The Rare Darrian T90 – A British Giant-Killer

The Darrian T90 is a car that’s not particularly well-known outside of British motor racing circles, though this seems a shame given the extraordinary David vs Goliath achievements enjoyed by the unusual performance car.

Darrian Cars originally started out as Davrian Developments all the way back in 1965. The company had been founded by structural engineer Adrian Evans in London to build racing cars using the then-new Hillman Imp as a starting point.

The Imp had been conceived as a competitor for the wildly popular Mini, although the Hillman never achieved the sales success of its front wheel drive rival it did enjoy some remarkable racing successes, and it has an enthusiastic cult following to this day.

Whereas the Mini had a front engined, front wheel drive layout the Imp went the other way, with a rear engined rear wheel drive layout. Interestingly it would be the first mass-produced British car with an engine featuring an aluminum head and block. Thanks in part to the Imp’s all independent suspension it became a popular sight on race tracks around the UK, often battling the Mini to the checkered flag.

Davrian founder Adrian Evans had quickly realized that with its lightweight 998cc alloy engine, independent suspension, and affordable price tag the Imp would make an excellent starting point for a more seriously engineered racing car to compete in sub-1000cc classes.

Evans developed a lightweight, aerodynamic fiberglass body for the new car and fitted the suspension, engine, and transmission from the Imp. He sold them in kit form from the mid-1960s into the early 1980s through model iterations from the Mk 1 to the Mk 8.

Above Image: The Darrian T90 prototype still carries its original Leyton House Motorsport racing livery.

After this time the company would change hands twice, eventually becoming Darrian Cars now headed by Tim Duffee, a long time employee turned company owner who has managed the extraordinary feat of keeping Darrian cars in production to the modern day.

From The Imp To A Formula 1 Wind Tunnel

One of the most significant moments in the history of Darrian was when in the early 1990s Robin Herd, founder of March Engineering which was one of the largest producers of racing cars in the world, took an interest in the company and bought two of their cars. He worked with Darrian and utilized the March Formula 1 wind tunnel to fine tune the aerodynamics of the Darrian T90 – a newly designed car with a mid-mounted engine and significant upgrades throughout.

The car you see here is the first T90 built as a result of this non-official partnership between Robin Herd of the March F1 Team and Tim Duffee of Darrian Cars. The T90 would prove to be the company’s most successful design to date, with a slew of race and championship wins under its belt encompassing hill climbs, rally, and tarmac racing perhaps most notably by winning the 1996 British GT Championship.

This 1989 Ex-Robin Herd Darrian T90 Prototype is now for sale through Collecting Cars. Unlike many prototypes it wasn’t left under a dust cover in a quiet warehouse or scrapped after development finished, rather it was sent out racing.

Over the course of its competition career (so far), Martin Sanson has won numerous rallies in the car, following on from the wins notched up by Robin Herd in 1990 at the Valvechatters and Rushmoor stages.

The car today remains in excellent condition throughout and it still carries its historic Leyton House Motorsport colour scheme that was used in Formula 1 and a number of other motorsport disciplines.

If you’d like to read more about the car or register to bid you can click here to visit the listing, at the time of writing there are 4 days left to get a bid in and the car is located in Bournemouth in England.

Images courtesy of Collecting Cars

 

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K&N Air Filter Keyfob

This is the K&N Air Filter Keyfob and as the name suggests, it’s a mini K&N air filter on a keychain for those who want to make sure their keys don’t suffer power loss due to restricted air flow.

These air filters, sometimes called pods, have become an almost de facto feature of many custom motorcycles (and cars) as they typically offer far better and less restrictive airflow than OEM air filter set ups.

One of the first recommendations for people who want to add more power to their bike or car is to allow the engine to breathe easier – with a better flowing intake and exhaust. Of course this is all region dependent as in some locales you still need to pass annual emissions testing and modifying your engine may mean it no longer passes.

Above Image: The keyfob comes packaged just like a normal air filter, including the K&N sticker.

K&N Engineering was founded in the 1960s by Ken Johnson and Norm McDonald who named the company after each of their first name initials. The company is best known for their washable oiled air filters which they claim significantly improve air flow into the engine.

K&N have been very active in American motorsport as a sponsor for decades, and they also sell cold air intake systems, cabin air filters, oil filters, electronic engine tuning components, and now keychains.

This is the part where I need to explain that my above comment about keys suffering power loss due to restricted air flow was a lighthearted joke, before I receive a wall of emails telling me I’m an idiot. Now on a more serious note, please remember to re-jet your key’s carburetors after fitting the new filter to ensure they aren’t running too lean.

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A Restored Volkswagen Type 2 Westfalia Camper

This beautifully restored Volkswagen Type 2 Westfalia Camper is one of the tidiest examples of the famous German hotel room on wheels that we’ve seen, certainly in recent memory.

