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Nissan DeltaWing crashes in Atlanta
TG’s favourite Le Mans racer's set upon by a Porsche. Rolls...
Nissan DeltaWing crashes in Atlanta -
A look at the Audi R18’s private bits
We autopsy Audi's Le Mans-smashing R18 e-tron. And get electrocuted (it's hybrid). And poisoned (it's diesel).
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Video: how to park a BMW art car on a cliff
BMW needed a pretty photo. So they airdropped a Le Mans racer onto a cliff…
Video: how to park a BMW art car on a cliff -
Racing in glorious slow motion: the video montage
Car racing is all about going fast. Rrrreally fast. So what would a 15 minute video of racing cars going SLOW look like?
Racing in glorious slow motion: the video montage -
Formula One stars and their personal cars
To pay the bills, they drive the fastest cars on earth. So what do Formula One drivers keep tucked away in their personal garages at home?
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"Well, there's the Le Mans winner, the Daytona winner and the world championship winner here, so there's major provenance," Lopez says. "From a collecting point of view, look at Cobra prices today. This is the most successful American race car of the Nineties and Noughties.
From a personal point of view, they're incredibly good fun to drive. Huge torque, very fast, easy to maintain. They were cheap, though they're starting to go up in value. The fate of many racing cars is that nobody wants them. They'll never be a 250 GTO, but owning a car that's won Le Mans... not many cars can claim that."
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The home made DeltaWing is finished!
Well, it took 337 hours, but our shed-built tribute to the experimental racer’s ready to go to Le Mans…
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Our home-made DeltaWing is nearly ready
Le Mans is approaching, and so is the deadline for this ambitious little TG magazine project…
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We figure out how the triangular DeltaWing works
It's what Batman would race if he did Le Mans, and while it looks cool, we can't help but wonder: how the hell does it work? We got out the TG screwdrivers and bent our heads underneath the DeltaWing's utterly bizarre body panels, because we're sure it's going to explode at Le Mans' first corner.
See it on: page 114.
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"I like driving weird stuff. It makes people happy. Especially now all the cars on the road look so similar - everything's silver or grey. Nothing's fun anymore. The DeltaWing should help cheer everyone up a bit."
Leaving Andy puzzling over some Batboat fibreglass, we exit through his abstruse digs and promise to return before its paintshop appointment on May 31.
We'll have many more updates on the Top Gear DeltaWing as Le Mans draws near, readers, so keep coming back! In the meantime, wish us luck if we're ever going to get this done... -
"But gearing's the least of my worries. I've got to get the thing running and working first." Ushering us towards a garage door, he says: "It's lucky I've finished my other projects really."
His second workshop's over-endowed with petrosexual insanity. Ever seen a lowered Panhard PL17? Or a Tempo Matador Van? Or a right-hand-drive 1935 Ford V8 convertible? Us either. Leaning against his very customised, very cool Ford Thunderbird, Andy explains that he uses them as his daily transport. -
"The pod sections of the rear end are getting made out of an old MX-5 bumper, the pods on top from the Batboat off the telly [pictured]. I've got something from an eco house to make the nose cone, and those DeltaWing kick-ups on the rear are getting made from the air intakes off Alan Jones' 1975 Grand Prix racer. It just looks like a load of old rubbish now, but it'll work.
"I've got some Nissan on there, too. I found some rear window vents off an old Bluebird in a scrapyard - I'm using it on the bonnet as a cooling vent. It's not going to be fast though. There's only the 1.6-litre Ford Crossflow engine from the Westfield in it, and a four-speed ‘box. God knows how it'll be geared with that rear axle. 60mph is going to feel like 100 in that thing..." -
And this, dear internet, is it - the Top Gear Delta Wing. An unholy amalgam of Westfield roller-skate, sheet steel, fibreglass and many, many scrap cars.
Thus far, the recipe includes Ford Mondeo (steel wheels), Hillman Imp (steering rack), Peugeot 207 (headlights), Fiat 126 (rear deck), Morris 1000 bonnet (other bit of rear deck), general Ford (space saver front wheels with holes machined in to look like the rears), and Ford Escort (rear axle).
Then there are the fibreglass body panels. Andy says, "I know this guy up in the New Forest that's got moulds for literally anything you can think of. I went through them all and found the shapes I needed - I've turned up some pretty weird stuff..." -
But we do have Andy. And he radiates the sort of esoteric lateral thinking that might actually get the job done in time. "When you guys got in touch, I'd never actually seen the Delta Wing, so I didn't really know how big it was. And Nissan wouldn't give me any measurements, so I had to work it out for myself. I went on the Michelin website and got the tyre dimensions, printed out a picture I found on the net and did the maths.
"Then I bought a really tidy little Westfield and got to work. That was two weeks, and about 160 hours of work ago."
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Thing is, unlike the ‘Wing's developers, and in true Top Gear style, we don't have several million pounds, several thousand days or several skilled engineers. We have three quite bad pictures, six weeks, a Westfield and a loyalty card with the local scrap yard. Will we do it in time? Watch this space...
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Hunched over a low-resolution printout of the Nissan DeltaWing Le Mans racer we've just printed off the internet, a man carefully decides which bit of Batman's old boat he'll use to replicate its side pods. "I'm pi**ing in the wind a bit here", he says, drawing a cautious line on the pixelated image. "I've got fibreglass moulds from all sorts - an eco house, two Mazda MX-5s... But the Batboat bit's going to work best for the pods."
Said man is called Andy Saunders, and he categorically isn't pi**ing in the wind. He is one of the UK's finest car customisers, and he's in the throes of trying to help us build a replica of the groundbreaking Le Mans racer, the Nissan DeltaWing.
Why? Because as you'll have read over the last weeks and months, we're massive fans. As well as potentially changing racing cars forever, the experimental jet-shaped racer is also utterly, deeply mental. Which is a Good Thing. So good in fact, that for some weeks now we've been pondering a plan, which is only now coming to fruition.We thought we'd join forces and pay homage to what could be a game-changing car by building our own road-going version. Then we're going to try and bring it along with us to the car parks as part of covering this year's race on TopGear.com. Just for fun, you understand - this isn't going to be hitting Mulsanne at any point, nor appear on TV.
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Nissan DeltaWing gets set for Le Mans start
Futuristic racer to tackle world’s greatest 24-hour race… with a 1.6-litre turbo engine
Read about the new Nissan DeltaWing launched today -
Gallery: the Nissan DeltaWing
More pics of Nissan's very own Batmobile: the new DeltaWing, set for a 2012 Le Mans start
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