A rather rare 1970 Bolwell Mark 7 Coupe

Founded by brothers Campbell, Winston and Graeme Bolwell in 1962, this home-grown company produced some of the best sports cars ever seen in this country and their distinctively styled cars are highly sought after by collectors today. The first model produced in quantity by the fledgling company was the Mark IV, with over 200 built in component kit form – the buyer was left to supply and choose the type of running gear and do final assembly. The low-slung bodywork was made from fibreglass, in either a gullwing hardtop or roadster styles, with the Ford Cortina 1600 the most popular choice of motive power. Although early Bolwells used a separate tubular space-frame chassis, the design was updated into a stronger, lighter (and cheaper to manufacture) monocoque on the Mark IVB. With the Mark V, Bolwell moved towards serious road car production, and Holden’s six-cylinder motor became the preferred engine. Following on from the one-off sports-racing Mark VI, Bolwell’s next road-going model, the Mark VII, was a more mature car in every way. Following Lotus practice, the car had a backbone chassis of folded sheet metal, with sophisticated suspension and a very attractive body strongly influenced by contemporary exotics like the Jaguar E-Type and the Ferrari GTO. Between 1967 and 1972, Bolwell turned out 400 Mark VII cars, some of them sold as complete turn-key cars from the factory but the majority were still sold in kit form. Bolwell went on to build a Ford V8-powered car, the Nagari (or Mark VIII) and the name lives on with the latest 2008 incarnation of the Nagari.

Article from here.

Haha, that’s so cool…

somedayclassics

BMW 2800 Bertone Spicup Concept (1969)
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Bertone styling house came up with many cars that can cause confusion at first glance. This one is a good case in point as it supports the proud BMW kidney grill but still looks nothing like anything else from the Bavarian stable.

This car’s nose slopes down, partially hiding the headlamps under two flip-up covers. It’s this that gives the Spicup a front-end aesthetic similar to that of the Alfa Romeo Montreal, another Bertone-designed masterpiece.

Despite it’s name, it isn’t based on an E9 2800 CS but the Spicup instead was built using the E3 2500 as a base. Bertone shortened the wheelbase of the E3 and moulded the unusual body shape complete with a sliding Targa roof.
The bonnet is another peculiar feature as it has the engine shape cut out and is in permanent view through it. As Bertone had used the E9’s 2800 CS 2.8lt straight-six engine, it was the only way the larger unit would fit in the Spicup’s low snout.
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📸 Via @zerorust

Classic Italian gorgeousness.

macmaninfi

“Happy that I don’t have any rubbing with the fenders, even at full lock over uneven terrain. It’s a good idea to have your wheels and tires before you make flares. I put it on the lift, took off the shocks, jacked up the suspension and turned lock to lock and went from there.”

Doing it right pays off.

Please emulate.

Mk II over Mk I

So beautiful… so round, so firm, so fully packed…

Shelby G.T. 350 H

Rent-a-racer nirvana.

Those were good days… days that we will never see again, thanks to the foul forces of Communism at work in our land.

This oughtta do it…

It’s a 1960 ZIL-132 6×6 from Soviet Russia. It has a 180bhp gas V8, a 5 speed manual bocks a 2 speed transfer case and locking differentials.

And gynormous freakin’ tyres.

BooYah

This is a Benz RH Tropfenwagen

Maximum Rare.

The following stolen from grandprixhistory.org

Car:		Benz		Engine:		Inline 6 Cylinder
	Maker:		Tropfenwagen Typ RH (RH = Rennwagen mitt Heckmotor)		Bore X Stroke:		65 mm x 100 mm
	Year:		1923		Capacity:		1991 cc
	Class:		Grand Prix		Power:		90 hp at 4500 rpm
	Wheelbase:		2830 mm		Track:		Front: 1400 mm Rear: 1300 mm
	Notes:		4-speed gearbox, Max Speed 185 kph, Weight 745 kg

In 1921 after World War I, Rumpler surprised visitors at the Berliner Automobile Ausstellung with his revolutionary ‘Tropfenwagen’ (teardrop vehicle), that resembled the gondola of a Zeppelin airship. Edmund Rumpler, was an Austrian automotive engineer who was well-known in post-war Germany as the manufacturer of the successful ‘Taube’ (Pigeon), a German warplane based on an original design by Igo Etrich. Rumpler also had experience in automobile design and manufacturing. In 1903, he had patented a swing axle rear suspension system. Rumpler’s efforts produced a car with an astoundingly low drag coefficient of only 0.28 (when tested in 1979). Its original rear-engine layout combined with independent rear suspension foreshadowed the future.

Rumpler’s concept was of historic significance but most people did not know what to make of this strange vehicle, one exception was Benz’s Berlin representative, Willy Walb, future race team manager at Auto Union who was intrigued by it’s possibilities. He convinced Benz to look at building cars with a similar design both for commercial and racing purposes. Karl Ludvigsen: “Edmund Rumpler and his patent lawyers caused Max Wagner some sleepless nights. Not having a Rumpler license agreement, Benz had to use a rear suspension design that wouldn’t contravene Rumpler’s many patents. As a result the RH had a much more practical system. Its conventional differential was fixed on the frame. It drove the axle half-shafts through universal joints in spherical housings similar to those then widely used for the forward mounting of torque-tube axles.”

