Historical or useless car facts.

[anonymous-user]

Roop said:

johnfelstead said:

I don't recall the term "mass produced" being used for any FIA championship, they just listed the number of "production" cars of that type that needed to be homologated and gave each type of racing/rallying homologation it's own group with it's own minimum quantity requirements, such as Group B, Group 4, Group 5, some groups were for "production" cars, some for "prototypes", the numbers of cars needed for each group varied, sometimes year on year. For example one of the latest to come from the FIA was.

"A new category will take part in the FIA Regional Rally Championships from January 1st, 2004 which will group together the following 4-wheel drive cars:
- production vehicles homologated with a minimum of 1000 units with a 2-litre turbo engine (32 mm restrictor)
- production vehicles homologated in a quantity of 2500 units, with a 2-litre normally aspirated engine

Not sure about other formulae but the Gp.A rules specified 5000 units but only to define "Mass Produced". During formation of the rules it was discussed that only mass produced cars would be allowed to compete where mass produced meant 5000 roadgoing examples. Stuart Turner, head of Ford Motorsport Europe in the 80's describes it in an interview I have on one of my Ford DVDs.

ie: RACMSA & BRSCC or whoever said "We only want mass produced road cars". It was then decided 5000 units = mass produced.

They probably don't even use the term mass produced anymore in the regs as it's clearly indeterminate and open to interpretation - they just state number of units required instead.

Stuart Turner is just waxing lyrical on how he interprets what the FIA numbers mean to him. Group A was for production cars of a minimum of 5000 initially, which was then dropped to 2500 in 94, there was also an evolution version allowed for circuit racing where you had to produce 500 (out of the batch of 5000) in this evolution range, hence cars like the Sierra Cosworth for rallying and the Sierra Cosworth RS500 for circuit racing. Discussing what the word "mass" means is a bit pointless, because the FIA always listed the number of units required for any particular homologation, they had no need to use a term like "mass" that could mean anything you want it to, they use numbers and terms more precise than that.

[Stunned Monkey]

Production car... cars produced on a production line. Cars that satisfy legislation for mass production. I could go on.

More DeLoreans produced in 2 years than Esprits produced in 20. Nearly 10,000.

Of course there are people who'll argue just about anything for the sake of it...

[Fer]

Stunned Monkey said:

Production car... cars produced on a production line. Cars that satisfy legislation for mass production. I could go on.

More DeLoreans produced in 2 years than Esprits produced in 20. Nearly 10,000.


Of course there are people who'll argue just about anything for the sake of it...

Oh no they won't.

[Roop]

johnfelstead said:

Roop said:

johnfelstead said:

I don't recall the term "mass produced" being used for any FIA championship, they just listed the number of "production" cars of that type that needed to be homologated and gave each type of racing/rallying homologation it's own group with it's own minimum quantity requirements, such as Group B, Group 4, Group 5, some groups were for "production" cars, some for "prototypes", the numbers of cars needed for each group varied, sometimes year on year. For example one of the latest to come from the FIA was.

"A new category will take part in the FIA Regional Rally Championships from January 1st, 2004 which will group together the following 4-wheel drive cars:
- production vehicles homologated with a minimum of 1000 units with a 2-litre turbo engine (32 mm restrictor)
- production vehicles homologated in a quantity of 2500 units, with a 2-litre normally aspirated engine

Not sure about other formulae but the Gp.A rules specified 5000 units but only to define "Mass Produced". During formation of the rules it was discussed that only mass produced cars would be allowed to compete where mass produced meant 5000 roadgoing examples. Stuart Turner, head of Ford Motorsport Europe in the 80's describes it in an interview I have on one of my Ford DVDs.

ie: RACMSA & BRSCC or whoever said "We only want mass produced road cars". It was then decided 5000 units = mass produced.

They probably don't even use the term mass produced anymore in the regs as it's clearly indeterminate and open to interpretation - they just state number of units required instead.

Stuart Turner is just waxing lyrical on how he interprets what the FIA numbers mean to him. Group A was for production cars of a minimum of 5000 initially, which was then dropped to 2500 in 94, there was also an evolution version allowed for circuit racing where you had to produce 500 (out of the batch of 5000) in this evolution range, hence cars like the Sierra Cosworth for rallying and the Sierra Cosworth RS500 for circuit racing. Discussing what the word "mass" means is a bit pointless, because the FIA always listed the number of units required for any particular homologation, they had no need to use a term like "mass" that could mean anything you want it to, they use numbers and terms more precise than that.

