On Tue, 17 Feb 1998, Irv Korey wrote:
> > Flares were indeed a bit of a thorny issue. As I understand it, they
> > were not allowed in SCCA. However, they were frequently tolerated. And,
> > if the article about the Group 44 GT6 is to be believed, if you could
> > put them on and it didn't look obvious, it was OK. There's a great
> > description in the article attributed to Kas about how to flare the rear
> > and 'have it look so much like it came from the factory that the
> > inspectors will never look twice' or something of the same feeling.
>
> There was a story circulating about the TR6 that Paul Newman bought from
> Group 44 and then won the national championship with. The story was that
> while the car had no flares, it was several inches wider than a stock TR6.
> It was said that Group 44 was always careful not to paddock near other
> TR6's. Don't know if there is any truth to this, but it makes an
> interesting urban legend.
I've looked at the Group 44 TR6 pretty closely lately, well pictures of
it... The car that is being run right now in the Group 44 livery most
def. has flares on the front fenders... TR6's have a accent line that
runs right along the top of the standard fender flares. On the Paul
Newman car pictures, you can see a kind of "bubble" in front of the front
wheel openings, and the bubble extends to the front of the car and
extends above the standard flare such that it occludes the accent line.
At first I thought my eyes were decieving me in a picture that I took of
the car, but I've confirmed that there are flairs by looking at the
pictures in the book "The TR250 TR6 Companion" that TRF sells. In that
book, there are two angle shots of the Newman car, and you can see the
flairs in both.
For a general idea of the flair of the Newman car, look closely at the
front of a Toyota Tacoma pickup truck - between the front of the car and
the wheel opening.... the similarity is rather interesting.
Now, in the TR6 Comp Prep manual, there TR6 pictured (which I think is
one of the Kastner cars) does not have any sort of flair. If you study
the picture carefully, you will note the 6 inch American Racing wheels
(I'll fill you in on the details if you care), and the body lines are
very true to the factory lines. Whether the car is truely the stock
width/track remains a mystery - you'd have to take some measurements to
actually figure out if the car is widened...
This is more or less a moot point, however, because that is a car with a
history and it would be allowed to run because of its notoriety. If you
were building a car from scratch, you might roll the fenders and possibly
augment the stock fender flair, but a welded in extended flair or 'glass
would not be period until after the mid '70's anyway... I have no idea
what the various sanctioning bodies would think about 'glass, but I'm
pretty sure the flair thing didn't start happening until the mid- 70's.
>
> Irv
>
rml
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