thebeerbaron

I said in my introduction that I knew immediately upon reading the design specs that this new Factory Five vehicle was going to be right up my alley. I've been settling into this alley for many years now, reading various car "build logs" and dabbling in a few discussion boards. Just so we're on the same page, I thought I'd share with you several examples of what I find inspirational. Be warned: I have spent many hours tumbling down some of these wells. I don't know if you would call them wells of inspiration or rabbit holes that lead to Wonderland, but if you're the curious type, you may get sucked in for hours.

Let's start with the most directly relevant video. I think I found this somewhere on the [URL="http://grassrootsmotorsports.com"]Grassroots Motorsports[/URL] [URL="http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/"]forum[/URL]. If you're the low-budget type, or simply the type that has to do everything from scratch, you really need to hang out over there. But I digress. Over on Google Video, there is a 2 hour, 20 minute long video called [URL="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7072924456318931568#"]Lotus Elise Inside Story[/URL]. It was obviously made in the 90s on a rather low budget, so barely fifteen years later the camp factor of the production is quite high. Ignore the cheesy soundtrack and oddball graphics. It is an amazingly good story and an excellent illustration of several points:
[LIST][*]designing a lightweight car is a not easy[*]it is very easy for a car's weight to increase, but not easy for it to decrease[*]both engineers and artists can be very pig-headed, to the detriment of their mutual goal.[*]suspension design and tuning is best done with your own private test track[*]you will never please everyone, but if you focus on your stated goal, you may have success[/LIST]
I don't know about you, but I think that if this new car can stay on target, it may be just as revolutionary as the Elise was when it debuted in the mid-nineties. I think the Factory Five team have their work cut out for them and to some extent I fear that the clamor from the forums could cloud their vision and cause them to miss the target. It's easy enough to do. But given [URL="http://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showthread.php?338-Open-Design-Discussion-and-What-s-NEXT!&p=6690&viewfull=1#post6690"]this post[/URL] by Dave Smith (and the one below it), I may be worrying unnecessarily.

Next in line are build logs created by the venerable [URL="http://www.slowcarfast.com/"]Keith Tanner[/URL] of [URL="http://flyinmiata.com"]Flyin' Miata[/URL]. Keith is a pretty big deal in the Miata community, being both a massively knowledgeable fellow and a real personable guy. Some of the crazies over on [URL="http://forum.miata.net/vb/"]Miata.net[/URL] may even believe that he walks on water. I harbor no such illusions but having emailed with him briefly on a couple of subjects I can unequivocally say that he knows his stuff and is a pleasure to speak with. The build log I'd like to focus on is his build of a [URL="http://www.cheapsportscar.net/index.php"]Lotus Seven[/URL] clone. Personally I found the entire build very inspirational. I won't reveal when I started following it or for how many years I patiently waited for updates, suffice to say that would be embarrassing. It gave me a real hankering to build my own Seven clone, but a couple niggling details have held me back. What is there to learn from this build?
[LIST][*]First and foremost getting a car, especially one you've built yourself, to perform absolutely flawlessly is going to take years of effort and most of that effort will come after your drive the car for the first time.[*]You will make mistakes along the way.[*]The quality of your kit vendor will have a direct effect on the amount of frustration you will encounter in building and perfecting your car.[*]Access to the mechanical bits of the car is of the utmost importance. (I'm especially thinking of Keith's issues with the nose of the differential here, but there are other examples)[*]A lightweight car with a reasonable amount of power and a stellar suspension will run circles around anything that is not.[/LIST]
What has held me back from building a Seven? There are no low-cost kit builders out there that have been in business for a long time, have a positive reputation in the community, and are economical. A Miata-based Westfield kit will easily run you twenty thousand dollars, before you factor in the donor and other build costs. There are some cheaper American kits, but they use truck parts which I consider a waste of pounds. Also, Sevens are renowned for their aerodynamic properties, or lack thereof. At a track day once, a gentleman with a very well-tuned and fast Seven (one of the South African manufactures whose name escapes me at the moment) revealed that while his Seven beat just about everything else through the corners, it was heinously slow through the straights. I believe he compared it to driving a brick. So the Seven is perhaps a bit less desirable than it might seem.

(at the risk of dragging this entry out beyond a length most people are willing to read, I'll continue with some more inspirations)

For a while there, I thought that the [URL="http://midlana.com"]Midlana Project[/URL] was going to be my savior. Kurt Bilinski, who built a mid-engined, carbon-fiber bodied Mini called [URL="http://www.kimini.com"]Kimini[/URL], is building a new mid-engined roadster and creating a build manual so that other people can do the same. Unfortunately for me this will never be a kit, and leaves quite a lot of design and production to the builder. As a would-be first-time kit builder, this is a bit more than I am really willing to bite off. The Midlana build is interesting because it reveals the dedication that it takes for one guy to build a prototype vehicle and document it well enough so that other people can do the same. If you want to know why a frame and a few glass-fiber panels that probably account for ten dollars in materials should be sold for ten thousand dollars, look no further than the hours Kurt spends designing, building, redesigning, and rebuilding his car.

There are other noteworthy builds out there. But since you've struggled through this massive post, why don't I reward you with some links to amusing and relevant videos you can watch?

Several years ago I stumbled on [URL="http://www.markevans.co.uk/acatalog/A_Racing_Car_is_Born.html"]A Racing Car Is Born[/URL]. Mark Evans is an amusing Brit in the vein of those prats on Top Gear. Except he's not an *** like Clarkson, he doesn't spend all day sorting spanners like James May, and... he is taller than Richard Hammond. By Googling around, you can watch Mark build a Westfield (Lotus Seven clone), restore an E-type Jaguar and MGB, and several others. I've watched the entire Westfield series as well as the MGB restoration. I'm about seventy-five percent of the way through the [URL="http://www.streetfire.net/video/a-car-is-reborn-episode-1_727138.htm"]E-type restoration.[/URL]. Don't kid yourself, these videos skip over a lot of mundane and repetitive details, and there are some interesting bits that are glossed over or shipped out to specialists. But as far as car shows worth watching, these rank quite highly.