MadaboutKitcars

Yep, seen your great idea on your build thread. I'm likely to copy that one...

Getting rid of hot air



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Did you ever cut your louvres out in the end?

Ha ha! That is an awful lot of louvres.

It's not the first time I've been asked about an excess of hot air, just the first time it's related to my car and not my conversational skills.

I didn't cut out the louvres, they're still just dummies. Instead I've installed a secondary radiator from a Toyota MR2 at the back of the car.

I'll plumb that in with a BMW electric water pump and thermostatically controlled valve in the spring, and I'm hoping that it will address the excess engine heat generated at constant motorway speeds.

I'll keep you posted.

Car

A friend sent me a series of old car pics he thought I would be interested in,
and amongst them was this little gem, I could not help but think of you!

Your car actually is an improvement of this one, but the designer of your body shell surely must have had this in mind at the time?

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And the purpose of that windscreen is?

Somewhere to rest the wipers!!!!!!!!!!

I had not really thought about it, but you are both so right!

That is the main reason I have laboured so hard on my build to drop my
bum right down very low, so this does not happen to me!!

That's a very pretty car Scottie. I think the windscreen is there solely to protect that groovy moustache and accompanying facial fuzz from fly strikes, Daddio.

Or it could be to protect the driver from golf balls being driven at him by irate golfists because he's doing doughnuts on their green.

Get well soon Mr T. The better weather is coming....................:-)

Correct me if I am wrong guys but my understanding was that although the Sammio has drawn inspiration from many models of cars from the early to middle fifties , Miglia Mikes biggest influence was the Lancia D24 , hence Toweds homage.

Didn't quite work like that PJ. If you go back and read the original Sammio build thread started by Lancelot link (Gary Janes) there's some background reading -

http://www.madabout-kitcars.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=17

Gary had a long track record in fibreglass fabrication in the custom car field, but had always wanted a Porsche 550 Spyder replica (the James Dean one).

Only problem was the 550 kits out there that actually look like the real deal cost an awful lot of money and Gary couldn't/wouldn't stump up the readies (I was in the same boat as my dream car was the Porsche 718 RSK, which I also couldn't justify the £15k+ outlay for).



His solution was to buy a 1950's Nikkri body shell he saw advertised on ebay and set about it with a circular saw, remodelling it both to look a bit more like the 550 and to fit an old Herald chassis he happened to have laying about the workshop.

He sold that project on partially finished but took moulds from the first body so he could make himself another. When the first car was finished the new owner drove it to Le Mans then sold it on ebay, putting a link to Gary's business, Bay Area Rods, on the listing.

This led to a flood of enquiries from people wanting to know if he could make them a body, and is how the Sammio business began. Although designed to fit a Herald chassis, Gary started to get enquiries about using the Vitesse 6 cylinder as a donor, but the longer motor wouldn't fit under the 550 style nose. A redesigned bonnet, taking inspiration from the nose of the Lancia D24 Spyder, was then developed to allow the bigger engine to fit (albeit with some further modification), which is how the car ended up looking like it did.

I'm not sure how many of the 'German' front ends were produced, but the 'Italian' version really made sales take off with well over a hundred sold.

Although a runaway success in terms of a kit car business, Gary seems to have got (characteristic?) wanderlust and sold the business to Andy's P57 and P85. Mike then set up his own, rival business, selling a product so, ahem, radically different from the Sammio that you couldn't see the lineage, apparently.

Mike (Miglia) worked for Gary when he owned the Sammio business and the way I saw their working relationship was that Gary provided the brains/finance/ideas and Mike pitched in with the technical skill to bring Gary's ideas to life, and swept up potential customers (bores with no intention to buy ususally) that Gary had lost patience with and walked away from at kit car shows (check out the glazed expression).


If anyone has anything to add/change to the above history please feel free to put in your two new pence worth as it's just my understanding of the course of events.

Very interesting Mr T.

Unless I have it wrong , the Porche RSK font end
was lost to the " Cobra style" front end in order to accommodate the straight 6 Triumph engine?

