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Thank You, Stuart. A Beetle for sure (the true “Porsche design heritage” 🙂). Your turn please.

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Edited by AZach
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Thank you.  this shouldn't be too difficult:

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That Beetle was an interesting one. A 1302 which means pretty modern like the Superbeetle 1303 with lot´s of trunk space in the front due to the modern front axle with Mc Pherson struts, disc brakes but classic designed dash, rear lights and plane frontscreen. Only made 2 years from 70-72.

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A little bit more generous crop:

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Well done Nigel.  Your turn.  We'll have to ask Wilson what they are like to drive.

 

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2 hours ago, stuny said:

Well done Nigel.  Your turn.  We'll have to ask Wilson what they are like to drive.

Stuart,

The standard 275GTB is a bit pendulous to drive and it is quite noticeable that the weight is concentrated at each end like a dumbbell. They make a wonderful noise. The 275 GTB-C or 275 Competitione is a completely different cup of tea and although they look identical other than wider wings, are a completely different car. The engine and gearbox is mounted far lower in a stiffer chassis made out of chrome/moly steel and the bodywork is paper thin aluminium alloy instead of steel. The engine is dry sumped, has bigger carburettors but oddly only 3 of them due to a homologation error (the standard car has 6 twin choke Webers and the original homologation document for the Competitione variant stated in error 6 chokes instead of 6 carburettors, so they were stuck with that) and puts out around 300 BHP. The suspension set up is different and uses wider Campagnolo centre-lock, forged magnesium wheels. These are fantastic to drive. 

I had a very pretty looking regular non-competition 1966 275GTB (NUM999F), which turned out to be a complete nightmare. On doing some research later, it turned out that it had been written off three times before I got it. It was the factory development RHD car and was built as a short nose single cam/bank car with the "knitting needle" solid prop shaft with no universal joints, so it is essential that the engine and gearbox are in perfect alignment. One of the factory test drivers had a huge accident in it and the remains sat in Ferrari's back yard until John Webb, who owned Brands Hatch and a number of other circuits (Motor Circuit Developments) spotted it and bought it for next to nothing.

He had Scaglietti rebuild it with a long nose body. Sometime later he hired it to a film company but on a shoot something went wrong and it had a head on collision - write off #2. John Webb decided to rebuild it in his own workshops at the top of the old paddock at Brands Hatch, where they made the S2000 sports racing cars. It was nearing completion and was up in the spray booth on the first floor, when there was either a gas or paint vapour explosion and it got blown sideways out of the building, landing on its roof.

The last rebuild was done well cosmetically (it won the best restored car award at the London Classic Car show in 1985). Sadly the rebuild was very poor mechanically. David Cottingham (DK engineering) did not straighten the chassis properly, so that the engine and gearbox were in line. The net result was that the solid steel prop shaft was having to run in an S bend, which ended up breaking the gearbox oil pump and bell housing back bearing repeatedly. Every Ferrari expert who looked at it, said it was incurable other than getting a replacement chassis made. In the end I sorted it out by buying a works racing Golf drive shaft made of titanium, cutting it in half and having a titanium tube welded into the middle of the two halves. I then had a special clutch plate made which used the Golf drive shaft spline as the centre driven shaft and had a modified flange made for the rear mounted gearbox input drive. This meant that instead of a solid steel bar propshaft, I now had a titanium one with a constant velocity joint at each end, to allow for the misalignment. I sold it on later to a friend as I needed a 2+2 for the rug rats, so bought a 365 GTC-4. He ran the 275 for 10 years without a single problem. 

Below is a photo of a 275 GTB-C behind the GTO. This is the Dubois/Noblet Ecurie Francorchamps Le Mans car from 1966. You can see the wide rear wings to accommodate wide racing tyres. 

Wilson

 

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Edited by wlaidlaw
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Another maybe-not-too-hard?

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