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build diary March 3, 2007: Yet another track day - with a difference. The track was the brand new Eagle Canyon raceway, just north of Dallas. It's not finished yet, with no paved parking, no final coat of asphalt and no finished runoff areas. Obviously not a place for really pushing the limits of cars, but we could still run pretty hard and stay safe. We had a group of professionals so everyone behaved. Unfortunately the Westfield XI didn't make it due to a mismatch of clutch components. I drove out with Bill Cardell from Flyin' Miata. This made a long trip much more enjoyable, especially since it was an even longer trip thanks to me not paying attention. It wasn't until we saw the signs for Santa Fe that we realized my mistake. Whoops. Have a look at a map sometime and draw a line from Grand Junction to Dallas. Then look at where Santa Fe is. The good thing is that I did get to see Las Vegas, New Mexico. We were the first ones at the track. I wanted to make sure the car was running well after the massive change in altitude as well as the new Texas gas. I also needed to clean the remnants of a snowstorm in Colorado off the car. The car ran pretty well (didn't even foul the plugs!) and we got it scrubbed up...and then a duallie towing a giant trailer rolled up. The door opened and two Atoms were hidden inside. One was a UK car with a UK-market 220 hp Honda Civic Type R engine inside and a 1300 lb wet weight. The other was a US-built example with a supercharged GM Ecotec motor good for a claimed 300 hp and 1500 lbs. Five guys swarmed out and started cleaning and detailing the clean cars. Gulp. Even when it's been detailed - and this was far from it - my car has a lot of patina. Stone chips, scuff marks, little bits of dirt hiding in joints. The car's been used hard for over two years and has spent a lot of time on an uncovered trailer. It looks it. The Atom is a really cool car. Designing the "modern Lotus Seven" is a rite of passage for UK car designers, and the Atom is the most impressive version I've seen. The design is clever in a lot of ways and the detailing is gorgeous. One thing that doesn't show up in pictures is how wide the car is - the body is fairly fat and the control arms are long. It almost looks square and with the low height, is really spectacular when seen from the front. It's also beautifully made, which is a good thing when all the components are on constant display. But they're not cheap. The price of the supercharged car was $70,000. Yikes. That's why GRM had invited me along, to see how a homebuilt car might compare. Last year for Car and Driver, I had the expensive "ringer". This year I was exactly the opposite. I took the Seven out to warm it up. The track is initially quite daunting, with a large number of off-camber corners, usually with a double apex and a blind crest leading up to it. We had cold temperatures so I was just tiptoeing around, leaving ludicrous amounts of room when braking and generally just being a wuss. The car felt good though, its usual rabid self and with about 20% more horsepower than usual. It's been too long since I was on a track, so I was super-cautious. I did enjoy this track once I got comfortable, and it's one that you could easily drive on for a long time and keep learning things. Loads of elevation changes, just the way I like it. I also got the chance to drive an Atom, thanks to a really generous gesture from Jim Sharp, the owner. It was the 220 hp Honda powered car. From the first corner, it was obvious just how different the car was. It was designed nearly 50 years later than the Lotus Seven, and it feels like it. The biggest difference is that you sit right at the pointy end. On a Seven, your butt is pretty much in line with the rear wheels. This is one reason why it's so easy to drive sideways, it just talks to you all the time. The Atom, however, puts your feet in line with the front wheels. The passenger actually has their feet on the steering rack! This changes the feel dramatically. It's very eager to change directions and you go with it right away. It feels as if it's a much shorter wheelbase than my car although they're within an inch of each other. I didn't get comfortable with the gearshift and I was just pussyfooting around in someone else's very expensive car on a cold unknown track so I certainly didn't set any lap records, but I did get a feel as to the dynamics. The one thing I found is that it was hard to get the car to take a set - it would either understeer or oversteer. The most entertaining thing came from the open body. On my car, I can place the wheels pretty accurately because I can see them. But on the Atom, you can look right through the body and see the tread of the passenger's side wheel to place it perfectly. The Honda-engined car I drove had a heroic motor as Honda likes to do - it never seemed to stop accelerating. With the intake mere inches from your head, it also had a very vocal soundtrack. The switch on to the second cam was obvious! Of course, the cars are super-adjustable mechanically and this means it can take some time to get the setup sorted. The supercharged car was brand new, and over the course of the day it was improved quite a bit by adjusting shocks and bolting on some new Hankook race rubber instead of the Yokohama A048s it was running. Watching one from the sidelines is entertaining, especially when you're looking at it side-on and you can see right through the car. B.S. Levy (of The Last Open Road fame, he'll want you to buy his books and you won't regret it) was there to drive the cars and write the article. I was pretty nervous - while Larry Webster drove the car last year, he didn't really get a chance to test it at maximum chat in a track environment. I've set up the Seven in a bit of a vacuum, really - I think it works well, but what would an experienced race driver think, especially when comparing it directly with a high-dollar, world famous car? Bert (the B in B.S.) belted up and headed out. I wasn't right there when he first came in, but it was pretty obvious he liked the car. He spoke highly of how it was set up, saying it felt like a race car in the way it was so happy on long sweepers. It could be balanced well, and it rotated really nicely in a couple of corners. The second driver there (Tim Webb) had a similar reaction. Both drivers thought the car was fantastic fun to drive. Whew! Both drivers really enjoyed the car, and it was obvious that they were taking more laps in their sessions than was really necessary. It was the setup that really impressed them. It just worked well, and Bert was really enthusiastic about the amount of fun the car offers particularly in light of the cost. It'll be interesting to see what Bert says about the cars in the article. I know he really enjoyed driving my car and I'm very happy with the results, but I'll let him come out with his verdict on Atom vs Locost. It wasn't all goodness, though. When Bert came in from a session, the engine dropped a cylinder as he drove into the "pits". Try as we could, Bill and I couldn't get it to come back. Was it a burnt valve? A bad injector? We're not sure, despite a bunch of testing. There are some indications that it might be in the head although there are no nasty noises coming out. So Bill didn't get a chance to drive the track, and neither did Tim Suddard from GRM. That's a bummer. I'll have to do some serious diagnostics when I get home and it did cut our day short by about an hour or so. It's not how I wanted the day to end, that's for sure. Still, nobody at GRM seemed to have a problem with that. We loaded the Seven on to the trailer and headed for a dinner with a bunch of Locost builders and Miata owners. Chris Fiaccone was there and it was good to see him and his gorgeous black beast again, now with a year of development. Martin Keller brought his Toyota-powered Locost out, and it's probably the closest I've ever seen to a "book" car. It was really interesting to look at it and compare it to the various mutated versions I'm used to. Julian Dziurawiec showed up without his car (he was on a business trip) but again, it was good to meet him. The next morning, we drove 15 hours through desolate, deserted Texas towns and snowy Colorado passes to get home exhausted but safe. A good trip overall, and I can't wait to read what Bert has to say. The focus of the article is the Atom, though. entry 1337 of 1439 |