Hmmm, ok.
It might not be appropriate, but I'm going to fill you in with a little background first with some pics for effect....................
After having driven to Naples in Italy and consequently giving it away and then being hurled round Knockhill on a trackday late last year in this.............................
..............I decided I fancied a bit of trackday action, so I bought this................
..........cheap off my mate as an MOT failure. It wasn't ideal as I'd really wanted RWD and a bigger engine TBH, but I had designs on using a Senator rear subframe and switching the engine around the right way as a longer term project. I was a little unsure about chopping up an otherwise sound, ( and as far as I'm concerned quite pretty
) car.
So anyway through one of the other forums I frequent, I heard of this...............
..........going cheap. (Yes I know it needs wheels!!), I couldn't justify the outlay and I already had one heap littering my back yard, but it just so happened the guy needed a 24v Senator engine that I just happened to have lying around, so I acquired myself a RWD trackday project!! (Yay!!).
So, as luck would have it, I needed a coil pack for this.............
..............and while I was in the garage, I noticed the owner had quite a deep interest in rallying, so I mentioned that I'd acquired a Monza for Knockhill. Then he says to me, I've got a mate with an ex-works rally spec' Monza that he's selling with a load of specialist spares and it'll be fairly cheap. "Tell me more!" I said.
So to cut a long story short, I went to see this.................
................A real shame I'm sure you'll agree, but given that the vast majority of the parts on the car were serviceable, even if at the time I thought the body might not be, I figured I'd be daft not to take it.
So I did. The seam welded body came with two sets of coilover suspension, 1 x steel and 1 x alloy roll cage, brake balance controller, Getrag dogleg box, tubular headers, foam filled fuel tank...... Ther's loads more, but it all escapes me at the moment.
Anyway, I 'took delivery last week...............
The initial plan is to strip the shell and I'll post up the progress once I clear enough space in my garage to get it in there. (Just had an extension built and I'm still clearing up the mess!!)
So anyway, the history/detective work..................
Basically, when I initially enquired about the car, the vendor said that it had come from Ireland and word had it that it had quite a record. A post on the Autobahnstormers mooted the name Austin McHale, but the vendor reckoned it hadn't been his car and besides, McHale's car had a different number plate, (99 GZJ as opposed to our B733 WES). Given that I now had the car, I wanted to find out as much as possible about it.
As the vendor had told me that the engine wes developed at Swindon Racing Engineering, I started with them. They were very helpful too, but the only Monza they'd ever worked on was McHale's, and I knew it wasn't his, so I reckoned I'd drawn a blank!!
So I then started with Google, (as you do!), and drew up a list of rally drivers that campaigned Monzas in the 80's. I found that Martin Stockdale, John Vincent and Gavin Cox all drove Monzas!!
I eventually tracked down a number for Gavin Cox and called him. He didn't seem to know much about my car, (I'd sent him this picture)....................
.............From this he reckoned it was more likely that it had been a track/touring car because of the high intensity light on the rear panel, so I set about tracking down touring car drivers!!.
Tony Lanfranchi and John Cleland were the most prolific names that came out of the hat. Lanfranchi sadly died of cancer a few years ago, so I sent Cleland an e-Mail. He wasn't so helpful, but at least that was another line of enquiry closed.
By this time I didn't really have much else to go on until I remembered this picture that B'stardChild posted up of the car in it's former glory....................
...............There's a phone number on it!!
So I called it and was put through to the answering service of a motorcycle repair shop in Hatfield!! So I double checked 'Trioomph' with the address of the company who's answering machine I got and they were the same address, so I thought, I'll leave a message, only this time they picked up.
I explained my situation to the girl on the end of the phone and she let me speak to a bloke called Mark who remembered the car vividly. It had been owned by a man called Ken Lark, (who now races VW's), Lark had brought the car to him in the late 80's with a cracked head. Mark ported and polished a replacement head copying the original Group 'A' spec in return for a drive in it. So Mark duly drove the car on Silverstone at a race called 'Birkett's' and consequently destroyed the clutch!!
So I got a number and called Ken Lark. On the fourth or fifth attempt I eventually got through. He was very helpful!
He explained that it is indeed Austin McHales old car. He'd re-registered it for some reason. Not only that, but at the same time, he owned Tony Lanfranchi's Monza and it transpires that the engine in my car was originally Lanfranchi's!!
I've still got a bit of digging to do, but I might take a bit of a break for a while, it's been exciting.
You all still awake?
