Already Been Done

[TexasTesla]

I had several Porsche (VW) 914’s growing up...both a 1.7 and a 2.0.

Both were only a couple of years old when I owned them..

My recollection is they were low-quality sports cars...the shifter was horribly vague...the seats were barely padded and uncomfortable...the fuel injection system was a POS...my 914’s always smelled like gasoline!

Access to the top of the engine via the narrow slot behind the rear window was almost nonexistent...

 

[RSchneider]

Same here but whatever it is, at 120 mpg it must be running at 15 mph or slower so is not really street legal!

I do know for a fact that the Atlantic is a VW MKI Jetta for the Mexican market. Never seen a diesel but the rest were all a gasser with a carb. I doubt they gave any more than 30 mpg. My older son had a MKI Atlantic (a US version names a Jetta) and it was nothing to write home about. For someone to get 120 mpg from one, that's something to get us all involved.

 

[RSchneider]

I had several Porsche (VW) 914’s growing up...both a 1.7 and a 2.0.

Both were only a couple of years old when I owned them..

My recollection is they were low-quality sports cars...the shifter was horribly vague...the seats were barely padded and uncomfortable...the fuel injection system was a POS...my 914’s always smelled like gasoline!

Access to the top of the engine via the narrow slot behind the rear window was almost nonexistent...

914's. They were garbage. No undercoat (so they rusted out in 5 years). The sheetmetal was too thin thus the rear trunk hinges broke out from the chassis, the clutch cable tube broke out of the chassis, the clutch cable broke about every two years because of that stupid pulley, the clutch system was junk, the windshield washers failed because they were from a beetle, the parking brake was junk, the rear window would fall out, the heater boxes, j pipe and heat exchangers rusted out, they burned to the ground unless you went in for the recall, the battery box would rust out and fall against the engine and the FI needed about 10 resistors so it would start cold.

If Porsche made that car today they would bring down the whole VAG empire due to about 20 class action lawsuits. It goes to show how much better cars are today than "back in the day".

I liked mine but looking back on it and my PCA buddy that was Mr. 914 back in the day, I found out it was like an MG. You better like it or else. On the other hand, the engine was bullitproof. It wasn't all 100% failure. The transmission was not bad but that convoluted shifter was like something a 1st year engneering student today would not even design.

 

[Maurtis]

Also on a side note, I have wondering about this "Atlantic" and the only thing I can see as to what it is is a Mexican VW Jetta from the 80's.

Teehee, AriLea is talking about the "Atlantric" with an extra "r" near the end. It is the electric three wheeler he is building, you can see part of it in his profile picture

 

[RSchneider]

Teehee, AriLea is talking about the "Atlantric" with an extra "r" near the end. It is the electric three wheeler he is building, you can see part of it in his profile picture

He has an electric three wheeler? Cool. Got any pictures of it? Hows the interior look. Does it have airbags? HVAC system? What's the range and recharge time. What standard does it use for recharging?

 

[Ty]

Experienced drivers have a higher measure of acceptance and on that end, it's kinda funny how you could go all-in for 3 ELIO 3wheeler without having drive tested it in different conditions (snow, gravel, crash worthiness, CG issues, 4 wheels vs 3, etc.) ??? US city freeways does not scare me at all...buying a car you've never tested is! There's always that element of risk on anything you do, what you drive and how you drive and believe you me, the untested ELIO will be subjected to the same brutal environment and if not used as intended (going faster than allowed, modifying the engine, etc.) one can get in a lot of trouble just like the cars you mentioned!
By the way, you may wanna consult these guys how VW beetle is driven on gravel road!

Class 11 Beetle




First up was a Class 11 bug. This was, as near as I could tell (no one was very sure), a 1959 Beetle. Or it had been. Class 11 is for stock VW Beetles with drum brakes and 1,600cc air-cooled flat-four engines. Suspension must be stock, with some modifications allowed. What that leaves you with is a stripped-out interior and maybe 60 to 80 hp.

Volkswagen had brought in the family fun-oriented sanctioning body M.O.R.E., Mojave Off-road Racing Enthusiasts, to help out. M.O.R.E. had laid out a 10-mile loop course for us press dolts to bang around in out in the Mojave near the Slash X Café (a place that deserves its own story, for another day). My first lap was in the black Class 11 bug you see here, driven by M.O.R.E. president Cody Jeffers.

“There’s not a lot of power in these,” Jeffers said of the Class 11 Beetle as we loped off into the desert.

Indeed, we were moving at what might have been 25 or 30 mph. The bug was surprisingly good at soaking up bumps, though. The suspension travel was more than I’d expected. Bracing my carcass for impact on the first few whoop-dee-doos, I was relieved to find that the bug took up most of the wallop. When it was my turn to take the wheel, I went a little faster but still enjoyed the suspension travel. It was fun, if a little abusive.

The Class 9. That front end gets light.




Next was the long, thin, yellow Class 9 machine you also see here, somewhere, I hope. Class 9 cars are powered by Volkswagen 1,600cc engines, but more modifications are allowed. The chassis is a welded tube frame with a 100-inch wheelbase.

“This thing can really fly,” said Jeffers. “You want to be sure and keep it straight.”

You climb into a Class 9 by opening the roof and sliding down into it, like a ball turret gunner.

“Don’t wrap your thumbs around the wheel,” Jeffers further counseled. “Your thumbs will get torn off.”

