Up the Swanny. Again!

[Splat]

[Euan Hoosearmy]

Anyone got any spare cash to buy the moulds/IP to keep us supplied with spares?

[jonclancy]

No spare cash, but there are S1 and S2 moulds not a million miles aways from this forum. Indeed, S2 and 15 available elsewhere.

I think we could find fabricators to do the suspension parts easily enough. Wells went through the process and ended up with the guys Ariel use. Splat knows more…

[Splat]

Well, as it happens, Ariel make their own chassis. Quite exquisitely! And even experimented with welding a full titanium chassis in a giant cocoon filled with pure Argon!!!

Caged Laser Engineering, near Radstock, Bath, make all of Caterham’s roll cages. And the chassis for The Small Car Company (who also went bust last month), Noble (who are still manufacturing the M500; who knew?), Alfaholics and a few others. They were doing the BAC Mono chassis too (which is what I think that Clance was thinking of), but BAC have taken that in-house.

And they’re also doing the central tub and front and rear subframes for the Wells Motor Company Vertige.

Which was designed by Robin Hall.

Who also designed the chassis for the electric version of the Chesil Speedster.

Which was constructed for Westfield by……. Caged Laser Engineering.

Who also made the frames for?

Yup………. The Westfield XI.

Here’s me at Caged Laser last month (March 2026) posing with the partially constructed tub of a Wells Vertige. This may or may not be the tub that’s built into customer build number 9. My car……..

[biggles]

Splatters, you are a man of impeccable taste, the Vertige is a lovely thing! However, will it replace your Xi?

[Splat]

Well, thank you, Tim. I’m flattered!

I was originally going to sell the Gallardo to fund the Vertige.

But David, chief mechanic at Lamborghini Pangbourne, told me in no uncertain terms that I’d be an idiot to do so. He’s been test-driving Lambos on a daily basis for over twenty years now, but claims that of all the cars he gets to drive, mine and a locally based RHD Diablo SE30 Jota (a £3,000,000-pound car and one of only three, worldwide!) are his absolute favourites!

And then Dickie Meaden, writing in evo magazine, said that my car was: “by far the sweetest and most impressive early Gallardo I’ve ever driven. The quickest, too.” (There was a ten page article dedicated to my car, published in the November 2024 issue!)

Which rather persuaded me to keep it!

Which is why it’s been off the road since October, having a somewhat expensive full suspension rebuild. Rather essential, after 130,000 miles of being hammered over our increasingly decrepit British roads

And……… after we (me!) discovered an 18”-long hairline crack in the crankcase of the Gipsy Major in our De Havilland Chipmunk, necessitating a full rebuild around “new” crankcase halves over this winter gone, that’ll be staying on the fleet too!! It’s going to take a LOT of hours of formation and aeros for it to repay me my share of the engine bill

Which only leaves the Eleven. But whilst I’ve owned her for 16 years now, she still makes me smile widely when I drive her. So she’s staying too!!

Which is why, if you look at my iBid rosters for the last 18 months, I’ve been taking full advantage of our dearth of shorthaul skippers and absolutely caning the overtime……………