Depending on your age the sight of VW camper vans like this used to be somewhat commonplace. They provided an inexpensive way for people, particularly young people, to have cross-country adventures often for weeks or months at a time.

Westfalia

Of all the companies that specialized in modifying VW Type 2s for camper van work the most famous is Westfalia, the firm was named for the Westphalia region of western Germany where they were based.

Starting in 1951 Westfalia began modifying VW vans, turning them into little cabins on wheels with beds, curtains, seats, tables, sometimes even including ice boxes and sinks with running water. The Type 2 itself had only been released in 1949 for the first time, hot on the heels of the Volkswagen Beetle with which it shares many components.

From its initial release the Type 2 was reasonably affordable and it was cheap to run, this led to it becoming a best seller in Europe and it proved equally popular in other markets around the world. Aftermarket products for the Type 2 quickly became available, the most significant of which was the full camper conversion by Westfalia or by one of their competitors – companies like Dormobile, EZ Camper, ASI/Riviera, Holdsworth, and any number of others.

These “camper vans” as they became known sold in significant numbers and became an annual summer holiday tradition for countless thousands of owners.

Above Image: Westfalia campers like this are perfect for those who want to spend more time in the great outdoors.

Consistently high sales of course led to many on the second hand market a few years later, often with very affordable asking prices. This in turn led to the VW camper becoming almost the de facto automobile of the hippie movement throughout the 1960s – hippies could afford to buy them, and of course they could travel cross-country using the van as a home on wheels.

Of course it wasn’t just hippies taking advantage of affordable campers, surfers, skiers, hunters, and many others with outdoor interests bought them too – so much so that they became an integral part of California culture.

Back in the early days, Westfalia was making a few hundred VW campers each year. These numbers continued to grow after Volkswagen started offering Westfalia-modified Type 2s from their own dealer networks worldwide.

When ordering their new Westfalia camper customers could choose all manner of additional options including things like toilets, stoves, refrigerators, awnings, pop-tops, and even a baby’s cot that was fitted to the driver’s seat.

Sadly it seems that relatively few original Westfalia camper remain, the vast majority appear to have been consumed by rust or junkyards – often after years or even decades of neglect. This means that surviving examples are enjoying steadily increasing demand, as more and more people seek out a more simple way of traveling across the country.

The 1962 Volkswagen Type 2 Westfalia Camper Shown Here

As we mentioned above, this is one of the nicest Westfalia restorations we’ve seen in recent memory. It’s equipped with a period-correct interior including a sofa that converts into a bed, and it comes with a slew of additional equipment like vintage-looking skis, a surfboard, and fishing equipment.

This camper is currently being offered for sale by RM Sotheby’s online, the bidding is now active and at the time of writing it’s sitting at $43,000 with 3 days left to go. If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can click here to visit the listing.

Images: ©2021 Courtesy of RM Sotheby’s

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A 1939 Ford Custom Roadster Mystery Car – Can You Help Identify It?

This unusual roadster is coming up for sale with Mecum in Indianapolis this month, it’s a custom bodied mid-century roadster based on the chassis and running gear of a 1939 Ford, equipped with a flathead V8 and a 3-speed manual transmission.

What you’ve read in the paragraph above is essentially all we know about this car, we don’t know when it was converted, where it was built, or even who did the work.

The auction listing does explain that the car has a dual exhaust, a tachometer, V8 center wheel caps, whitewall tires, Stewart Warner gauges, a wooden dashboard, a tan interior, and a British racing green exterior but you could gather most of that from the images.

The design of the car looks more 1950s than 1930s, with the rear end of the car looking somewhat reminiscent of the MGA which was first released in 1955. The 1939 Ford that this car is based on was of course a body-on-chassis vehicle making a re-body a relatively simple task for a person with the right skillset.

In the post-WWII period there were an astonishing number of custom cars not unlike this one built, many taking advantage of inexpensive pre-war cars as donors for their chassis and drivetrain. Removing the heavy original steel bodies to replace them with lighter bodies and hopping up the engines provided young enthusiasts with cars more than capable of going fast enough to get them into trouble.

In stock trim the Ford flathead V8 produces approximately 90 hp however there have been almost 100 years of tuning going on with these engines in the aftermarket community, and power levels can now reach well over double that figure with the right modifications.

Above Image: The interior of far car looks classic mid-century, and there’s a removable panel over the transmission for access.

This car does include a few outwardly visible parts from its donor vehicle, namely the headlights and steel wheels with their chrome hubcaps. The windshield looks like it may have been sourced from a Shelby Cobra (or a Cobra kit) and the interior makes use of a creatively shaped shifter lever to get it into the right position for the driver.

