Living in a land down under there
is a common saying 'If its got Breasts(polite term) or wheels then your
going to have trouble, and for those of you who have meddeld with motor
cars will know how true that is. If your reading this article i'll take
it for granted that you are a petrol head interested in speed or in making
your car faster, safer or more comfy.
I happen to fall in to the first
category, 'Faster and handle better'. Since the motor car was invented
men have always mixed their cars with their women, and even today we can
class some of the new cars, let me see if you agree with me.
The new Audi TT.................Sexy
The new VEE DUB Beetle ....Cute
The Subaru Wrx,Sti...............Raunchy
The NEW porsche 911 carrera cabriolet.......classy
Agree????, well i could go on and on, but i guess if you did'nt
see the similarity then this if where you find this article boring.
long before I reached puberty cars were named after women, the most famous
was of course Damlier benz's daughter Mercedes, I can only imagine her
to be extreamly beautiful, and even I raced an old girl by the name of
"DELILAH" that was on the 26 th of march 1978,  at
a dirt track race track on the outskirts of Calcutta called Barrackpore.
The event organised by the oldest motorsports club in India' the Calcutta
motorsports club', or the C.M.S.C. as we knew it then, have a look at
the picture of this car. i found it in in mess lying at the back of a
friends workshop.
It was love at first sight, it was based on an old Riley, with a twin
over head rocker system (no not cam shafts), cross flow head, dome pistons,
with the spark plugs bang in the center of the combustion chamber, It
had a fiat diff and a "crash " three speed gearbox which made double-d
clutching a necessity , when changing down, it had a strange thing on
the electrical system which id never seen before , it was called a 'Magneto",
wooh we had never seen such an advanced racing car back then , all you  needed
to do was push the car and it would start, no battery needed.the best
part was that when we got her ready we could not start her, it kept popping
and back firing, and all the symptoms led to the timing, i remember sitting
on the side of the road checking the firing order..1...3...4...2, check
it again/// 1..3..4...2 yup it ok , still it wouldnt start, then while
we were fiddling an old roadside mistiri walked up to me and said in Hindi"
Saab aapka phiring order is not theek hai" By now i had had enough so
i smiled at him and said " tum Karo" with that the old man bent over the
bonnet changed some of the plug wires and bang it started,,, it seems
these old pommie cars had a diffrent firing order something like 1243
i cant remember for sure. i can admit that embarrasing moment now but
not then.
When I came to live in Perth Western Australia much to my amase ment i
saw a car that took me straight back to my racing days, look at the picture
of "Sabrina" very elegant and oh so smooth, as i did my research i found
out that this lovely lady was actually named after a real person. Sabrina
was a well endowed British showgirl and sex citten of the 50's, and if
you look at her pic you will see she is stunning.
If
you look through clouded eyes you can see that Sabrina the car, has the
very senshious lines of the D type jaguars , but in reality Sabrina is
classified as a group LB (dont know) but she competes with other cars
built after the war but before 1960. She is powered by an Austin healy
3000 motor and is super charged drawing through two 50 mm su's it still
has the original healy gearbox with close ratio straight cut gears, the
braking is not aloud to be modified which means that after a few laps
brake fade usually sets in , just like the Ambassadors at the Sholavaram
tracks.
By the way Sabrina the lovely lady is still alive and is in her early
70. HASTALLAVISTABABY ILLBE BAAK
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