With that, I fired the engine and headed out. The Class 9 was, in fact, faster. More power, less weight. And it was a bit of a handful keeping straight at what might have been 60 mph. Might have been 50. Who knows? The trick was to avoid establishing some kind of frequency oscillation, or harmonic frequency, or whatever you call it when energy is loaded and unloaded into the suspension and increases the amount of fishtailing and over-correcting you’re doing in the rack-and-pinion steering. Just keep going straight, is something I seem to have learned over the years. Which I did.

The front end of the Class 9 was light; Jeffers had earlier picked it up off the ground to show exactly how light. Launch off a little road wallop and you’re flying through the air. In those situations, it’s important that you are going straight so that when you land you can keep going straight instead of rolling over a couple times. I was really doing well, I told myself...maybe I could buy one of these and race it in M.O.R.E.’s six points-race season. Hmm, you can buy a decent Class 9 buggy for four grand, a trailer would be one grand, maybe I could…then I stalled it and my race dreams died, along with the carburetor I’d just flooded.

The all-conquering Class 5




Next was a mighty Class 5 Unlimited bug. This one belonged to Darryl Clifton, whose family had been working on it for decades, since he and his father had bought it when he was 15, which was, guessing here, 30 years ago? After rebuilding the whole car “two or three times,” it was now about as modified as you could get a Volkswagen Beetle. With engines of up to 3.0 liters allowed and long, long suspension travel, the cars in this class were fast.

Clifton drove, which was probably a good idea.

Bumps that I’d slowed down for or crawled over in the Class 9 and 11 cars were mere Botts' Dots to this thing. We flew, at great speed, over everything. This would be much more entertaining and far less painful to race.

The Dune Runner. Note the Mercedes front end.




Finally, I got into a sort of dune buggy thing that Jeffers owned. It was a two-seater fiberglass kit that was sold in the 1960s and '70s as the “Dune Runner” from dune buggy enterprises (yep, all lower case) in Westminster, California. This one was the Dune Runner with the “Mini-Mercedes-style hood.” I’m sure Mercedes didn’t have copyright lawyers in 1960. Whatever.

Now, I’ve ridden in real Meyers Manxes -- in fact, I drove the original Big Red in Baja with Bruce Meyers. This Dune Runner thing was not like that. It was like an escapee from Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride at Disneyland. With just one other person in it, the Dune Runner scraped its fenders on the slightest bump. It needs some ground clearance. Or some ride height. Or some springs and shocks. But it served to demonstrate the breadth and depth of the Volkswagen presence in desert fun buggies of all kinds.

Bruce Meyers in the Meyers Manx 50 years ago.






“Baja bugs are the easiest thing to get into racing with,” said Meyers. “Ya mess around with it. They have Class 11, it’s the largest class of all. So what have we got? A love affair that’s going on with these Volkswagens.”

A love affair that, for racers, is just as strong today as it was 50 years ago. For California, that has to be some kind of record.

MARK VAUGHN - West Coast Editor, covers all things west of the Mississippi from his Autoweek lair high above the LA metropolis.
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Well, that was a fun little read!

 

[Ty]

It's fun to see you guys defend mid-engine cars that were nicely and properly engineered. And in the case of the dune buggy used in a environment with driver intentions matching expectations. My own bug miss-hap had everything to do with my lack of code-switching to sand and gravel driving versus street antics. I consider both theaters acceptable implementations of vehicle designs.

In the moment I had my accident I didn't understand what I was feeling out of the car. I was very young at the time.

As for my Chevota, as a mid-engine, I did need to test it before I can affirm it's success in ice and snow, but I expect it would do as well as the 911, which is reasonably acceptable. But driving up to go skiing on an icy mountain road? I'd rather take my 1970 Ford Fiesta for that one(FWD). I never needed chains, and passed many-a-car putting theirs on.

All of that is of course apples and oranges comparisons, when considering using RWD in the 3 wheel layout. I don't need testing to know, when the power is opposite the 2 wheels and in designing where the CG is, you always trade off rollover for traction.

And in the case of 2 wheels back (1F2R-like Reliant Robbin), even with power at the two wheels, there are 3 distinct (no warning) swap-overs of under-steer versus over-steer as speed increases in a turn. That case of over/vs/under can be mitigated (to a degree) by lower CG and longer wheelbase. I've had 'epic' discussion about the road worthiness of 1F2R versus 2F1R. Seemingly, unknown to everyone, the actual argument is about what level of dynamic instability is acceptable. It very much depends on the driver.

Like the issue of the Reliant Robbin as driven by Jeremy Clarkson, yes DON'T drive it like that and you'll probably be fine. But would the young and impatient do OK too? After their first roll-over they will very likely do just fine.

At the very minimum take my advise on this; NEVER let Jeremy Clarkson drive anything you own!

Does that include the RIMRAC? Or is that just Richard Hammond? LOL

 

[Ty]

He has an electric three wheeler? Cool. Got any pictures of it? Hows the interior look. Does it have airbags? HVAC system? What's the range and recharge time. What standard does it use for recharging?

It's more of the Flintstone variety right now but if he ever gets a drivetrain and interior in the thing, It'll make for one neat looking vehicle on the road!

 

[RSchneider]

It's more of the Flintstone variety right now but if he ever gets a drivetrain and interior in the thing, It'll make for one neat looking vehicle on the road!

I thought he had a fully functioning car and was already giving Elio a run for the money. Didn't realize it was just a shell.

 

[Ty]

I thought he had a fully functioning car and was already giving Elio a run for the money. Didn't realize it was just a shell.

Not yet. From what I remember, life got in the way of finishing the prototype for now. I'm still rooting on him finding his round-to-it and getting it done though.