Here is a brief excerpt from the abridged version of my latest book, Mike’s Guide to Attracting Attention in Your Car Without Being Even the Least Bit Pretentious. All you hipster kids trying out out-attention whore each other with stickers of cartoon characters and colorful wheels, please take note:
Here is a little bit of trivia from the day the Cameron’s article “Modifying Shock Hangers on My 1996 C2500“, took place.
That day was memorable to me for several reasons.
When it comes to British car manufacturers, most people think of Jaguar, Aston Martin, Land Rover, and Rolls Royce. However, the Sunbeam Motorcar Company was a British car maker that gave the world some pretty notable cars in its heyday.
Sunbeam was founded in 1901 but had been in business before that as a bicycle maker. Like many troubled car companies, Sunbeam changed ownership a number of times throughout its history. In 1919 the company merged with Talbot and Darracq to become Sunbeam-Talbot-Darracq, or STD Motors (seriously).
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This has got to be one of the rarest Corvettes around. According to my research, there are only either 2 or 3 of these cars in existence, depending on who you ask. This particular Corvette is on display at the Mel Martin Auto Museum in North Phoenix. It is owned by Mel’s son.
There isn’t much information on the internet about these cars, but according to the sheet of paper that was displayed near the car, its got a Vortech supercharged 383 stroker LT1 putting out 500hp and 454lb-ft of torque. The brakes have been upgraded to Brembo units, the wheels are 17 inches (this was 1992, remember) and it cost $80,000 when new. The modifications were performed by Lister Cars in England.
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I spotted this at an emissions testing place a while back. While I like seeing mentions of Typhoons and Eclipse GSXs, I can’t help but be disappointed at the idea of a bunch of “car guys” assuming that Corvettes are AWD (I wonder how suprised they are when they pop the hood and find out someone replaced the rotary engine with a small block?) and that Dodge calls its fast cars “TR” models.
I wish I would have had a better camera at the time, but the next time I go back, I’ll try and get a shot of whatever ridiculous inaccuracies they’ve got on the board nowadays. Here’s a close up:
