoing examples.
The homologation committee were taken to a warehouse containing 200 unregistered cars and told to inspect them. After doing so, Cesare Fiorio said 'before you see the others, let's have lunch', where they were plied with lots of fine Italian wine.
During which the workers moved the 200 cars from one warehouse to another. After the lunch the FISA committee were slightly sozzled anyway, and the rest of the inspection passed without incident.
To this day no-one knows exactly how many examples of the Lancia Stratos were actually built. Lol, i hadnt heard that one, sounds absolutely briliant. I dont know if i could stomach these kind of antics first hand, but all these stories just make me want to move to italy, preferably sometimes around the 1960s I was discussing cheating in motorsport on the weekend and someone told me that Lancia just used to skip serial numbers so they'd build 100 cars and assign them all even numbers so you'd have cars 1-200. We also reminisced about Gerry Marshall's racing Dolomite having a specially cast aluminium cylinder block, contrary to the rules, and Tyrell injecting a load of lead shot into the fuel tank along with the last top-up in an F1 race to make the weight in post-race scrutineering.
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The Nur
5,479 posts
55 months
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EDLT said: When it became a discussion board. I don't have to agree with you idealism or your naive ideas about engineering.
And the MR2 didn't have a boot. Which Mr2?
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Chris71
20,102 posts
112 months
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Martin350 said: I've mentioned this on a different forum some months ago, please forgive the repeat, but I like it.
When a jouralist was being taken for a tour of the Lamborghini factory by Ferruccio himself, he asked him
"Mr. Lamborghini, how come all of the women who work in your factory are so beautiful?". Ferruccio replied "Because they cost the same as the ugly ones!"
 I think certain companies retain that philosophy to this day. Martin350 said: The photographer always wanted the best coloured cars so the road testers usually ended up in the car with the 'special' engine.
It's rumoured that TVR used to do something similar. It's not at all unusual for for (full production model) motorshow cars to get an extra coat of paint and at least one manufacturer used to employ a well known coachbuilder to close up all the panel gaps with lead. As for TVR, well, a Chim 500 like mine should produce 340 bhp as standard according to the brochures and it's just possible the press cars did. However, a normal one in good nick makes about 280 bhp on a good day and you're looking at pretty serious mods to get over 300. Only a handful of naturally aspirated examples in the whole country make TVR's claimed power output. Maybe the angle they were going for was 'feels like 340+ bhp in a tiny little sports car'. In which case I heartily agree. ETA niva441 said: Alan Wildig? Nope. Roger Dowden.
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Cledus Snow
1,480 posts
58 months
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Twincam16 said: My favourite possibly apocryphal Italian supercar story is the one where FISA turned up at Lancia to confirm the Stratos's Group 4 homologation for rallying. In order to do so they needed 400 roadgoing examples.
The homologation committee were taken to a warehouse containing 200 unregistered cars and told to inspect them. After doing so, Cesare Fiorio said 'before you see the others, let's have lunch', where they were plied with lots of fine Italian wine.
During which the workers moved the 200 cars from one warehouse to another. After the lunch the FISA committee were slightly sozzled anyway, and the rest of the inspection passed without incident.
To this day no-one knows exactly how many examples of the Lancia Stratos were actually built. I've heard the same story about the Ford RS200, told to me by someone who was working for Ford at the time. 
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Tango13
2,654 posts
46 months
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The one about Lamborghini is true, he had wrecked the clutch for the third time and asked one of his tractor mechanics to take a look. His mechanic showed him that Ferrari were using an off the shelf Borg & Beck clutch so Lamborghini realised that building a sportscar wasn't such a black art as he first thought.
I think Tyrell used water for 'brake cooling' or something like that and the tanks were empty about half a lap into the race. I've got the book at home i'll post the story later.
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TonyHetherington
30,992 posts
120 months
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Cledus Snow said: Twincam16 said: My favourite possibly apocryphal Italian supercar story is the one where FISA turned up at Lancia to confirm the Stratos's Group 4 homologation for rallying. In order to do so they needed 400 roadgoing examples.
The homologation committee were taken to a warehouse containing 200 unregistered cars and told to inspect them. After doing so, Cesare Fiorio said 'before you see the others, let's have lunch', where they were plied with lots of fine Italian wine.
During which the workers moved the 200 cars from one warehouse to another. After the lunch the FISA committee were slightly sozzled anyway, and the rest of the inspection passed without incident.
To this day no-one knows exactly how many examples of the Lancia Stratos were actually built. I've heard the same story about the Ford RS200, told to me by someone who was working for Ford at the time. Must admit, I'd heard the same story about the RS200 also. Let's hope at least one of them's true
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silent k
682 posts
101 months
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The Nur said: EDLT said: When it became a discussion board. I don't have to agree with you idealism or your naive ideas about engineering.
And the MR2 didn't have a boot. Which Mr2? Both of mine definitely did
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GadgeS3C
2,001 posts
34 months
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Cledus Snow said: I've heard the same story about the Ford RS200, told to me by someone who was working for Ford at the time. Yeah, sure I read it in a magazine and I think it was about Ford. But who cares - nice story anyway and probably happened all over!
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Captain Muppet
6,285 posts
135 months
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silent k said: The Nur said: EDLT said: When it became a discussion board. I don't have to agree with you idealism or your naive ideas about engineering.