Developed under the guidance of chief engineer Hans Nibel, the Benz Typ RH had an advanced twin-ohc in-line six engine with 24 valves, electron pistons, twin Zenith carburetors, a built-up roller-bearing crankshaft, and roller big ends, which gave some 90bhp at 4500rpm, unblown. This engine was located between the cockpit (which enveloped the driver and riding mechanic), and the rear axle, which it drove through a three-speed gearbox mounted as a unit. Inboard rear brakes were employed, a separate crescent-shaped radiator was mounted above the engine cover, and the car had excellent stream-lining with a clean, rounded nose and tapering tail. The radiator mimicking the tall airboxes that are used in modern Formula One cars.

The car competed in only one major race, the Grand Prix of Europe at Monza on September 9, 1923. Three cars were entered for Fernando Minoia, Franz Hörner and Willy Walb. Two of the three cars finished with Minoia in fourth and Hörner in fifth though they were both waved off before they could finish the race due to the track being invaded by spectators. The cars were known for their handling but were underpowered when compared to the supercharged Fiats. Perhaps if a blown engine had been used the results might have been different. As a small consolation the Monza organizers awarded Benz a medallion for their audacious design. The cars later competed in local events in Germany with a handful of hillclimb victories by Walb and later Mercedes works driver Adolf Rosenberger to their credit. On May 16th 1925 Rosenberger won the Tropfenwagen’s final race, the Rund um die Solitude and Benz’s rear-engined experiment was over. Despite their promising start at Monza, these Teardrop racers were not very successful in later Grand Prix and the company returned to building front-engined cars. However, there is little doubt that when Ferdinand Porsche became technical director of Mercedes in 1924, he must have carefully studied all the construction details of this unconventional rear-engined racer some aspects of which served as a model for Porsche’s use of swing-axles and a mid-placed engine layout in his future Auto Union race car.

From Wikipedia:

The Rumpler Tropfenwagen (“Rumpler drop car”, named after its raindrop shape) was a car developed by Austrian engineer Edmund Rumpler.

Rumpler, born in Vienna, was known as a designer of aircraft when at the 1921 Berlin car show he introduced the Tropfenwagen. It was to be the first streamlined production car, before the Chrysler Airflow and Tatra T77. The Rumpler had a drag coefficient of only 0.28, a measurement which astonished later engineers^[1] and would be competitive even today. For comparison: the top ten most aerodynamic production cars in 2014/2015 worked their way down from a value of 0.26.^[2][3] The Fiat Balilla of the mid-1930s, by contrast, was rated at 0.60.^[4]
To enable the car’s aerodynamic shape, the Tropfenwagen also featured the world’s first (single plane) curved windows. Both the windscreen and the side windows were significantly curved.^[5]

The car featured a Siemens and Halske-built^[6] 2,580 cc (157 cu in) overhead valve W6 engine, with three banks of paired cylinders, all working on a common crankshaft.^[6][7] Producing 36 hp (27 kW),^[6] it was mounted just ahead of the rear axle.^[8] The engine, transmission, and final drive were assembled together and installed as a unit. The Rumpler-invented rear swing axles were suspended by trailing leaf springs, while the front beam axle was suspended by leading leaf springs.^[7]

Able to seat four or five,^[9] all the passengers were carried between the axles for maximum comfort, while the driver was alone at the front, to maximize view.^[6] With the 1923 model, two tip-up seats were added.

Weighing nearly 3,000 lb (1,361 kg),^[6] the Tropfenwagen was nevertheless capable of 70 mph (110 km/h) on its mere 36 hp (27 kW).^[6] This performance got the attention of Benz & Cie.’s chief engineer, Hans Nibel. Nibel conceived the Mercedes-Benz Tropfenwagen racers using the virtually unchanged Rumpler chassis.^[6] Poor sales and increasing losses led Benz to abandon the project.^[10] Later Auto Union racing cars resembled the Benz Tropfenwagen racers and were built in part by Rumpler engineers.^[6]

Rumpler made another attempt in 1924, the 4A106,^[10] which used a 50 hp (37 kW) 2,614 cc (159.5 cu in) inline 4-cylinder engine.^[9] This compelled a growth in wheelbase, with a consequent increase in seating to six or seven.^[9]

Although the car was very advanced for its time, it sold poorly – about 100 cars were built. Sales were hindered by small problems at the start (cooling, steering), the appearance of the vehicle, and the absence of a luggage compartment. Most were sold as taxis, where easy boarding and the high ceiling were advantages. The last cars were built in 1925.

The Tropfenwagen did become famous thanks to the film Metropolis, in which Rumplers found a burning end. It also inspired the Mercedes-Benz 130H / 150H / 170H road cars.^[11]

Only two examples are known to survive, one in the Deutsches Museum’s Verkehrszentrum in Munich and one in the Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin.

Such innovation. So nice.

Porsche 935

A true legend.