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Re: [Fot] Spitty racer for sale??

To: FOT@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: [Fot] Spitty racer for sale??
From: Andrew Mace <herald948@aol.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:46:53 -0400
-----Original Message-----
From: Clark W. Nicholls <cwnfot@gmail.com>










Good grief guys!

For $1700 it will provide a lot of fun and be competitive if the other cars
all perform to that level. If Joe shows up he'll blow their doors off, for
sure....

==AM==
I'm with Clark here! (I never got to see that particular infamous Spitfire, but 
I think one of the spare
bonnets in my garage is from that very car, thanks to Clark!)

Some of you have heard the following story before, so bear with me....

A buddy and I picked up an abandoned ex-GP Spitfire 4 back around 1983 for 
almost nothing (package deal with a '73
1500 Spitfire street car). It look a lot of paint and a few odd gaskets and 
seals, but very little else (except for
a pair of doors -- thanks, Clark!) to get it going, and it became a great 
little budget Solo II car. Loads of fun
for very little money. Like Clark, we used mostly cast-off FF slicks and such. 
It was good enough to win FTD occasionally
in local Solo II events as well as at the VTR National Conventions in 1986 and 
1989.

At the '89 Convention, it even attracted the attention of a gentleman who 
expressed some interest in trying it,
and we were only too happy to let him do so. To this day, I still believe that, 
if he'd had something for his feet other
than the bulky dress shoes that caused him to jam both brake and gas at the 
same time, Mike Rothschild would've taken FTD
from me at that event. (Yeah, THAT Mike Rothschild!) I could not have 
"purchased" that treasured experience and memory
for 10,000 times what we'd spent on that abandoned Spit.

In its prime, it was probably not much more than a mid-pack Regional GP car; by 
today's standards, the engine and other modificiations were barely "warmed over
street" level. And by the mid-1990s, I wasn't using it nearly as much anyway 
(young children and all that). Outside of VTR National Conventions, i.e., any 
local Solo II event,
it was barely competitive with "stock" Neons. But I didn't care, 'cause it was 
still fun!

--Andy Mace



*Mrs Irrelevant: Oh, is it a jet?
*Man: Well, no ... It's not so much of a jet, it's more your, er, Triumph 
Herald engine with wings.
-- Cut-price Airlines Sketch, Monty Python's Flying Circus (22)

Triumph 10 / Herald / Sports 6 vehicle consultant, The Vintage Triumph 
Register: http://www.vtr.org

Check out the North American Triumph Sports 6 (Vitesse 6) and Triumph Herald 
Database: http://triumph-herald.us

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