Low-volume production or one off cars like this one are always interesting to learn about so if you have more information on this car please get in touch to let us know so we can update this post with it.

It’s impossible to know whether it was built in period or more recently, although the excellent condition that the car is in would tend to indicate it was either built or restored more recently. The car doesn’t appear to have a folding roof of any description so it’ll be a fair-weather cruiser, though to be fair cars like this rarely lend themselves to use in inclement weather.

When I first stumbled across this car a week or so ago I was on the fence about its looks however over the past few days it’s been growing on me, and knowing that it’ll that flathead V8 burble makes it more appealing still.

If you’d like to visit the listing on Mecum you can click here.

Images courtesy of Mecum

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A Highly-Detailed Fiat 1100 Driving School Cutaway Model

This unusual Fiat 1100 driving school model was made by Werner Degener to give driving students a detailed understanding of exactly how cars work – including an X-ray look inside the engine, gearbox, and steering system.

The model is based on Fiat 1100 mechanicals and uses carefully positioned cutaway sections to show students what’s actually going on inside the car when they’re driving. It uses an electric motor mounted under the engine to get the parts moving – from the valves and pistons to the gears and differential.

Though the model was originally designed to run on 220 volt power in Europe it’s been converted to run on 110 volts so it can be used in the United States.

The driving schools in many countries used to dive relatively deep into the actual engineering that goes into making automobiles work. This has become less commonplace today and this trend is likely to continue as cars get more and more adept at driving themselves.

The Fiat 1100 that this display car is based on was first released in 1953 and would remain in production until 1969, covering a number of model iterations and upgrades.

As the model name suggests the car came with a 1,100cc engine, or 1,089cc to be precise, and it provided cheap transportation to many in Italy and around Europe.

The 1100 was built under license in signficant numbers in India, Argentina, Taiwan, Australia, Iran, Morocco, Yugoslavia, and West Germany, with its native production occurring in Italy. Due to their abundance and low cost the 1100 was a popular first car, which is likely why it was used as the basis of the model you see here.

RM Sotheby’s will be offering the model in May with a price guide of $4,000 to $6,000 USD, it’s being alongside a plethora of other items from the DFW Elite Toy Museum in Texas. If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can click here to visit the listing.

Images: Rasy Ran ©2021 Courtesy of RM Sotheby’s

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Kaiser Darrin – The World’s First Mass-Produced Fiberglass Bodied Sports Car

The Kaiser Darrin is an unusual American car that is considerably less famous than it deserves to be. The Darrin was the first mass-produced fiberglass-bodied sports car in the world, meaning of course that it was also the first composite-bodied production car.

Developing The Kaiser Darrin (In Secret)

Much like the Lamborghini Miura which would be developed decades later, the Kaiser Darrin was developed completely in secret, out of the sight of Kaiser company executives. This cloak and dagger approach was taken because it had been made clear that Kaiser wanted to focus on selling an affordable “every man” car in post-WWII America, the Henry J sedan.

American automotive designer Howard “Dutch” Darrin released he could turn the chassis and powertrain of the Henry J into a sports car if he simply removed the steel body from the chassis, and replaced it with a lightweight, sleek sports car body, and then made some modifications to the suspension.

Using steel for the new body would be out of the question as it would require expensive stamping equipment, aluminium alloy would prove similarly expensive due to the intensive craftsmanship each panel would need – so Darrin pursued fiberglass.

Fibreglass was a new, advanced material at the time that promised to revolutionize the automobile industry. Once a mould was created the fiberglass cloth was laid down and coated with resin, then left to dry. This was a simple process, so simple that workers could typically be trained in a single day.

Above Image: Here you can see the Darrin’s unusual doors that slide forward into the front fender rather than swinging out as with regular cars.

What Darrin did was design a body to fit the wheelbase of the Henry J, he then had it made from fiberglass by Bill Tritt, a man who had pioneered the use of fibreglass in sports car bodies. This body was then fitted to the chassis in secret, the car was finished off and Darrin unveiled it to company boss Henry J. Kaiser.

Kaiser’s reaction was ferocious, Darrin quickly explained that the car hadn’t been developed on company time or with company funds, which helped calm the boss down a little, but he was still adamant that it would never be put into production.

That is until his wife took him aside and said “This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I don’t see why you aren’t in the business of building sports cars. I don’t think there will be many automobile companies that won’t go into the sports car business after seeing this car.”

This completely changed Kaiser’s mind, he cautiously agreed to the project, much to Darrin’s relief.

Prior to this there had been a few small-scale companies in the United States offering both turnkey fiberglass cars and fiberglass bodies that could be fitted onto pre-existing chassis. The Darrin was the first release from a “big” company, being unveiled at the 1952 Los Angeles Motorama, two months before the first Corvette was released with its fiberglass body.

