The other consequence of tobacco advertising…

Let me be clear: I am not and, aside from a few experimental puffs as a teenager, I never have been a smoker. In fact I intensely dislike the habit, in particular what it does for the smell of one’s clothes when in close proximity to a smoker. And then there are the health implications! Despite this, Tobacco advertising is good for a few things. Who could forget some of the brilliant Hamlet TV adverts of the 1980s? Well, me actually although a quick search on YouTube brings it all flooding back.

Tobacco advertising has been good for something else though, and it can be summed up in three little letters: JPS. The John Player Special livery was on the first ever race car I can remember seeing. I had a model of what was almost certainly a Lotus F1 car when I was quite small. I can still remember it to this day. I don’t think I have it any more, but I might raid my parent’s attic in search all the same. Anyway, it has always struck a chord and when it came to selecting a colour scheme for my new race car there was only really one option.

Below are a couple of pictures borrowed from the excellent www.jpslotus.org website. I’ve picked these in particular as they show gold wheel rims and black centres:

I’ve been fortunate enough to come by (via Steve) as set of Superlite’s Ultralite 3-Piece wheels that are in need of a refurb. As such the idea is to replicate the wheel design seen above.

I also had in mind that I wanted to have the chassis powdercoated in gold too. This I felt was a bit of a risk as the car might end up looking like a complete ‘tart’s handbag.’ However, my mind was finally made up when I saw the vehicle below on the MEV stand at Autosport International in January.

Now, admitedly, this is still a bit 'in ya face' but there will be a lot less tube visible once the racer is clothed.  Essentially the roll cage will be the only expanse of gold chassis visible.

The wise Tim Hoverd is a keen advocate of lighter finishes on chassis as it allows easier crack detection, so as well as looking great I’m hoping that it will be relatively practical too. That said the wishbones will be black as anything else on a ‘7ish’ just looks wrong to me.

Steve has been busy again. Yes he did do some work on the car, for example finishing off the radiator mounts as seen below.

Much more importantly though, he’s been busy after his lovely wife Milenah gave birth to their first son, Josef. Many congratulations to all concerned!

In other news, there is some steel tube sat in my garage that is hopefully going to come together to form my roll cage. More detail on this at a later time.

TC