And the MR2 didn't have a boot. Which Mr2? Both of mine definitely did My MR2s (mk1 and mk2) had two boots each, one at the front one at the back. So technically you could argue that no MR2 was made with just "a" boot. If you were a joyless pedant.
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Twincam16
27,438 posts
128 months
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silent k said: The Nur said: EDLT said: When it became a discussion board. I don't have to agree with you idealism or your naive ideas about engineering.
And the MR2 didn't have a boot. Which Mr2? Both of mine definitely did Yeah, mine did too. Still, mustn't suggest that it's possible for one of the world's most profitable automotive giants to produce such a car, otherwise we might get accused of being feckless romantics, eh? Better stop dreaming, 'get real' and get an automatic diesel Audi instead. In resale grey. 
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Captain Muppet
6,285 posts
135 months
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I heard from a former TVR employee that dusters from cleaning the car were accidentally left in the airbox every time they went for drive-by noise testing. No idea if it was true, but I'd like to think it was. TonyHetherington said: Cledus Snow said: Twincam16 said: My favourite possibly apocryphal Italian supercar story is the one where FISA turned up at Lancia to confirm the Stratos's Group 4 homologation for rallying. In order to do so they needed 400 roadgoing examples.
The homologation committee were taken to a warehouse containing 200 unregistered cars and told to inspect them. After doing so, Cesare Fiorio said 'before you see the others, let's have lunch', where they were plied with lots of fine Italian wine.
During which the workers moved the 200 cars from one warehouse to another. After the lunch the FISA committee were slightly sozzled anyway, and the rest of the inspection passed without incident.
To this day no-one knows exactly how many examples of the Lancia Stratos were actually built. I've heard the same story about the Ford RS200, told to me by someone who was working for Ford at the time. Must admit, I'd heard the same story about the RS200 also. Let's hope at least one of them's true The version of the RS200 story I've heard from a Tickford employee was that cars were driven out of the factory, counted, driven round the back for new chassis plates and driven out again. Again, I'd like it if there was room in the world for stuff like this to be true.
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WTFWT
505 posts
93 months
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Smokey Yunick, the legendary stock car and NASCAR man, had his car pulled into scrutineering as his rivals believed that he was running a larger than regulation fuel tank. The scrutineers took the tank out of the car and measured it, and it seemed to conform. High on a sense of indignity and outrage, Smokey scolded them and jumped back into the car, started it up and drove back to his garage. The tank was still on the floor where the scrutineers had left it. Apparently he was using fire hoses for fuel pipes and could carry several extra litres as a result.
Another that I love, though less dramatic, involves Maurice Trintignant. After some testing with Ferrari, it was late at night and he jumped into his road car to head home. His mechanic was following him out of the circuit and realised Maurice's brake lights were broken. He gave chase to warn him of this, but was struggling to keep up. Trintignant ripped it home with the mechanic hanging on to his coat tails and as he pulled up in front of the garage, applied the brakes for the first time, illuminating the rear of the car and his mechanics disbelieving face.
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DickyC
Original Poster
9,907 posts
68 months
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In the nineteen fifties Tony Vandervell would road test his Grand Prix cars, the Thinwall Specials, on the road late at night. He did this because he didn't care.
Top bloke.
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rohrl
3,938 posts
15 months
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In Motorsport a couple of months ago some driver or other claimed to have driven Alain de Cadenet's Le Mans car at 213mph westbound on the M4 at about 5 in the morning sometime in 1971/2 and to have gone between two trucks doing so.
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Negative Creep
11,349 posts
97 months
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EDLT said: Twincam16 said: rohrl said: Like an MX-5? I meant something more like a Ford StreetKa, based on a fairly ordinary supermini but with an exposed cockpit that heightened the sensation of speed. Problem with the StreetKa is that it looked far too much like the Ka it was based on. Also, it was FWD - it would have been better if the powerplant was reversed and transversely mounted in the back. It would also have been twice the price and be completely impractical. Brilliant! Since Ford and Mazda are partners, I always thought it was odd that they didn't release their own version of the MX5
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DickyC
Original Poster
9,907 posts
68 months
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At an Aston Martin function somebody was talking about cheating in motorsport and mentioned Reg Parnell's dodge in endurance racing of having a switch in the brake light circuit. When someone had got into the habit of following him for a good few laps he would switch the brake lights off and stop doing his pursuer's driving for him, sometimes with dramatic results. Sounding angelic, Richard "RSW" Williams (the Aston specialist who built AMR1 and the Sanction II DB4GT Zagatos) said they would never do anything like that but they were always looking for loopholes in the regs. AMR1 was entered in a sprint race where the organisers realised there was a temptation for entrants to run without the alternator, winning themselves 10 or 15 bhp in the process, and stipulated that cars must have a charging circuit. The Astons were presented to the scrutineers with photo-electric sun strips across the windscreens with the tiny wires leading down to the batteries. The scrutineer saw this and became quite animated.
"You know that's not what we meant!"
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Twincam16
27,438 posts
128 months
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Negative Creep said: Since Ford and Mazda are partners, I always thought it was odd that they didn't release their own version of the MX5 They never had their own version, but they did build a rival for the Australian and US markets that I'm surprised we never got over here, given that many were made in RHD:  The Mk4 Capri. Although admittedly it was FWD.
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