I think we're debating the same side of the coin here...

[anonymous-user]

[Gavin & Stacey] I know [/Gavin & Stacey]

[Futuramic]

The parcel shelf in a Daewoo Matiz is made of compressed vegetable matter.

[Fer]

Futuramic said:

The Daewoo Matiz is made of compressed vegetable matter.

EFA

[Pigeon]

Fer said:

Futuramic said:

The Daewoo Matiz is made of compressed undigested vegetable matter.

EFA

EF further A

[groomi]

Pigeon said:

Fer said:

Futuramic said:

The Daewoo Matiz is a vegetable.

EFA

EF further A

EF yet further A

[hugoagogo]

Matizheads - Compressed Vegetables Matter

[tali1]

The S80 was the first was the use of a built-in, fully integrated GSM phone, complete with both a hands free function and a lift-up hand-set. The S80 is also claimed to have world's smallest manual gearbox, the M65.

[AndrewW-G]

tali1 said:

The 911 (930)Turbo SE (only 50 made)is the only official 911 with pop up headlights.

Wrong, Porsche also made the 911-964 flachbau (approx 80 made) that had the pop ups from the 930S and later the 968 and that's ignoring all the cars that came out of Porsches custom workshop and the US cars

Edited by AndrewW-G on Thursday 21st August 23:19

[Alfa_75_Steve]

tali1 said:

The S80 was the first was the use of a built-in, fully integrated GSM phone, complete with both a hands free function and a lift-up hand-set. The S80 is also claimed to have world's smallest manual gearbox, the M65.

Not sure about the phone, I thought the BMW E38 7-series beat them to it by a few years.

[ZeeTacoe]

tali1 said:

The S80 was the first was the use of a built-in, fully integrated GSM phone, complete with both a hands free function and a lift-up hand-set. The S80 is also claimed to have world's smallest manual gearbox, the M65.

I thought it was the shortist since it had to fit on the end of the transverse 6 yet still fit in the engine bay and give the car some lock.

[gib6933]

johnfelstead said:

red_rover said:

Now for the big one - the Rover V8 story.

For a start it wasn't the chairman of 'BL' who discovered the engine. It was Martin-Hurst of the Rover Car Company back in 1962. BL wouldn't be formed for well over a decade. Secondly the engine wasn't just dumped in the corner of a warehouse. Martin-Hurst discovered the engine when visiting the 'Mercury' boat factory where the engine was being made to fit one of Mercury's boats. Buick had stopped production three years prior to this. When acquiring the license from GM to build the engine, Rover hired the engineer who had developed and designed the engine, Joe Turley, who had been in retirement for two years. Rover paid for him to move to the UK where he helped Rover re-engineer it for the UK market. The main differences between the US and UK Vee-8 was that the Buick versions had cylinder blocks made using gravity die castings where as Rover was able to sand cast this. The Rover engine was also lighter as a result and much much stronger. It was first used in 1967 in the P5.
It also took two years

There was also a sister version of this engine built for Oldsmobile, the main difference was it had an extra stud boss cast into the block and used a different design of cylinder head that utilised this extra stud location for better head gasket/head stability. It had a far superior head design to the Buick lump Rover utilised.

This Oldsmobile version of the block became the basis of the Repco-Brabham F1 engine that powered Sir Jack Brabham to his F1 championship in the first season of the new 3.0 litre formula. It was firstly built in twin overhead cam guise and then quad overhead cam chain driven guise.

It was also the basis for the Traco Oldsmobile engine used in Can Am racing by Bruce McLaren. The ultimate version of this Oldsmobile based version of the engine was the F85X, F85X became the design code for the next major development of the engine when Ian Richardson designed his cylinder heads to replace the asthmatic heads Rover came up with for the Buick blocked engine. The combustion chamber design in these new heads is based on that used in the Gurney Weslake engine fitted to the JWA Gulf sponsored Ford GT40's that took the first success at Le Mans.

I hand ported the first pair of production castings and helped build the first engine to use these new heads, a 5.0 litre version that went into Simon Allaway's Lotus Esprit Silhouette racecar. The next pair of these heads went into an FIA GT car, knocking 10 seconds off it's Silverstone laptime.

