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Motor pages |
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Background Being interested in everything motor since early ages, I've always wanted to have something a bit different. That goes for both motorcycles, cars and boats, but of course you don't always manage to get everything exactly the way you want. The motorcycles that really caught my interest and admiration was the Italian sports bikes from the seventies, with the Moto Guzzi Le Mans and the bevel drive Ducati SS as the "most wanted". When it came to cars, it was naturally sports cars that was in the forefront. The motorcycle nerve hasn't yet been massaged enough to make me take the jump (except for a short summer in 1980 with a Suzuki GT380) , but with cars I've managed to make a start. |
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| Sports cars After a period with modifying and tuning the standard saloon cars of the family, like an Opel Ascona 1,9 SR and a Vauxhall Magnum 2300 (see 
for a complete list),
finally in 1991, I bought an engineless and barrel-rolled Alfa Romeo
Alfetta GTV
2,0. With the help of a professional welder a
new roof went on, and with 2,5 years of my own hard work of my own, the car became really nice.
 But since I'm living in Norway where we have 9 months of salt-infested roads, the Italian thin-metal vulnerable sculpture was wearing on my nerves. A friend told me to park the car far from my bedroom window, because he feared that the sound of the tin-worm eating its way through the precious metal would keep me awake at night. Since the car was really looking nice at that moment I decided to sell it and find something more appropriate. I still have a soft spot for these Italians though, and have dedicated a separate area of to them. 
When looking
for a replacement, a fibreglass sports car seemed to be the right way to go, and
that started me on a long process, first to find something useful
at all to put on a
list of candidates. And then to check them out. |
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| * Lotus - Europa, Elan and Elan + |
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| * Marcos - 1600/1800/3litre |
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| * Gilbern - Genie and Invader |
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| * de Tomaso - Vallelunga |
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| * Reliant - Scimitar GTE |
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| * TVR - Tuscan, Grantura and Vixen |
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| * Elva - Courier and 2000(BMW) |
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| * Piper - GTT |
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I searched on the net, contacted
and joined several clubs in England, Germany and Italy, contacted
people and started to place bids for several cars. And found a lot of nice
enthusiasts in the process. It became clear to me after a while that the most
attractive cars were also (naturally) the most
unobtainable, because of few built and high prices. One
amusing episode was when I got
a straight answer from the secretary of the Piper Owners Club in
England, that they didn't want me to buy a Piper to bring it out of
Britain. Two of the most beautiful cars I've ever seen are the Vallelunga and the Elva 2000 BMW, but those went out of the picture for price reasons. But after bidding for a couple of Lotus Europas, I suddenly found, through the Marcos Owners Club magazine, a Marcos 2 litre V4 for sale. And when I called the guy, he lived in Guernsey ! The car was bought - as a restoration project - and the work started.
A
story which you can follow here :
Took it to a trip to Sweden a short time after I got the licence plates. Since neither the sun roof or the rear window were in, I had to trust the weather report when leaving on a Thursday afternoon and expecting to get home on Sunday. And it worked! We had a beautiful weekend with sun shining from a clear sky and 25-30 degrees Centigrade all day. And lots of sports cars present. The MAJOR outing however was mid August 2009 when the missus and myself went to England in the EcurieEcosse to join around 260 other enthusiasts for the Marcos 50th Anniversary. Going by ferry from Norway to Denmark, driving through Denmark, taking the North Sea ferry to Harwich, driving across England to the Cheltenham area for a wonderful weekend in the Marcos fraternity, driving back across England to Harwich, going with an other ferry to Hoek van Holland, staying a couple of days in Amsterdam, driving along the coast of the Netherlands, through Germany and Denmark before catching the high speed Cat back to Norway. Almost 2700 km without a single glitch from the old V4. We were mighty impressed with her then. She may not be completely water tight (her body that is) but for the rest she behaves exemplary.
Some pictures from the trip in
my photo bucket account here:
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The
restoration project
took quite some time (years) and
towards the end, I got a leg injury (playing soccer at the office of
all stupid things) and that tied me to a chair for
almost 2 months During which I sat a lot in front of the
computer and worst of all - reading ads on EBay!!!
Before I knew it I had bought a new project in the shape of a Lotus Esprit S2, and soon went to England on a vacation with the missus. To collect the Esprit on a trailer and seeing a bit of England at the same time.
But I've managed to hold back on the progress of this Esprit - I'm going to put the Marcos back on the road before jumping into more adventures. I really need to have a car that I can drive. We are a bunch of petrol heads that go on trips on a regular basis, and I'm fed up by having to ride shotgun for all these years.
However, I
already made a web page about the
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Grenland Sportsvogn Klubb Part of the fun with living out a passion like this is that you often find others with the same "problem", and in the area where I live many of us have found each other and formed a very informal club; Grenland Sportsvogn Klubb. A meeting on the first Tuesday of every month, in Skien is a must for most of us. There we'll talk, brag, ask questions, watch movies, pictures and magazines - everything about cars. Like a waterhole for the enthusiast.  |
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