Cleland Cavalier

[bluest2]

Did anyone get a close look at the Cleland Cavalier in the touring cars display? It looked very convincing from a distance until you noticed it had a suspiciously small front disc brakes....But no, faith is restored when you notice the giant racing style disc behind the rear wheel. The front one must just be stop-gap until the authentic original racing part could be located. Look closer still and.....Nooooo!, the illusion is shattered beyond repair when closer inspection of the rear disc shows it to be a crudely fabricated piece of scrap welded to the outside of the Cavalier drum.

It might sound a bit picky but this really ruined the credibility of what could have been an excellent display. If you can't find the original don't replace it with a 1.6L that's had the interior ripped out and a few stickers put on. The Astra had a full road interior so I guess that wasn't genuine either.

Hopefully someone can restore my faith (shoot me down) by telling that was a genuine btcc Cavalier shell on temporary running gear awaiting restoration.

[johnnymaestro]

Well, your right it was not and original BTCC Cav, me and mate went to have a look at the stand while on a break from ours and were very disapointed by it. Bad panels wrong discs and that was onlty the exterior.

One of my fellow racers is building up the ex Menu 1993 Renault Laguna, which was then used by Tommy Rustard in his privateer season (white with blue wheels, DC Cook car). His is the last Laguna BTCC car in this country as all others are abroad or destroyed. This car could have been on the stand but someone didn't do their research to find it.

[GasMonkey]

It is not uncommon for Manufacturers to build a mock up of Touring Cars / F1 cars etc, used for PR events and shows when the base cars are available for sale, then the mock ups [usually without a VIN allocated] are sold, often initially to their own dealer network for showroom display

[bluest2]

GasMonkey said:

It is not uncommon for Manufacturers to build a mock up of Touring Cars / F1 cars etc, used for PR events and shows when the base cars are available for sale, then the mock ups [usually without a VIN allocated] are sold, often initially to their own dealer network for showroom display

You're right, and a lot of cars at the show fall into this category. A number of the Focus WRC cars spring to mind, there were two with no engines that I saw. I don't really mind in those circumstances because at the end of they day they are just used as promotional tools, and the proper versions may still be in active use. The problem I have with the Cavalier was that it was there as part of a display of famous touring cars, and as such should have been the genuine article.

Edited by bluest2 on Monday 14th January 18:57

[turbo-ww]

Or to put it another way what if one of Colin's cars was a mock-up?

How cheated would we have felt then?

(BTW I'n not suggesting for a moment that any of them were)

[autofocus]

Hi there,

Did anyone look closely at the Team Dynamics Honda Integra BTCC car.

It had a tax disc in the window !!!



Were any of the cars real ?

Regards

Tim

[Frederick]

The team dynamics integra is their promotional hack - it's road registered and most definately not a touring car.

The mondeo appeared to be legit, as did some of the older ones.

The bit that stood out for me was that the "proper" ones all had centre bolt fixing alloys, whereas the mockups were studded and the proper ones also had multi point roll cages which were triangulated all over the car, whereas the mockup ones had bolt in, non BTCC cages.

Also you could tell the mockups due to the standard position of the steering wheel, most BTCC ones have the wheel moved much further back, and the driver located more centrally in the car for weight distribution reasons.