Hi Group,
in my younger days I had a Sunbeam Lotus for a couple of years.
It was great fun as the body was based on the small hatchback which
replaced the Chrysler Avenger in the UK. The standard car had engines
from 1 litre to 1.6 litres.
The lotus version of the car was fitter with a 912 Lotus engine of 2.2
litres giving around 150 BHP. In standard form the car was pretty
tricky to drive as there was lots of power and no weight on the rear.
This sounds like a revisit of the Alpine to Tiger project where Chrysler
Uk looked for a powerful engine that would fit into the car to let them
go into motorsport.
The car was great to drive since it looked like the standard shopping
car but went like a rocket. I ran mine on 195/60 - 13 rally sport tyres
and could still get it spinning wheels into third gear going sideways up
the road.
the car was successfully rallied by Chrysler ( later sold to Puegeot
Talbot) in the world rally series.
I built a rally car with a friend (he had the money so he drove) and had
a lot of fun and some good results on some UK rallies including the Manx
and RAC.
I ended up modifying my car with a bit more power, tarmac rally
suspension, quick rack and an LSD.
They may not be that pretty but most people only saw the rear end of
them !
The car was great fun and I regret selling it...... now where's that
advert I saw recently...... :-)
In message <0000CB78.3038(at)tfn.com>, Kurt Eckert <eckert(at)tfn.com> writes
>There is a picture of one of these things on the bottom right corner of the
>April page of the TE/AE calendar. It is godawful ugly.
>
>>
>> In Europe, Sunbeam Talbot produced the Sunbeam Talbot Lotus,
>> which was actually a Lotus 911 powered Dodge Omni, which used
>> a 2.2 liter version of the above motor.
-- Jeff Howarth
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Sep 05 2000 - 09:40:54 CDT