Nory P wrote:
>
> >Morgans used Fords, Triumphs, Etc.
> >The V-8 in there now is a GM, I
> >believe.
>
> Oops! Forgot about that. I guess there aren't any
> British cars anymore after all.....
Actually, what the Brits always did best automotively is still very much
alive -- cottage industries, as the subject line indicates. There are
dozens of small companies churning out a handful of sports cars in the
Sceptred Isle these days, some of them even rather inexpensive, and all
of them in the tradition of many of the marques we know and love.
Morgan is the largest of these, and easily the one with the most
heritage, stretching back to 1909. Still family-owned, still turning
out just enough cars to satisfy the company but leave a long waiting
list of customers.
Caterham is another that y'all may have heard of; they were originally
the firm contracted by Colin Chapman to build the frames and panels for
the Lotus Seven kit. When Chapman decided in the late Sixties to get
out of the kit-car business once and for all, Caterham bought the rights
to keep producing the Seven. You can still buy one today, though with a
Vauxhall (British GM) engine. Still, at 160+ bhp in a car weighing
maybe 1200 pounds, it's a rocket; in fact some British magazine recently
tested a series of modern supercars (BMW M cars, Mercedes E55, and
others) on a speed-and-handling course and the Caterham was faster than
all of them; only the Elise even came close.
TVR is also still in business, the company that Trevor Wilkinson founded
having now turned into a manufacturer of very well turned out,
high-performance vehicles. I've got friends who have variations of the
first TVR, the Grantura, one with a Mk. I and the other with a Mk. III;
both use M.G. B-series engines, with different suspension designs and
different body styles. Neat cars, very much the race-car-for-the-street
feel; lighter than a Sprite, with fully independent suspension, a wider
track than an MGB and about a hundred horsepower, the Mk. III is a
blast, at least for the short distance I've driven it. Today, the top
of the line uses a bored-and-stroked version of the good old Rover (nee
Buick) 3.5L (nee 215), again in a swoopy roadster body with stiff, well
articulated chassis.
Ginetta? Still around too, I believe, though not producing Imp-powered
'glass cars any more. Can't remember what is motivating the latest
Ginetta, which I think is up to G22. But it's no cooler looking than
the G4.
And there are more; a recent R & T (I think) article on the Birmingham
(again, I think...) Motor Show listed other micro-manufacturers who are
producing limited-production sports cars. The worst thing about them:
we can't get them in the U.S., at least not easily.
But the astute reader will note an interesting fact about all those car
companies:
Not one of them designs or manufactures its own powerplant.
And in a very real sense, the Healeys were just such a cottage industry
in the early 1950s when Len Lord saw the Healey Hundred, DMH's newest
creation (still using the twin cam-in-block Riley 2.5 engine out of the
Silverstone), at Earl's Court, and said that if DMH could build those
around an Austin engine, there was a bag of money in it for both of
'em. Three years later, Lord made his comment about the car that became
the Sprite, and the rest is history.
As a side comment that impinges on this list: One of the Healeys'
potentially neatest projects was a single car, built about 1960, called
the "Super Sprite." Built with an alloy body on the steel unitary
platform, it was a -- to be honest -- moderately ungainly-looking thing,
attempting to get the styling of the Hundred with the pop-up headlamps
and general dimensions of the Sprite. But who cares what it looked like
-- it weighed less than a standard Frogeye, and it had a Coventry Climax
1100cc SOHC four with twin Weber 40DCOEs on it, basically the same
engine used in the Lotus Elite and Eleven. It was, by all accounts, a
rocket. BMC did *not* like this, as the Climax engine was not built by
one of their subsidiaries, so the project was quashed. Which only goes
to show that not every evil began with B(P)L.
Someday soon I'll tell the story of Eddie Maher and the Cylinder Head
That Never Was. More grist for the mill...
--Scott
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