Almost Scottie, in fact it was the 550 style front end that got replaced to fit the straight six -









I've never been much of a fan of the 550 front end myself, always preferring the swoopier lines of the RSK 718 or the upturned bathtub looks of the 356 -





Oh, and this is something I've wanted to do myself for a while, park up next to a current Porsche Boxster for a comparison shot. This one is an original 550 (on the right), which is roughly the same size as a Sammio, parked next to the lowered, lightened Boxster Speedster special edition -



And that's the Boxster after it's been on a diet...

fantastic pictures Mr T. That last one says it all.............

Thankyou Towed Buddy for the correction.
Maybe I should change my username to Schmuck.
Thats a real kick in the head. I feel pretty upset now that I have been misled.

I based my comments on here and other postings around the communications I received from direct email activity with Mike at Miglia. The very first line of the very first email was ;
''Hi bless them Ribble boys i designed all the kits they sell , and my kit is a different beast next to theres.''

The second email I received said;
''Hi Peter, i designed the car, but i was working for a guy that wanted to produce the kit''

You can see how I got my misunderstanding. Not a good start to things.
I don't want to make a big deal out of this but just a bit displeased that I have been made to look a bit of a fool on here

I have been made to look a bit of a fool on here.

You have not been made to look a fool at all as you have just used the information given to you, some of which is incorrect. Unless you have followed these cars from early on in their life you wouldn't know.

P.S. Mister Towed is the Sammio Historian.

Mr Towed is the forum Wikipedia, and not to be taken lightly! :-)

Hey PJ. I had no intention to make you feel or look foolish. My only intention was to document what I believe the course of events was leading to the cars looking the way they do.

As for Mike designing the original Sammio shape I don't know who did what to the original Nikkri bodyshell, but I do know that Gary Janes owned the company and it was him, on his own, that was covered in filler dust when I visited the 'factory' to collect my kit. It was also his company to sell, including all the intellectual property rights, which are now owned by Andy P57. I believe Mike worked for Gary on a freelance basis rather than as an employee, effectively selling any ideas/design input to Gary. If Ferrari pay Pininfarina to design a Ferrari, who owns the resultant shape?

I didn't meet Mike until half way through my build when I turned up at a kit car show to get some money back after a tonneau I'd paid for never arrived. Mike struck me as a nice chap who knew his stuff and gave me loads of useful advice about paint prep.

That was about the time that Gary appeared to have overstretched himself by diversifying into the Scimitar based G46 and Beetle based 550 Spyder, and, by several accounts, the customer focus side of the business started to slip.

As for Mike setting up in competition to Ribble, that appeared to be a rather ungentlemanly, if not necessarily illegal act, but I believe an agreement was made behind closed doors for Mike to pay Andy a percentage of his sales. Not sure how that's working out in reality for either side.

Anyway, I hope you accept my apology, at least you've now had an independent view of what occurred rather than the full, one side of the story...

Thank you Buddy. Please no more to be said on the matter.
Lets move on.
I know I have.

PJ - if you start building a Ribble, feeling foolish becomes a way of life. Just ask me about dropping a nut down into my sump, or having the chassis fall on me whilst angle grinding. Now that, my friend, is feeling foolish.

You believed what you were told - there's nothing foolish about that. It's called trust. Some value it, and some don't.

Mr T - your potted history is perfect.

Thanks for the kind words guys. A lot of what I know comes from having read the article in the April 2011 edition of Complete Kit Car about ten thousand times before stumping up the readies for a kit -

http://www.completekitcar.co.uk/Issue/april2011.html

Still well worth getting hold of a copy imho.

T, thought you might like this.

Very nice indeed, thanks for posting that. Wonderful to see your actual D24 taking centre stage on the podium. Where and when was that exposition?

In the picture of '66' above, which person is Gary Janes? I met him some years ago when I made enquiries about having a Beetle chopped, but can't recall. Thanks.

Gary's the chap in the brown shirt holding a polystyrene cup in his hand.