Engine Punk

That's me on the left, looking vaguely spiritual but feeling more like The Hooded Claw in that hat, as I proselytise (good word) with my Suzuki clutch tool and a wooden raygun that I found - fashioned by the forces of nature itself - by the tracks of the Liskeard and Caradon Railway The Steampunk movement in Cornwall has been growing steadily during 2011 since a like-minded group of scientists, inventors, artists, explorers, adventurers, dollymopps, ruffians and natural philosophers had a bit-of-a-do fighting a squid in Falmouth last April. Organised by a variety of inspired and industrious individuals under the collective identity of Steampunk Kernow, notable members of our illustrious circle have subsequently survived a hot-air balloon crash, broken innumerable speed records on the Bodmin & Wenford railway (the cream teas went especially quickly) and cavorted with specially created daleks and oods in a Dr Who-themed Christmas party in The Bird in Hand, an ancient coachi...

This Morris Minor looks a little deflated but in a good way Posting about the Kilo Sports reminded me of this car which I spotted in the tax exempt car park at the 2010 Goodwood Revival. It's not been chopped and channelled but it's been sectioned in the style of the US hotrodders and could have been what the Barris Brothers would've produced had they gotten their grubby mitts on a Moggy Thou during the fifties. However, as it's a monococque, the sectioning process is much harder. It involves chopping right through the car not once but twice and removing the strip that's left in between these tow cuts. Of course, being a well-rounded little jelly-mould, the cuts are not going to be straight, at least not if the end result is to justify the effort. Nice picnic basket madam. Perhaps a bit more bulge to the bonnet, though? What is so clever about this is that the unaltered greenhouse area doesn't look out of place on the lowered shoulders of the section...

Here's the Buckingham glassfibre monococque resting on its headstock. What I'd really like to see is an image of the complete bike. From my stats page for this blog, I can see that one of the most visited posts on this blog is for the Buckingham 4 valve JAP 500, a speedway device featuring a GRP monococque frame and a DIY 4 valve conversion. It was built by Graham Buckingham who was a technician when I was a student at Coventry Polytechnic in 1985. We fell into conversation as fellow piston heads are wont to do and he brought in some parts to show me. From above you can see the recesses for the detachable tank and seat. They were held in place by rubber straps or over centre catches. I've posted all I know about this machine before and following recent erudite feedback on other automotive queries you might expect that I'd heard more about this curious machine. But no. It's as much a mystery as it ever was. Unless I hear something dreckly (good C...

The Kilo Sports was a no frills, doorless roadster based on a Morris Minor and produced in Cornwall. When I was still at school in the late seventies and early eighties, there were still some after shocks from what Peter Filby called The Fun Car Explosion. Kit car manufacturers sprang up everywhere, it seemed, and offered the eager purchaser all manner of extrovert motoring experiences. Many used a common basis like a Beetle or a Triumph based chassis but the Kilo Sports used the organs from a dead Morris Minor. The Kilo was designed by David Stiff and built by a local Morris Minor specialist known as the The Thousand Workshop. Production began in 1983 and lasted for a year with a brief revival in 1986 and estimates of production top out at about 14 cars. I had a very good friend and neighbour who about this time ran an ex-GPO Minor van. My first ever car was a Morris Minor, which I've still got (more about that another time) and we visited The Thousand Workshop because it ...

At first sight, with those fat wire wheels, this special looked rather good but reversing the tendency of a true Vintage Thing, this device did not get better the more you looked at it. The environmental disposal of this trials special appeared way back on this blog (End of a special) and I thought it had been featured as a Vintage Thing. Earlier today I stumbled across the Hobbsie (or Hobsy) Special again and realised that it had not been immortalised in this way. So here are some more images of it before the end-of-life directive was carried out on it by metal guru Adrian Booth. In truth, it wasn't such a Vintage Thing and had very little to recommend it. Somebody had built it for trialling and they seem to have started off with some good components, like a Ford 1600 engine and MGB wire wheels, but along the way something happened and the Hobbsie (or Hobsy) Special never amounted to much. It got parked up and deteriorated for many years until 2007 when space considerations...

Foxbat - wasn't that the code name for a Russian cold war fighter? Just a bijou follow-up-ette to my musings on the Jag shooting brake. Mr Valve Bounce left a comment and pointed me to the Bonhams website but there's still some mystery surrounding it.. Nobody knows who made it, although another existed back along (good Cornish expression). This car is thought to be the sole survivor and historians have suggested it was made as a competition tender for long distance motor sport events. It is properly known as the Foxbat. I'd spotted the badge on the rear door at the time but forgot about this when I uploaded the admiitedly rather dark pictures. I still say it took a genius to realise the concept of blending a Moggy with a Coventry cat. But how does that make a Foxbat? On my screen at home they don't look so murky but there's something fitting about this car emerging from the shadows.

Also at Goodwood this year, but actually competing was the Ferrari breadvan. And now, motivated by simple devilry following the last post on a Jaguar XK150 shooting brake, here is the Ferrari "Breadvan" modelled by Drogo on a 250GT. I'd first seen this car at the Le Mans Classic in 2010 but I'd heard about it years before that.  Whoosh! This car divides opinion but I like it. I think they find the straightlines don't match the curves but that roofline is the blurred streak from the top of the windscreen and I particularly like the effect from the rear. It looks so fast! Its nose is beautifully styled, too. Apparently, it was nicknamed "Anastasia", which around Modena is a derogatory name for an ugly woman but it looks pretty good to me. This car is low, lower than the kneecaps of a grasshopper. It was not built for its load carrying abilities. Although the rear window is hinged, just try to get anything in it. Or out of it. After...