Up until recently, Ralph Thomas (Highlands, NC) had both cars. He sold the
"Rocket"
car to his partner, Doug Campbell. Bill Warner
"michael l. cook" wrote:
> Herald948@aol.com wrote:
>
> > In a message dated 8/20/00 9:47:51 PM EDT, kaskas@earthlink.net writes:
> >
> > > Vitesse...Built by my company Kastner Brophy Racing in 1971. Factory
> > > sent me a stock Vitesse and we then did the build for the then Trans-am
> > > racing.
> >
> > I admit that I've always been curious as to WHY this all happened when it
> > did. Presumably the Vitesse 2L was the only Triumph product that might even
> > have come close to fitting neatly into a Trams-Am racing class. But it
> > couldn't have had much to do with the classic "Race on Sunday, sell on
> > Monday" advertising philosophy. After all, fewer than 700 "Vitesses" were
> > ever officially sold in the US, and that had happened about 7-8 years
> > earlier. And even the Herald had been gone from the US for several years
>when
> > these two Vitesses hit the Trans-Am circuit!
> >
> > So Kas, or Mike Cook, or anyone else in the know -- why did Triumph or BLMC
> > wish to see this happen?
> >
> > --Andy
> >
> > Andrew Mace, President, The Vintage Triumph Register
>
> All of us back at headquarters just assumed that Kas built the Vitesse
>because he
> could! And because he had a crazy driver named Carl Swanson who did great in
> Triumphs with little screaming sixes in them - witness the GT-6 at Road
>Atlanta.
> However, if Kas builds a race car, there is always a GOOD reason behind it.
>Just
> a bit hard to get to it sometimes.
>
> And by the way, Kas, although the car had candy apple and red stripes, it was
> actually white, wasn't it?? An I remember Mike Rockett's car being white with
> blue stripes - must have been a re-paint.
>
> Now we need to find Paul Newman's 2.5 PI.
>
> Mike
|