MG Rover then decided to build an MGF based car to attempt a land speed record at Bonneville to be driven by Andy Green, it was called the MG EX255, this was a 4.8 litre version of the engine with stage 2 heads and was originally twin supercharged, using scroll style chargers, they were proving restrictive so the engine was converted to twin turbo at short notice. The engine produced 950BHP, not bad for a Rover V8.

There is a story going around (that i herd from Murry Walker. name dropping sorry) that GM had bought the engine from another car co.
He tolled me that the engine had started its life in the 1954 502 bmw, and that the rights to the engine were sold when bmw nearly went bankrupt.

I like to think It is true, it would be funny to think they had bought the rights to there own engine back when they bought rover.

Edited by gib6933 on Friday 22 August 13:54

[red_rover]

gib6933 said:

johnfelstead said:

red_rover said:

Now for the big one - the Rover V8 story.

For a start it wasn't the chairman of 'BL' who discovered the engine. It was Martin-Hurst of the Rover Car Company back in 1962. BL wouldn't be formed for well over a decade. Secondly the engine wasn't just dumped in the corner of a warehouse. Martin-Hurst discovered the engine when visiting the 'Mercury' boat factory where the engine was being made to fit one of Mercury's boats. Buick had stopped production three years prior to this. When acquiring the license from GM to build the engine, Rover hired the engineer who had developed and designed the engine, Joe Turley, who had been in retirement for two years. Rover paid for him to move to the UK where he helped Rover re-engineer it for the UK market. The main differences between the US and UK Vee-8 was that the Buick versions had cylinder blocks made using gravity die castings where as Rover was able to sand cast this. The Rover engine was also lighter as a result and much much stronger. It was first used in 1967 in the P5.
It also took two years

There was also a sister version of this engine built for Oldsmobile, the main difference was it had an extra stud boss cast into the block and used a different design of cylinder head that utilised this extra stud location for better head gasket/head stability. It had a far superior head design to the Buick lump Rover utilised.

This Oldsmobile version of the block became the basis of the Repco-Brabham F1 engine that powered Sir Jack Brabham to his F1 championship in the first season of the new 3.0 litre formula. It was firstly built in twin overhead cam guise and then quad overhead cam chain driven guise.

It was also the basis for the Traco Oldsmobile engine used in Can Am racing by Bruce McLaren. The ultimate version of this Oldsmobile based version of the engine was the F85X, F85X became the design code for the next major development of the engine when Ian Richardson designed his cylinder heads to replace the asthmatic heads Rover came up with for the Buick blocked engine. The combustion chamber design in these new heads is based on that used in the Gurney Weslake engine fitted to the JWA Gulf sponsored Ford GT40's that took the first success at Le Mans.

I hand ported the first pair of production castings and helped build the first engine to use these new heads, a 5.0 litre version that went into Simon Allaway's Lotus Esprit Silhouette racecar. The next pair of these heads went into an FIA GT car, knocking 10 seconds off it's Silverstone laptime.

MG Rover then decided to build an MGF based car to attempt a land speed record at Bonneville to be driven by Andy Green, it was called the MG EX255, this was a 4.8 litre version of the engine with stage 2 heads and was originally twin supercharged, using scroll style chargers, they were proving restrictive so the engine was converted to twin turbo at short notice. The engine produced 950BHP, not bad for a Rover V8.

There is a story going around (that i herd from Murry Walker. name dropping sorry) that GM had bought the engine from another car co.
He tolled me that the engine had started its life in the 1954 502 bmw, and that the rights to the engine were sold when bmw nearly went bankrupt.

I like to think It is true, it would be funny to think they had bought the rights to there own engine back when they bought rover.

Edited by gib6933 on Friday 22 August 13:54

Its a complete fabrication. It was designed & engineered by a chap at GM called Joe Turley.

[gib6933]

bugger

[LuS1fer]

...who coincidentally had a dog called Rover.

[Marquis_Rex]

red_rover said:

When acquiring the license from GM to build the engine, Rover hired the engineer who had developed and designed the engine, Joe Turley, who had been in retirement for two years. Rover paid for him to move to the UK where he helped Rover re-engineer it for the UK market.

Joe Turley must have been insane.
Did he move for the weather? May be the pay thats less than a train driver?
High Taxes?
Or continual confusion amongst mechanics who call themselves 'shop floor engineers'?

[JamesM]

Might have been said before

MG stands for Morris Garages (i think)