'Suzuki SC100' Special Saloon - help with history please!!

[Clive Brown]

I'm aware of five , and possibly six , of them . Harry Humberstone built the first of them for Alan to drive . It had a weird wood/composite monocoque , and utilised March 803 ( I think ) suspension . Engines were either 8 or 16 valve air-cooled Suzuki bike engines . This car was responsible for the funniest incident I ever saw at a race circuit , in the padock at Thruxton .

Ben Bowlby , who I last heard of as a designer at Lola , built one with his father Richard . This was a very successful car , and used a 1 litre Kawasaki bike engine .

Finally , I drew up plans for a mid-engined Imp-powered car using Ralt RT1 corners . I built one myself for Rob Mason to drive , which I never completed for reasons I don't intend to go into in this forum . Rob built a second car for Irish racer David Hall , which used a 1220cc Carter Imp motor with a Coventry Climax FWH head . Finally , Richard Harris , for whom I built Imp motors , decided to replace his Maguire saloon Imp , and bought a home-built F4 car called a Cirrus from a monoposto racer called Ian Rowley . This had ( I think ) Chevron F3 suspension at one end , and March F3 suspension at the other . I adapted my original drawings to suit , and Richard and his right-hand man Bill constructed a third car in accordance with the cardboard templates I made for them . Later on , Richard rebodied this car as a Nissan 100SX silhouette , altered the monocoque by replacing the tubular engine frame with a full monoccoque , and fited a 2.0l 16v Vauxhall engine and Dallara F3 rear end . This was the car sold to the Mandersons .

As for the sixth car , I have a feeling that John Schneider's car was not the ex-Humberstone car , but a spaceframe car that John had made for him to his own specification . I think that confusion may have arisen because this car also used a Suzuki bike engine .

[driftwood]

1 Scneider did build his own SC100 i think he had his running before the humberstione car was racing
2 re Rob= worse kept secret in history
3 the nissan harris car has been thru my hands form Matt manderson to 2 other gus it willrun soon with XE motor and another sporst car body fitted in time it was ralt corners and gearbox at rear and either march or ralt front uprgihts fitted with horribly short wishbones

4 what car dio David Hall have?
he had a davrian floor pan car with Imp shell in top like the John Homewood car

[Mike Holmes]

Wasn't the Ben Bowlby car featured on a TV documentary? I seem to remember seeing a program on it?

[col rooney]

Yes David Hall had a suzuki with imp engine but it never done any good as it use to swap ends for no reason so he sold it i think he only used it for 1 season


col

[Dan Rear]

Originally Posted by driftwood

1 Scneider did build his own SC100 i think he had his running before the humberstione car was racing
2 re Rob= worse kept secret in history
3 the nissan harris car has been thru my hands form Matt manderson to 2 other gus it willrun soon with XE motor and another sporst car body fitted in time it was ralt corners and gearbox at rear and either march or ralt front uprgihts fitted with horribly short wishbones

4 what car dio David Hall have?
he had a davrian floor pan car with Imp shell in top like the John Homewood car

DW,and Clive, the Cirrus F4 car was built by Alan Morgan, who posts on here and TNF as 'Cirrus'. His mate is Iain Rowley or 'Delta', both great blokes. Alan worked for Ralt around this time, so I suspect there was a lot of Ralt influence in the Cirrus

[Clive Brown]

I travelled to Ireland to assist David in finishing the car for its debut , which was at Phoenix Park . I drove the car into scrutineering , and well recall people's looks of amazement . The car did not have a rear low-visibility red warning light ; it wouldn't have needed one at the time in the the UK .

" Where's your red light ? " , said the scrutineer . " It's a racing car , not a f**king knocking shop ! " , came my witty response . Nevertheless , we got the ticket ....

It ****ed with rain all weekend , everyone got very drunk , and I spent the Saturday night sleeping with the car in a beer tent in the Phoenix Park paddock . If Stiletto driver Richard Baird is still out there , for a suitable sum of money I promise not to disclose why he didn't take part in the first GT race on the Sunday !

The car did swap ends very quickly , but certainly not " for no reason " . Although the car was basically a copy of my design to the rear of the half-monocoque , it was largely built by a stupid little mutant who used to work for Rob Mason at the time . Whereas my car was built from 18g L72 , using solid rivets wherever possible , David's car was built from 16g NS4 , pop rivetted together . Crucially , whereas the engine frame on my car was carefully designed to provide a rigid frame using the RT1 engine bearers only as a basis , but with the Imp engine as a completely unstressed component , the car built for David Hall was totally deficient in this respect . The rear suspension must have moved about like a wet copy of the ' Sporting Life ' in a high wind .

I remember being called by a Welshman called Owen Jones , who had previously raced raced a 1 litre Special Saloon Anglia , who was considering buying the car , but I don't know what happened to it thereafter .

Clive

P.S. : I think the donor RT1 might have been ex-Trevor Templeton . Mine was ex-Arie Lyenduyk .

[Clive Brown]

Originally Posted by Dan Rear

DW,and Clive, the Cirrus F4 car was built by Alan Morgan, who posts on here and TNF as 'Cirrus'. His mate is Iain Rowley or 'Delta', both great blokes. Alan worked for Ralt around this time, so I suspect there was a lot of Ralt influence in the Cirrus

I honestly can't remember the car using Ralt suspension at either end ; what puzzles me is that I should be able to remember if it did , having used RT1 suspension all round on my own car . I know that one end , probably the front , had four stud fixing wheels , whereas the other had centre fixings . All Ralts had centre fixing wheels ; the trademark of Derek Bennett's Chevrons was their parallelogram twin link lower rear suspension wishbone , which he used to obviate the possibility of rear-end bump steer .

