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Hi All,
having enjoyed reading many anecdotes of the trips people have made I thought I would share my last few days. I've made this trip almost every year since 1992 in my MGA 1600 and have many fond memories of blasting along the N138 (alas, however sweet the MGA is to drive it's bark is not backed up my much bite!) Enter stage right the BJ8 which I've had for 6 months having bought it via digital photos and emails from Virginia. As my previous postings about gunk in the rocker cover mentioned, this car had not really been exercised much since it was completely restored 18 years ago and this trip well and truly blew away the cobwebs.
It's a round trip of 700 miles and on the way down we only went on the Autoroute for about 100 miles with the rest being on secondary roads with lots of good driving bits and ample overtaking of the many trucks on the single lane carriageways. The temperature was up to 33 Celsius in France and I stayed at 85-90 mph and once or twice went up to about 110 where the car felt incredibly well planted. (I had just fitted new 72 spoke wheels with Fulda Y2000's 185 70 15 and had fitted recon rear shocks). Relative to the MGA the obvious appeal was the any gear acceleration and I found overtaking by dropping from 4th o/d to 4th an absolute joy. Frankly I was staggered by the acceleration at higher speeds and could do the whole trip again.
I think I managed about 190 - 220 miles per tank of petrol depending on the right foot. I will get round to working out how much oil it consumed in the next few days. Being left hand drive and knowing the road like the back of my hand it was easy to show a few faster cars the finer points of a road trip to Le Mans. Highlights had to be firstly overtaking a line of 2 911's a Caterham 7 and a Boxster in a perfectly safe fashion. It certainly served to wake them up and the friendly truck passing en masse continued for 30 odd miles. Second highlight was being overtaken on the motorway by a new Ford GT, a Ferrari F50 and a Lambo Diablo all doing over 160 mph. Whilst I imagine they were chancing their luck with the gendarmes I have on recent years been noting the locations of mobile speed traps and marked them in pen on my map, and on cue the little men in blue appeared. With so many modern and classic sports cars on the roads on the way there and back , I rate this as one of the best drives anywhere to the best race in the world.
(Biased of course but it beats the F! fiasco in Indianapolis)
Oh, by the way , it was good to see a Healey 100S right up with the leaders in the Le Mans Legends race as well as a few 100 M's. I'm not sure where the 100S finished but it seemed to be outpaced only by D types and C types.
So I hope you got an idea of how much like a kid in a toy shop I've been. Roll on 2006 /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/england.gif
having enjoyed reading many anecdotes of the trips people have made I thought I would share my last few days. I've made this trip almost every year since 1992 in my MGA 1600 and have many fond memories of blasting along the N138 (alas, however sweet the MGA is to drive it's bark is not backed up my much bite!) Enter stage right the BJ8 which I've had for 6 months having bought it via digital photos and emails from Virginia. As my previous postings about gunk in the rocker cover mentioned, this car had not really been exercised much since it was completely restored 18 years ago and this trip well and truly blew away the cobwebs.
It's a round trip of 700 miles and on the way down we only went on the Autoroute for about 100 miles with the rest being on secondary roads with lots of good driving bits and ample overtaking of the many trucks on the single lane carriageways. The temperature was up to 33 Celsius in France and I stayed at 85-90 mph and once or twice went up to about 110 where the car felt incredibly well planted. (I had just fitted new 72 spoke wheels with Fulda Y2000's 185 70 15 and had fitted recon rear shocks). Relative to the MGA the obvious appeal was the any gear acceleration and I found overtaking by dropping from 4th o/d to 4th an absolute joy. Frankly I was staggered by the acceleration at higher speeds and could do the whole trip again.
I think I managed about 190 - 220 miles per tank of petrol depending on the right foot. I will get round to working out how much oil it consumed in the next few days. Being left hand drive and knowing the road like the back of my hand it was easy to show a few faster cars the finer points of a road trip to Le Mans. Highlights had to be firstly overtaking a line of 2 911's a Caterham 7 and a Boxster in a perfectly safe fashion. It certainly served to wake them up and the friendly truck passing en masse continued for 30 odd miles. Second highlight was being overtaken on the motorway by a new Ford GT, a Ferrari F50 and a Lambo Diablo all doing over 160 mph. Whilst I imagine they were chancing their luck with the gendarmes I have on recent years been noting the locations of mobile speed traps and marked them in pen on my map, and on cue the little men in blue appeared. With so many modern and classic sports cars on the roads on the way there and back , I rate this as one of the best drives anywhere to the best race in the world.
(Biased of course but it beats the F! fiasco in Indianapolis)
Oh, by the way , it was good to see a Healey 100S right up with the leaders in the Le Mans Legends race as well as a few 100 M's. I'm not sure where the 100S finished but it seemed to be outpaced only by D types and C types.
So I hope you got an idea of how much like a kid in a toy shop I've been. Roll on 2006 /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/england.gif
