It is a slow day in the office and my mind starts to wander. Besides the topics that I cannot mention on a family web site like this one, I tend to daydream about cars. Cars that I have a realistic chance of owning. Cars I could own if feeding, clothing and educating my children were not important to me. And cars that would require matching six lucky numbers for me to own.
Owning a dream car would always be nice. But it seems to me that the act of purchasing that car and then driving it home would be only satisfying for the moment. A relatively brief feeling of Sisyphean pleasure would wash over me and then I would need to go find some other consumer satisfaction fix to keep my automotive Jones alive.
What is the alternative to the transitory pleasure of buying your dream car? Perhaps building your own dream car would be more satisfying. The process could take months or even years depending upon the level of sophistication of the car and the ability of the owner/builder. Certainly it could become a long-term process that has no definitive "end" but rather a never-ending journey of discovery. Sometimes the goal is not the destination but rather the passage to that destination is experience that one should seek.
All this philosophical claptrap leads back to a dream car that I could realistically own. And because I enjoy the process of improving existing cars yet seek a greater challenge, I am aiming toward building my own car from the ground up. It certainly will not be a transitory pleasure to build my own car; allotting only a few hours per week of my available discretionary time to the project could stretch out the completion date to some point years into the future.
If I am dreaming, let me dream big. And by big I mean a small power to weight ratio. If the typical econobox sedan weighs about 3,000 pounds and has an engine that makes about 120 horsepower, then that car has a power to weight ratio of 25:1. The new for 2006 Civic Si has 200hp in that same 3k lbs. package for a power to weight ratio of 15:1 and that is considered a snappy performer. And for comparison sake, a 3400 lbs Corvette Z06 with 500 ponies kicking under the hood has a power to weight ratio of 6.8:1 which puts that street car in the range of some race cars.
For my purposes, a power to weight ratio of 10:1 is good goal to shoot for. And I would like my dream car to have no more than 2,800 pounds of bulk to haul around (Colin Chapman's first law of automobile design: Add Lightness) so I only need 280hp to get the desired result.
The basis of any car is the engine/transmission combination and for my dream car I want to use the horizontally opposed flat-four turbo engine of the Subaru WRX. Coming from the factory with nearly 250hp, it is fairly easy to coax as much as 300hp from that engine. But rather than putting the engine in the front and driving all four wheels as the Subie normally does, I would put the engine in the middle, drive only the rear wheels and eliminate the transfer case, drive shaft and associated gear needed for Four Wheel Drive. If I had the resources of carbon fiber fabrication, I would whip up a fantastic plastic monocoque for the car's frame, but realistically I would have to settle for a triangulated tube frame construction. Two seats, down force-creating ground force body panels, double wishbone suspension and not much else.
But the truth of the matter is that I do not have the fabricating skills or tools to build that car. Within the walls of my 20' by 20' suburban garage I have the room to modify an existing car or maybe build a kit car. My current hobby car, a 1987 Honda CRX has been an exercise in car modification so I have Been There, Done That. Not that there is anything wrong with modifying an existing car, I have been doing that as a hobby for nearly 35 years. The next step up will be a kit car.
The term "kit car" has a lot of negative connotations, frankly there are a lot of schlocky kits being sold to an unsuspecting public. My earliest recollection of kit cars was the Fiberglas bodies slipped over VW platforms to create a hideous approximation of the Ford GT40. The best use of the resulting mess was the highlight of George Lucas' first feature film THX1138 in which a pair of them was smashed to smithereens.
I have always ha a romantic perception of open topped cars; the wind in my hair (what is left of it) the roar of the engine in my ears, the song of the tires on the road. I know that a roadster (a small two seat sports car with a canvas top that can only suggest weather protection) is not practical. That wind in your face is either blazing hot or bone chilling cold so the number of days that you can realistically use a roadster without a top is severely limited. But as we discussed earlier regarding the Zen concept that the journey to the goal may be more important than the destination, so in this case the construction of the car is more important than the actual use.
I am evaluating three very different kit cars that share the two-seat, roadster design. At the bottom end fop the spectrum is a kit that uses the frame, suspension, engine and brakes from an air-cooled VW Bug. There are quite a few manufacturers that sell kits based on the venerable People's Car and the variety of body styles that a kit builder can use is impressive. Of the open topped VW kits, the classic dune buggy, the "bathtub" Porsche from the 1950's and the 1950's Porsche Spyder racer replica are the most attractive to me. The down side is that the VW frame used is not particularly rigid, and the air-cooled engine may not be able to generate the necessary power to achieve the target of a power to weight ratio of 10:1.
The next step up would be a Caterham 7 kit. Imagine a classic English roadster, maybe looking something like an overgrown roller-skate, from the 1950's with bicycle fenders over the tires and a tight little cockpit and you will have the Caterham 7 in your mind. Based upon a design by Lotus' Colin Chapman, the Caterham 7 is a smile producer for drivers and for passers by. But the body kit is pricey because it has to be shipped from England and the mechanical bits that power the car are not as easy to find in the US as they are in old Blighty. So this kit is not as attractive as it could be.
The ultimate choice is a bit of a cliche these days. The very symbol of aging Baby Boomer nostalgia for an icon on our youth. You know it; you love it, the 1960's Shelby Cobra. The original Cobra was a hand-built confluence of English roadster technology with a huge honking American V8 shoehorned into it. There was nothing subtle about the Cobra; it was as defiant as the turbulent times that spawned it. Working on a tiny budget, Carroll Shelby created a production car that humbled the Corvette and the Ferrari. Every schoolboy wanted one then and every middle-aged grey beard wants one now.
There are a number of kit car companies that make a Cobra-clone and it is even possible to get a newly built Cobra from the descendent Shelby Car Company. Outside of time, space and a modest amount of money, all of the Cobra kits require a late 80's to early 90's Mustang to build a dream car. And the Cobra kits can easily achieve the desired 10:1 (or much better) power to weight ration of my dream car.
Daydreams are fun, reality is tough. It would take a major commitment of time and energy to build a kit car and continue to have a life beyond my garage. I will continue to ruminate upon this decision and of course I will keep you readers up to date on my progress.