Thread: Can I just say
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Old 27th June 2020, 10:49
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Yes, and it was a well built example, it's just that the journalist hated it.

If you remember back to the days when Top Gear was good they did a Lancia special show.

Clarkson folded himself into a Works Stratos with Hammond in the passenger seat and they both agreed it was fantastic.

But Clarkson also drove a kit-car version of the Stratos (running a 3.0l Alfa V6 more powerful than the Dino engine in the original) and hated it:

The cockpit was too small (dimensionally identical to the original he drove).

The handling was too twitchy (it's a short-wheelbase rally car and he lost it while pushing too hard on a track).

It was built by a man in a shed.

With hammers.

And the brakes seized on when he thrashed it round a track.

So, when driving a replica worth around 1/20th of the value of the original that hadn't been maintained by a team of specialist engineers, Clarkson concluded that the entire kit-car industry was a dangerous pile of shite that should be avoided.

I also recall that when he built a Caterham as part of a Top Gear challenge he managed to knock the chassis off the axle stands it was on, dropping it about four feet onto a concrete floor. If that car ever came up for sale I'd avoid it like the plague. After all, it was built by a Clarkson.

On an abandoned airfield.

With hammers...
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