Discussion
Just finished a rally in the south of France with an eclectic collection of cars. Here's one interesting one taken from a chateau we visited just to give you the flavour of the type of cars there. The weather at times was foul - very heavy storms - and it isn't much fun driving in those conditions with no hood or wipers!
To fill you in with a bit of technical detail, the long nose has a blueprinted engine with 300bhp but the short nose has a severely reworked engine with 325bhp and over 400 lb/ft of torque (50% more than the long nose). Modifications included Venolia pistons, profiled cams, reworked induction and exhaust tracts, neoprene bushes throughout the suspension, adjustable Spax dampers but it still runs on the original style Dunlop R5 racing crossply tyres. The wheels are mag alloy and you can pick up a wheel and tyure with one hand. The whole car weighs in at a fraction over one ton. It is possible to spin the rear wheels in third on a damp track so great is the torque. Consumption works out at about 15mpg when rallying and a litre a minute on the track!
Lowdrag,
I despise and envy you so much right now that I don't know whether to applaude you or cry into my keyboard!
Seriously though, a shortnose is a car that I one day must simply buy and thrape to Le Mans every year until I am too old to drive it. There was a stunning rep for sale on here a few months back that looked absolutely gorgeous and if I could've snapped it up I would've done.
Any more pictures etc that you could post on here would be greatly appreciated.
You are a lucky, lucky man.
Edited to add -
You added those pics whilst I was typing my last post by the way!
I despise and envy you so much right now that I don't know whether to applaude you or cry into my keyboard!
Seriously though, a shortnose is a car that I one day must simply buy and thrape to Le Mans every year until I am too old to drive it. There was a stunning rep for sale on here a few months back that looked absolutely gorgeous and if I could've snapped it up I would've done.
Any more pictures etc that you could post on here would be greatly appreciated.
You are a lucky, lucky man.
Edited to add -
You added those pics whilst I was typing my last post by the way!
Edited by L100NYY on Saturday 5th May 16:31
Let me know what type of photos you want and I'll post them. I had thoughts of converting the short nose into an XKSS which is why I bought the long nose but I can't bear to do it so don't really know what to do. Let me know if you are coming to Le Mans and you can pop by the house and see the cars. I'm only 5 mins from Mulsanne.
lowdrag said:
Let me know what type of photos you want and I'll post them. I had thoughts of converting the short nose into an XKSS which is why I bought the long nose but I can't bear to do it so don't really know what to do. Let me know if you are coming to Le Mans and you can pop by the house and see the cars. I'm only 5 mins from Mulsanne.
Many thanks lowdrag,
Any pics of the shortnose looking slightly grubby (ie used and abused) would be fantastic, I may be coming to Le Mans but things are working against me at the moment on that one unfortunately.
Then here are some more for you. The car is used extensively and covers its 5000 limit per annum with ease. The snow photo was the 7th July 2004 at St Moritz! One is at the top of the Maloja pass and the other on the Stelvio, all 48 hairpins of it. Lovely! The one with the kiddies D type was in the paddock during the Le Mans Classic 2004 and the other short nose is a sister car. His is a lot cleaner than mine though!
Well spotted - yes it is a Lotus. The lowdrag shown is a Lynx too I believe - I tried to buy the same car direct from Lynx a few years back but we couldn't agree on price. Lynx only built 5 lowdrags in all. The attention to detail is fantastic - the flap on the roof that flips up to give air to the driver, the correct louvres in the rear wing, and the light on the roof took years of research to find out what it was originally. It comes from an early 1960's Renault van and is then painted blue inside to give the telltale night running light.
In reply to an earlier post I would post a soundtrack of the short nose D type but haven't the faintest idea how to go about it. I don't have a video camera - can it be done with a mobile phone? It wouldn't be worth doing it with the long nose since with a full length exhaust it is quite quiet but the short nose produces 108db I am led to believe.
In reply to an earlier post I would post a soundtrack of the short nose D type but haven't the faintest idea how to go about it. I don't have a video camera - can it be done with a mobile phone? It wouldn't be worth doing it with the long nose since with a full length exhaust it is quite quiet but the short nose produces 108db I am led to believe.
lowdrag said:
Well spotted - yes it is a Lotus.
Which one? Is it a Type 11?
lowdrag said:
In reply to an earlier post I would post a soundtrack of the short nose D type but haven't the faintest idea how to go about it. I don't have a video camera - can it be done with a mobile phone? It wouldn't be worth doing it with the long nose since with a full length exhaust it is quite quiet but the short nose produces 108db I am led to believe.
A mobile phone doesn't do the noise justice. Those car sounds need a decent microphone, otherwise it just sounds like a -pardon my French- wet fart...
Strangely enough there you are wrong Phil. I've had my E type over 20 years and while I run it nowadays as a road car on radials it handles far better on crossplys. The car was designed for such and the breakaway is felt and controllable whereas with radials it is either going forwards or backwards. The D types (both Lynx) are exactly the same but more so in view of the power and I wouldn't dare put them on radials because the grip on the R5 Dunlops is phenomenal anyway plus the breakaway is forgiving. Next time I am going to use Blockley tyres which I am led to believe give as good if not better handling plus a much longer life at the same price. I get about 5/6,000 miles to a set of R5's sadly so any improvement is a bonus especially at £1,000 a set! Any feedback on Blockleys would be much appreciated.
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