Yerrsss. In a straight line. In theory. If you can keep the engine on the boil and change gear quickly. In the Flying Breadvan (automatic) you put the right foot on the floor and leave it there as long as required.
I'll not get into the question of predictability in cornering. Suffice to say the Scimitar is a trustworthy old beast, and BM took an awful long time to accept that roads might have bends in them.
SD1: Yup. Come to that, any V8 SD1 should fill the mark. The steering isn't that (immediately) confidence-inspiing, but it works well once you're used to it. The gearbox - well, the manual is OK. Not driven an SD1 slushmatic but it might work well. Goes, handles. Brakes (like anytjhing from that era) are marginal by modern standards. It's not hard to run an SD1 out of anchors - if you're careless.
A good SD1 could be fun.
Other than that: 2.8 or late 3.0L Capri? Gilbern Invader?
Y'know, I thought of the Elite when I first read this - then reckoned an early XJS would probably be less expensive to keep running.. :(
Same would go for Jensen-Healeys and Jensen GTs, possibly even more so.
Oh yes it is.
It's just so much fun when the second choke kicks in. Mind you, at that point you can hear the air whistling in to the petrol tank to replace the fuel used: the second choke on a Weber doesn't go in for cissy stuff like "mixture" or "metering". It just lobs fuel in as fast as it can.
Mine's a 5 speed manual. The others may be less fun for overtaking.
Ian
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Mike G" saying something like:
I always liked them, but the vast majority of them have long since become part of China Rail.
It makes a deal of difference which rack is fitted, as there are three. The Cam Gears one is the best. The others are too light and lacking in feel.
It's as good as any three speed, really. The manual isn't the world's best box. ;-)
The vented discs and four pot calipers on the EFI models are ok - just. The early ones are more than marginal for a car of that performance.
Very likely, but you can buy a whole Scimitar for the price of a Tii gearbox.
Aha. That could explain a good deal.
Well, it's better than the big Ford manuals of the time, not that's saying a lot. ISTR 2nd and 4th being - difficult - until it warmed up, though :)
Stepping from a Citroen GSA to an earlyish SD1 V8 could lead to moments of interest, as I found out once.
Ian Johnston ( snipped-for-privacy@btinternet.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :
Yep, and on narrowish lanes, you can zip through gaps where you'd have to stop and tuck into the hedge in a wider car.
A 2cv is a much under-rated hoonmobile. Ssshh!
Andrew Robert Breen ( snipped-for-privacy@aber.ac.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :
I've fixed your post for you.
Prices of parts on older cars often exceed the price of a complete car. Frinstance.An early Celica GT4 turbo baught for under £500 can fetch well over a £1000 you break it and sell the parts separately. That I know for a fact. In the price guide I used a 2002Tii in average condition is £2500. An excellent one £4800. Mike.
It's a relatively easy job to fit Jaguar discs all round. I'm told they work very well.
I always thought it strange that the SD1 brakes were so poor at launch. After all, the P6 was famous for having excellent brakes in its day.
Well said. I'm still puzzling over a nice run I had a couple of months ago along the A5 through Snowdonia. I was following a Subaru Imprezza Turbo something or other. From where I was sitting he looked as if he was putting some effort into it but there was enough traffic to slow us both down. He'd overtake a car or two, then I would and so on until the last few miles through Dyffryn Ogwen where we had the road to ourselves. Now there's no way in hell a 34 year old Triumph Vitesse should have been able to keep up with something like that, but I managed very nicely thank you. The only explanation I can think of is that he was being lazy with his gears, while I was flicking in and out of overdrive and the Vitesse was perfectly geared to the road.
I had a similar experiance some years back in the Scimmy: cutting over from the Conwy valley to the back of Llan Ffestiniog I noticed a car coming up behind - closing on me but not at any great relative speed, but definitely not hanging about. When I stopped at the main road crossing it came up behind and was one of the hotter Imprezas. I wasn't aware that I'd been pushing on that hard, but it still rather startled me that he'd not just been up, past and gone a long time before. I guess it's that big-engined light-weight cars have an ability to go quickly at about 60% effort - and going much quicker requires more effort in anything. If that makes sense..
It's have been nice to have flagged the change, maybe with /s or similar, but point taken. Speaking form no experiance at all, I guess there might be similarities - a brief feeling of bliss followed by a lot of reallt bad stuff.
I remember reading one of Clarkson's articles in which he described driving fast across the Yorkshire Moors in something exotic and very quick when he became aware of headlights closing up behind. He mentally ran though the short list of road cars available that could outrun what he was driving then was rather shaken when he was overtaken by a local nutcase in an Astra Van.
It does to me. The difference in lap times between fastest and slowest racing cars is also a good indicator of diminishing returns. 2CVs around our local track are only some 15-20% slower than the fastest singles seaters.
My nomination:
Saab 99 Turbo 2dr (good one will cost you £1700)
Reliable, solid, high quality, 28mpg, comfortable, massive wads of torque (second gear acceleration is neck snapping, 30-70mph acceleration times are faster than ferraris of the same age), steering feel is great, cornering is very good due to full double wishbone front suspension. Have the best seats in the world! Parts are easily available through the Saab O.C. and reasonable due to there being loads of poverty spec 900s being parted out Any basic design that through evolution lasts from 1967 til 1994 must be worthy. I say the later 2dr turbo because the '78 -'80 3dr turbo was made with v. poor metal. The early 99s have v. heavy and safe biased steering/handling (I know, I have one) , the geometry was improved massively in '74 and by '78 was excellent.
If you want more refinement for even less money (£900) then an 80s 900Turbo will make you grin from ear to ear (I have one of these also). Don't be put off by the FWD, as I say it was designed in the sixties when most cars were rwd and was designed to suit these drivers
The heavyweight 'Tank' image that some people see is quite a way off too, a base spec modern Ford Focus weighs the same as a 900
Ken
Well, there's rarely /anything/ faster on really dangerous, twisty roads than a white Astra van..
Silly story: Many years back CAR ran a story in which they took three exotics (Ferrari Boxer, Lambo Countach and Porsche 911 turbo, IIRC) on a 'real world' tour - down the M4 from London, up through south and mid Wales, then IIRC back along the A40. They stayed the night in Aberystwyth, where I encountered an interesting scene whilst wandering along the prom: a fairly intense arguement about who got to drive what the next day. No suprise, you say? Well, there was a twist to it: the car everyone wanted was the camera/support car, which was an Austin Maestro. As well as being more comfortable and generally nicer to drive than the others it had also proved faster coming over the mountains..[1] This debate was not relaated in the published story. A shame, I felt.
[1] There were other reasons. As I recall them they were that the Lambo was just brutally uncomfortable and far too wide for the roads, the Ferrari's throttle had jammed open a couple of times (lovely!) and the Porker misted up.
/much/
A good suggestion. I've nearly bought Sarson-SAABs several times (must actually do it one day :) I have covered a fair amount of milage (mainly in .no and .se) in 'em, though. /Tough/ cars. One of the ones I've used had spent 5 or 6 years as site car for a radar institute whihc lay at the end of a few km of dirt track, up and down which the SAAB was hammered at speed several times a day. Even after years of that it didn't rattle - at all. The other cars - Opels - tended to die after 3-odd years.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember snipped-for-privacy@aber.ac.uk (Andrew Robert Breen) saying something like:
Meeting dodgy people and parting with lots of cash for stuff in plastic bags.
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