Engine Punk

The Alfa badge caught our eye Here we have another Imp spotted at Tregrehan, this time in the late 1980s. This is how I always remember the paddock at Tregrehan. Muddy. It had plenty of cooling holes, retained the handy rear hatch for loads (engine access as it turned out) but rear arches of questionable aesthetics This Imp had an Alfasud engine and gearbox mounted behind the rear seats. My mate Jerry (that's him with the carrier bag in the photo) was in the process of building something similar (more on that another time) and spotted the little Alfa badge on the front, put two and two together and went to ask some well-informed questions. As so often happens on these occasions the answers were remarkably forthcoming considering it was a competition car under developing but - hey! - that's hillclimbing chaps for you. Look at those Rotoflexes! We were particularly interested to see that the Imp rear suspension had been retained and that standard Rotofles co...

Luigi looks all shiny and new here. Those front wheels were reputedly off a Ferrari. They were ultra-light but were sold off for some ridiculously high amount before Luigi came my way. Luigi is Kermit's younger Italian brother. If my memory serves me right it was 1987 when I stumbled over Luigi at Tregrehan. Luigi is low and I am not. This was the same place where I'd seen Kermit (VT No.101) a few years before and at the time I thought I'd found Kermit again but this device was obviously Alfasud powered and had a great slab of radiator sitting up front. I subsequently discovered that it was called Luigi and entirely new. Luigi embodied a few lessons learnt from campaigning Kermit. These included the use of a single rear wheel (albeit a spectacularly wide rear wheel) with a Citroen suspension sphere pressed into service on the home made box section swing arm. Not a brillinat photo but it's the only image I've got of Luigi (or Kermit for that matter) in ac...