Picking this up from WV. It’s a project I’ve been looking at for probably a year now, the owner finally dropped his price and I finally pulled the trigger.
I’ve already got the wheels that MOMO made for the LeCar Cup race series.:boink
Neat. What are you plans for it? Lapping? Wheel to Wheel? Make it streetable again?
where in the hell do you find these cars?
you must have one of the most unique collections
That has to be one of the most interesting cars i have ever seen. honda guys aint got nothing on u and being low!!!
Probably looking at AutoX first. It was actively racing in 2004 so it shouldn’t take a ton to have it out again. It is essentially streetable, though it’s caged and sits about 5" lower than my current street R5, which already rides like a no-suspension go cart. This thing on the street would probably cause kidney damage, but yes I’m dumb enough so I’ll hopefully be taking it out there shortly after I bring the car home. I may try to bring it to a PS meet this summer or do something really dumb like run it at Flashlights, just depends of course.
I’m anticipating a good bit of wrench time. It has some old, rare performance stuff (the Head, Cams and Suspension are all from the Cup Series aftermarket that existed back in the late 70’s/early 80’s so for today’s purposes they may as well be one-off parts because no one has them and the companies that made them are essentially long gone) so I’ll be focused on making sure everything is buttoned up, I have a more than adequate cooling system, probably fresh water/fuel pump, etc. Even though the R5 was around longer and more widely sold in UK/France, performance parts just aren’t really around (they got the turbo version so the N/A car was pretty much just used for its econobox roots).
This (and a spare car that comes with it) brings me up to 3 R5’s. With a spare engine I keep looking at Megasquirt, dreaming about a wild turbo setup, but that’s a hazy fantasy. Long-term I’d realistically like to blueprint the race car’s motor and at least have specs in case I need to copy some of the performance parts but for now it feels awesome just to have what has to be one of the last surviving examples of the LeCar Cup.
Oh and to answer the question yeah it was very random finding this. I was actually on another message board trolling for contact info on Alpine Canada (they made a lot of R5 parts back in the day and still have a Canadian division that imports some leftovers from Europe) and someone said “oh my friend over in WV has an R5 race car, I think he was talking about selling it once,” so I got the guy’s number, called him up and we went back and forth for the past year or so. It took him over a month to get the car out of storage for some pictures last Spring, then race season came so contact was slow, then in the Fall I ran out of cash and he was too busy to bother selling it to someone else. A few weeks ago he did the “final offer before I go through the hassle of ebay” and I had to say yes. I was wrestling back and forth because I was trying to get rid of the projects I had accumulated and I finally sold my Festiva, but my fiance actually talked me into buying this.
awesome and congrats on teh find though
U must have a pretty darn sweet fiance!!! My old lady would tell me its ugly and u dont need another car!!!
nice.
I cant wait to get pulled over by the cops with 2 of these on an 18ft trailer…
And I thought I had some weird cars, congrats, I would rock that.
VERY NICE!
That thing is really sweet.
Three lug wheels. Crazy.
x2
your habits are rubbing off on him.
Intresting car… I wouldnt even dare drive soemthing that low around here.
The head in the race car was milled down so much that the builders took 2 links off the timing chain. The P.O. said it was at least 13.0:1 compression, probably higher, and it’s running Archer Brothers cams. We’ve started it a couple times on pump gas and it seems fine but I’m probably looking at running only Turbo Blue in the future.
Here are basically the only pictures I managed to snag on our trip to pick the car up in WV. Right when we got out to load up it started pouring. The red car is just for parts but it did come with 3-lug authentic Carroll Shelby wheels, which seem incredibly rare.
Spotted: gearhead checking out the Toyota Prizm that “feral cats pissed in a whole lot”
man… no dirty hippies spotted
this car is sooo fuckin loud , i love it