Lorne,
Thanks for taking the trouble. After watching the web cam for an hour
I had to leave for the office and missed the unveiling. It is interesting
to see what I missed.
By exceptional coincidence, in the post by air was a large envelope
from the Works containing issue no. 3 of 'The Malvern Link' which is
devoted to the Aero 8, a letter from MMC on the letterhead of my own
Agent (very clever), an accessories brochure, and a form for transferring
an existing order to the New Car.
The pictures in 'The Malvern Link' are large and detailed and give a
very different perspective to the web cam shots. The car looks better
without the distorted wide-angle effects.
Briefly, since I type slowly and it's late, the car has an ash body
which mounts onto the very high-tech alloy glued and riveted alloy
chassis. There is no glove box, but instead a fancy piece of Mulberry
luggage (a fitted case), and there is much exposed ash in the car
without a burl walnut fascia. There is much hammered alloy instead.
An interesting bit of text reads 'well under five seconds'. Somewhere
ages ago I recall hearing around 4.2 seconds 0 - 60. Also, not only
are the screen and rear glass heated, but so is the side glass which
has to be a first since these have electric window lifts.
The hood latching mechanism is not visible. There appears to be a
thin rubber seal at the top of the screen. The figure of 0.39 drag
coefficient is with the hood raised OR lowered.
335 ft./ lbs. @ 3,700 ain't bad, so this car will be another torque
monster. The bit about the lack of need for anti-roll bars has to do
with the suspension geometry which increases grip while cornering
and gives a 1.0 G skid pad result. (The Germans should love this.)
The theoretical top speed is ~ 160 MPH.
As it is also not obvious, I'm wondering just how MMC will deal with
front and rear impact requirements (bumpers) without the extensive
use of plastics (like Porsche) or fitting bumpers which might detract
from the overall design?!
Now if any of you happen to know anyone who would like to buy
a fleet of Range Rovers so that I can provide my Plus 8 4.0 with a
stable-mate... (NAS versions will be ~12 months after EC cars
are released, perhaps in Autumn.)
Regards,
Willie
William G. Lamb, III
Land Rover Specialist
MSCC # 9096
NAS Plus 8 4.0 Litre (R-11953)
At 11:59 AM 2/29/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>MSCC DISCUSSION GROUP - http://www.itmc.net
>
>And for any who missed the show..I have pioosted som,e shots under the
>Geneva Show on the Plus 8 page at GoMoG.
>
>Lorne
>http://www.gomog.com
>
|