Anyone want to buy a crap F1 car?

Mmmmmm........ How come their not highlighting the usual selling bonus of:

"Never raced or rallied!"?

I might see if I can get these! - I just need to contact Mastercard to see if they'll loan Me the money!

 

Actually I don't care whether it raced ever or not. It was built for the season and just failed to qualify. Still a real F1 and faster than most of us here could safely handle.

I hope this car gets picked up by one of the "F1 rent-a-drive schools" so the mere mortals amongst us can take it for a spin.

Anthony, please keep us posted.

PS: I was at the Brazilian GP the year these cars were supposed to be part of the grid. My program still lists them but by that time, the team had already gone under.

 

I have no idea what they're value is, but if I had a spare $50k I wanted to get rid of, I'd bid.



Mark

 

Interesting. Ricardo Rosset is the father of my 12 year old sister's friend, and a very accomplished businessman these days. I know he owns one of the Footwork/Arrows cars he drove, and a Tyrell, but don't know about the Lola. I'll pass this along to him, maybe he'll be interested...

 

I estimate these to be in the 100 to 200k range

50k would be for the car sans propulsion

 

Neat car. That Cosworth motor is good for quite a few track weekends and quite a few terrifying laps....if you can. Get a formula Ford first and see if you can handle that.....


For anyone who may know, what do you do if you show up to a track day session at Road Atlanta or Watkins Glen etc with a Formula 1 car?? I suppose you go out with the advanced group with faster cars and better drivers, but you're still going to be the most bananas car on the circuit.

 

Road America has track days for the big boys of the region: F1, CanAm, Indy and F5000

Plenty of cars in the Midwest, a F1 is not that super rare here

 

If someone intended to actually run one of these cars, the purchase price would only be the tip of the iceberg. A well-sorted Formula Atlantic (for example) would provide 90% of the thrill at a small fraction of the cost. As a bonus, one would have a reasonable chance of the car getting through the day without breaking down.

 

Man those Mastercard Lolas just don't look sleek at all.

 

Sounds properly terrifying doesn't it. Getting on a track with fast cars varying in levels of speed and driver ability.

 

Yes and no.

Track days are normally fairly leisurely with only a few cars running at the same time on a long track. Slower drivers know to stay their line and let the faster ones pass.

It is the "races", which are scary. Particularly the Can Am reunion races. Red mist and all.

 

Errr in a word no.

 

I missed it the first time I viewed the auction, they're advertising £115k delivered anywhere in the UK or England. That seems pretty fair if the Costworth is in good running condition.


Mark

 

Would be fun to get and drop in an easier to service engine. Not authentic, but would make it infinitely easier to run it by yourself.

 

i would buy those in a second if i was rich. how cool would it be to have two f1 cars to race against your buddies with. ahh if only!

 

I would think as someone mentiond here before - purchasing the car is the entry point... rebuilds and just tires alone would equal the price of the car ..let alone any damage repair. enging rebuilds alone can cost upwards of $20( low) $50K ... what they fail to say is the engine may be $65K but a rebuild basically replaces most of the internals etc... so you are really buying the block and crank... if you dont maintain the tolerances during rebuilds you can damage the actual block etc...

I'd buy the car - and put in a V6 honda or something that can be beat up... give you pleny of power... and fun...

 

The title of this thread cracks me up every time I read it.

 

Screw all this talk of making it a track car... convert it to a street runner!

 

Big cost of engine conversion is crankshaft center heights. Production car engine may sit so low that sump is below floor of car and then adaptor for bellhousing. Also most street engines are not designed to be fully stressed so a tube frame structure would need to be added from chassis to new bellhousing. And that requires modifiying the carbon tub! But if somebody wants to do that I can sure design it for them. Just bring $$$$

 

I still can´t understand how a manufacturer with the know-how of Lola could get it so wrong.

Even Pacific or Forti got it better.

 

…compared to today's F1 cars perhaps.

But to be fair, here's a comparison between the 1997 Lola and a "generic" 1997 F1 car (i.e. same year model, drawing lifted from another FChat F1 thread). The Lola looks pretty similar so it probably didn't look much worse than the other 1997 F1 cars.

As the auction description indicated, the rushed design accompanied insufficient funding, testing and refinement, with predictable results.
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£115k for car #2. I was thinking between £80 and 100k myself. Does include some spares though, which is handy.