Student Bodies at Rye House

It's all gone a bit quiet in my motorsports’ world. Not a lot happening at all which could probably explain the short nature of this month’s inane ranting on my part. I attended the first meeting of the IUK championship, the format runs to Club 100 rules. Two stroke karting. These karts are fast and loud – which is great. This first event was a four-hour open test session with 32 karts running. The day was a bit mad as the mixed abilities of all the university drivers led to a fair few incidents and almost constant yellow flags. One of the nastiest occurred to the Brookes B kart and as a result one of our drivers had the once over from the paramedics. But all in all it was a good day, and great to see about 200 motorsport nuts almost all under 25 in one place.
This was just a slice of the student motorsport cake. With at least 19 different universities represented, student motorsport is growing from strength to strength.
On the car side of things I thought I’d give an update on the progress of the rally car (or lack of). Right now the shell is pretty much finished with just a couple of doors to be painted and fitted. The expensive stuff starts now!  Next thing on the shopping list is the rollcage and on a student budget that is a huge bit of pie. So I am just waiting until I have a few hundred quid lying around to finish it. The new target date for first competitive running will be on a sprint some time next summer. I’m planning to do the upcoming scatter on the 28th, and hope to finish higher than last this time (although at least I’m consistent). Although that’s cash and car dependent! A good point of coming last all the time (fnarr fnarr) is that I can always stand a chance of shocking people when I do run well. Can you imagine what would happen if Daren Hall got beaten by someone like me on an Autotest! That would be something to write about.
For once I don’t have a whinge or a rant to pad this section out with. H’mm a top ten – that would fill up some space.

My top ten Road cars of all time.

Now this is one people will disagree with! The way I’ve decided to do this is by going for cars that were designed for Road use – not homologation specials or limited run hypercars.
Lotus Elise Mk1 – I’m not sure about the looks of the newer version currently on sale but the original was simple as a sports car should be. And its British ish.
VW Golf Mk2 – I’ve owned three of these and they are for me the perfect car for everyday usage, Its big enough for pretty much most uses. The 1.6 is really quite quick when wants to be. But also with the Mk2 Volkswage created the ultimate GTi the Mk1 GTi was great but the Mk2 was better and with the G60 you remember that is a mid 80’s car when in my opinion cars reached a peak (Pikes peaks in a quattro to exact). Since the start of the 1990 cars have never really been quite as good. I’d still rather have a Mk2 1.6 than a Mk5 GTi.
The Mini – I’m not gonna bother to explain why that’s here as I imagine the rest of you would have it on your top tens as well
Ford Mustang– Well I want to be Steve McQueen
Ferrari 288 GTO – Well how could I not have a GTO on this list?
Ford Puma – See mustang and it looks great!
Ford Focus Zetec – I lapped Castle Combe in one and loved every second of it.
Jaguar SS100 – It looks like a car should do
Aston Martin V8 Vantage – It’s a real V8 eat your heart out Mad Max and watch this cathedral move
TVR Cerbera – The car that showed the world what sports cars are meant to be (broken!)

That’s all I’m going to sleep. Good morning!!!

Sam Collins

The Acorn : December Edition