Delays meant that although people could order their car, none were delivered until 1954. These delays coupled with the somewhat disappointing performance capabilities of the car led to it not being particularly popular – the top speed was just 95 mph and it took 15 seconds to go from 0 to 60 mph.

Above Image: The interior of the Darrin is beautifully appointed and not dissimilar to the early Corvettes of the same era.

Due to the fact the car hadn’t originally been designed as a sports car the handling also suffered compared to its British rivals. As a result of these issues and some bad luck with a freak snowstorm, the Kaiser Darrin would be produced for one year only, 1954, and just 435 would be made.

Today the surviving examples of the unusual car are a highlight at any auto show they attend, people love to comment on the unusual “fan shell” front grille and the doors that disappear into the front fenders are a major highlight. The historic importance of the car seems to be increasingly recognized – particularly as lightweight composites become more and more common in automobile construction.

Over the years owners have learned to tweak their cars to notably improve handling, some even added superchargers to boost output from the 161 cu. in. (2.6 litre) F-head 6-cylinder engine.

The 1954 Kaiser Darrin Shown Here

The car you see here is the 67th of the 435 that were built, it received a body-off restoration in the 1990s and it’s now presented in period-correct condition with its 161 cu. in. 91 hp F-head Willys 6-cylinder engine, 3-speed manual transmission with overdrive, and correct interior.

The most common color for the Darrin was white and the red interior certainly suits it well, this car is one of the nicest examples of the rare model we’ve seen in recent years so it’ll be interesting to see what it sells for.

If you’d like to read more about this car or register to bid you can click here to visit the listing on Mecum, it’s being offered with no reserve at the Indy Auction in mid-May.

Images courtesy of Mecum

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For Sale: A Lada Riva Sedan – The Soviet Union’s Workhorse

In the West our knowledge of cars from behind the Iron Curtain is often lacking, largely due to lack of exposure or first hand experience. The car you see here is the Lada 2107, also known as the Lada Riva or the Lada Nova, and it’s a member of the Lada Classic series.

The Lada Classic series was, by and large, the family of vehicles that moved the majority of the Soviet Union’s car driving public. The model family can be separated into three main groups, the VAZ-2105, the VAZ-2104, and the VAZ-2107.

The 2105 was the base model, the 2104 was the estate or station wagon model, and the 2107 was the desirable deluxe version. All of these cars were based on the Fiat 124 platform from the 1960s – the Fiat 124 is an unsung hero in the automotive world, it’s the third best selling automobile platform after the Volkswagen Beetle and the Model T Ford due to the licensing deals done around the world.

Perhaps the most interesting version of the Lada Classic is the 140 bhp Wankel rotary-engined Lada 21059 and Lada 21079 versions developed for use by the KGB and the Interior Ministry. These cars tipped the scales at approximately 955 kgs (2,105 lbs) and so with 140 bhp under the hood they were among the fastest cars on the road in Russia and the Eastern Bloc countries.

The Lada 2107, like the one you see here, was powered by engine 2103, a 1.5 litre, carburetor fed inline-four. The cars have four doors, three box sedan styling, a spacious trunk, and front disc brakes with drums on the rear.

The Lada Classic vehicles series was the best selling in Russia and many Eastern European countries for decades, and they’re still one of the most popular secondhand cars on the market to this day. They remained in production in Russia until 2012, however the production didn’t stop there, in Egypt they were still building them until 2015.

The Soviet Union was desperate for foreign income and so a number of export agreements were agreed with nations like Britain, Canada, New Zealand, France, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Denmark, Colombia, and others.

Interestingly the New Zealanders struck a deal with the Soviets to trade the cars for mutton and butter, with no money changing hands at all. It was an unusual barter agreement the likes of which we rarely see anymore, particularly in the automotive world. As a result of this many Lada Classics can still be found in New Zealand, a nation over 10,000 miles from Moscow.

The Lada 2017 you see here is in remarkably original condition throughout, a rare find given the hard life so many of these cars lived, particularly on the salted roads of Russian cities during winter. It’s fitted with the 1.5 litre engine and a 4-speed manual transmission, it has a blue exterior, a black interior, and it’s riding on an original set of steel wheels.

The car is accompanied by its original owner’s manual and the factory accessories including the first aid kit, tool kit, spare tire, and jack. The odometer is now showing 36,907 kilometers and the car is due to cross the auction block with Mecum in April, if you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can click here to visit the listing.

Editor’s Note: The vehicle has crossed the auction block already, fetching a high bed of $8,000 USD. We had this post in the publishing queue and missed publishing it before the auction date for which we apologize.

Images: Mecum

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