Scottish Elises

AJT wrote:What a brilliant addition to your garage.
There is a guy over on Seloc who is doing a self build of the same car http://forums.seloc.org/viewthread.php?tid=411682

Thanks. I have been trying to follow some of the build threads on the various forums including the main Stratos forum.

One of the reasons I am going ahead with this is related to the build. The guy who is doing my build works on fairly exclusive no-budget individual projects and is well known in the industry. There is also an "Ultima" connection since he does a lot of bespoke customisations for people and has his own 12 month waiting list to fit things in. He made me a couple of one-off carbon parts for my Ultima and I contacted him on the off-chance just to pick his brains and ask if he knew anything about the LB cars.

However, he used to be the boss of the Lister Bell owner / developer when they both were developing the Ultima and spoke highly of their product and spent 3hrs with me on Thursday at the LB factory. There was a bit of an appeal for him to build one of their cars to show standard which obviously suited LB and we agreed a fixed fee for him to do that for me which is far (far) less than it would otherwise have been.. so I guess I was in the right place at the right time. Still unlikely to see the car for 18 months tho.

Renmure to be renamed Mad Jack McMental.

That is simply an awesome choice and I'm massively jealous too. Wonderful car to goto and will be my route one day... either that or an AC Cobra

Absolutely love it, and can't wait to see (and no doubt hear!) it in the area!

I remember a car show (or possibly rally - of the driving around variety, not the hooning in forests one) of sorts coming to Camperdown Park in Dundee when I was younger. Rowan Atkinson of Mr Bean fame passed through in his red/orange road Stratos and I fell in love with it, there was then the 2 replicas which turned up at KH for years too.

I bet it'll be Ultima rivalling in terms of the overall drama of the experience too.

Chris

Wow. Just wow.

Sent from my MotoG3 using Tapatalk

Jim,

Something you might like (Just incase you miss it)

http://www.scottishelises.com/phpbb/vie ... =2&t=43085


Steve.

Love it. I'd probably chicken out of buying it in the first place but to do that and do full rally paint shows impressive balls - respect

Jim,

Blimey I thought Sandra and I were a little bit mental when we put a Cobra replica down on our "what will our next car be" when we contemplating the Boxster Spyder.

However a Lancia Statos rep is in another league and have to hand it to you, much admiration and looks like you have got the perfect guy for the job.

Definitely one car which will ensure you never lift part way through a corner

George

That will be absolutely epic, that Bussone engine is a peach of an engine, with 50 more horses than standard on throttle bodies and in a light weight mid engined short wheel base Stratos I'm just speechless though I suspect on full chat you will be anything but. I've recently aquire a GTA Sportwagon with the Bussone engine and I'm just blown away by the way it piles on speed. Such a glorious free revving engine.

The Steve Sutcliffe Autocar review is an entertaining watch - I think the Lister Bell Stratos he drove in that test was fitted with a 3.0 litre or maybe even a 2.5 litre, not sure. I'll have to watch it again!

Look forward to seeing the project develop.

Rich

I was on the Edinburgh City By-pass around 3pm yesterday and a group of 4 Lancia Stratos cars passed in the opposite direction heading east

Evoman wrote:That will be absolutely epic, that Bussone engine is a peach of an engine, with 50 more horses than standard on throttle bodies and in a light weight mid engined short wheel base Stratos I'm just speechless though I suspect on full chat you will be anything but. I've recently aquire a GTA Sportwagon with the Bussone engine and I'm just blown away by the way it piles on speed. Such a glorious free revving engine.

The Steve Sutcliffe Autocar review is an entertaining watch - I think the Lister Bell Stratos he drove in that test was fitted with a 3.0 litre or maybe even a 2.5 litre, not sure. I'll have to watch it again!

Look forward to seeing the project develop.

Rich

Thanks.

The engine is really the only variable in my build. I have priced the car with the 3.0 litre engine but said that if a 3.2 litre one becomes available then I will have it. There is a fairly big cost to go up from the 3.0 litre to the 3.2 but it is really the availability that is the issue. They did seem confident tho.

Speaking to the folk at Lister Bell about the Autocar thing was funny. Apparently the whole review was to have been done across 4 or 5 different types of cars from different manufacturers with no/little driving involved so Lister Bell provided a nice looking but basic spec 2.5 litre car just to look good in some pics. Once Sutcliffe had driven the Stratos he changed the whole format of the review to just focus on that car and LB got a big rush of interest on the back of it.

That's a cool little story, I like that. Steve is so animated in the video so it's interesting to hear the background to it. I wouldn't be surprised if he placed an order shortly afterwards, he was clearly smitten.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvs5jRi4h80

I must admit I watched that a while back before I got my Exige thinking shall I, nah that's just crazy so did something slightly less crazy (though that's questionable) and got an Exige S1. Well clearly not as mad as a Bussone Stratos! Love Lancia and always had a soft spot for the Stratos and 037. These Lister Bell cars look brilliant.

In the spirit of keeping anyone who is interested up to date ... and keeping SE ticking over .... a small update.

Just before Christmas I did a daft thing. I bought a lovely Alfa Romeo GT from a guy in Derby, had the engine removed, and threw away the rest of the car. I've physically never seen the car and won't see the engine till it's in my Stratos

It was getting really frustrating trying to source a good 3.2 GT engine with all the expensive bits so I took the decision to cut out the middle-man and just buy a car. That meant I got the correct gearbox, the LSD and all the proper ancillaries I needed as a package... all wrapped in lovely Italian bodywork and leather seats

In truth, it didn't really matter how great the engine was since it is still getting sent away to a specialist Alfa engine builder in Cardiff to be totally stripped, rebuilt with whatever higher performance bits it needs and should effectively come back zero timed and better than new.









And with the engine arriving down at Lister Bell before heading to Cardiff.



It's all still a bit frustrating.

Sometime either this month or next month the schedule is for me to effectively commit to the spec that I want for the final build cost and pay 33% of that then around about May(ish) the chassis and running gear is delivered to the builder followed by the rest of the bits with the rest of the balance to be paid.

I've already ticked all the upgrade boxes for, eg big brakes, top spec dampers and suspension and other stuff** (** stuff = bits I'm not really sure what the differences were but if there was an upgraded bit I went for it so I could get a better handle on what the final cost would be) so it's really one small detail bits I have to give a bit of thought to.. eg interior trim colour, seat colour err... and other stuff I suppose. Thankfully a lot of the original GP4 cars had red seats so, since you can't have too much OTT, I will probably go down that route.

Anyhow, my collection of Lancia Stratos photos is growing and Wendy has at least stopped calling it a Fiat X1/9 even if she still thinks it looks daft.

Italian engine in Italian classic

Nice work. A V6 gift wrapped in Italian designer metal and leather, ideal for Christmas.