Incidentally , the last time I heard of my own car , it was in the possession of John Woods , proprietor of Gemini Engineering , esteemed engine man , Lydden racer , and twin brother of the late and much-lamented Ginetta G15 racer Ronnie Woods . John intended at that time to rebody the car as a silhouette G15 .

The Woods twins were no relation of Ernie Woods , self-confessed retired bank robber , and one-time Special Saloon racer , who bought David Leaver's home-built spaceframe Stiletto , which Rob Mason drove after Woody broke his wrist falling of a Honda Monkey .... whatever became of Woody ?

Clive

[Slartibartfast]

I realise we are getting away from the original thread here, but I think this is the David Hall Imp after he had sold it on. By this stage (1978?) it was driven by Vivian Candy (and I don't actually know if this was his real name) because one of the mechanics lived quite close to me for a while. I used to see it in the lockup garage attached to his house, and if memory serves he may have taken it for a spin around the local housing scheme to test the engine/transmission once or twice.... By this time it was well sorted, and at least a match for anything in the local 1300cc mod saloon class. I might be wrong, but in the 80's the regulations changed to 2 valve 1600cc, and it was given a new lease of life with a Lotus/Ford twin cam.

[Clive Brown]

Surely he couldn't have taken it around on a public road ; bejasus , that would have been illegal , and whatever would the Garda have made of that ?

It appeared in various colours ( Captain America , Marlboro Ireland ) , and was a Davrian fibreglass car . It followed on from the original John Homewood car , but used a Hewland gearbox .

The Irish GT rules did indeed change to 1600 cc eight valve motors , which at a stroke wiped out many of the existing competitors . A guy called George Crozier had a mid-engined Metro ( chassis by John Maguire ? ) with a 1600 Ford twin cam . They didn't suss it , but the obvious motor to use was the contempory water-cooled SuperVee motor ; lighter than the Ford , and more readily available even then .

If this particular car did ever use a Lotus TC , it must surely have been turned around and made mid-engined . Certainly , David Hall retained his 1220 cc Carter engine and Hewland 'box for use in his Suzuki .

Regards

Clive

[Slartibartfast]

I spent some time re-shelling an Escort RS2000 road car. One Sunday morning I decided I needed to check the loom and engine wiring/timing/carburaton etc. But there was no interior fitted (or the replacement Janspeed exhaust system). So, I sat on an upturned milk crate and held onto the steering wheel, and took it for a test drive. I can't imagine what the cops would have done if they had caught me - and it was in the same area as the Imp test, so I assume they were more interested in breathalising old biddies for church wine after mass. It's one of those crazy things we sometimes do - just for the hell of it. :>) There were witnesses, and I still have photos of the car after it was finished, parked in Mondello.
And I still have the milk crate.

[Alan Morgan]

I honestly can't remember the car using Ralt suspension at either end ; what puzzles me is that I should be able to remember if it did , having used RT1 suspension all round on my own car . I know that one end , probably the front , had four stud fixing wheels , whereas the other had centre fixings . All Ralts had centre fixing wheels ; the trademark of Derek Bennett's Chevrons was their parallelogram twin link lower rear suspension wishbone , which he used to obviate the possibility of rear-end bump steer.

I built Cirrus 004 in about six months in the winter of 77/78. It had March uprights and wheels at the front end (with centre lock fixing) and Chevron B15 rear uprights (with four-stud wheel fixing), and lower wishbones at the rear. The front wishbones etc were made by myself and my father, as was the monocoque chassis, and other rear suspension parts. The nose and cockpit surround were Ralt. When I worked for Ralt, Ron Tauranac asked if he could measure some parts of the car up for things he was planning for the RT3 - I learned a hell of a lot from him, and I was a bit surprised that he thought he might learn something from my homebrewed special.

The "trademark" parallel rear links were actually seen on many cars besides Chevrons. Derek Bennett used lower rear wishbones for a long time before parallel links.

[KA]

Originally Posted by Mike Holmes

Wasn't the Ben Bowlby car featured on a TV documentary? I seem to remember seeing a program on it?

Yes, shown on Channel 4- part of 'Equinox' which was their main science documentary series in the late 80's/90's

http://ftvdb.bfi.org.uk/sift/title/452821

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1303319/

[col rooney]

Yes the candy car was david hall imp im not sure if candy ever drove it on the road but david drove it to mondello 1 day as his trailer was being used by someone else ,he did have a ford engined imp i will try and post a picture

col

[col rooney]

[Slartibartfast]

Col, when I saw the car being driven on the road for 'testing', it was still owned by Candy, but it was one of the mechanics who was driving it. It was close enough that when it was started up, I could hear it's open exhaust clearly. Clive, SuperVee was never a class raced here in an Irish championship. So I suspect the expertise with the twin cam and ixexpensive parts was the reason this engine was the most popular. There may have been regulations (I can't remember) that didn't allow water cooling, but I do remember that 4 valve engines such as the Toyota twin cam and Ford BDA variations were not allowed. This is despite the fact that we had a long lost, and mourned, formula atlantic series. So 1600cc BDA engines would have been about the place. The twin cam was far less expensive in most respects, and I imagine that also contributed to the decision.