Connaught Type-D GT Syracuse<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="90%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
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Production: Limited production run of 100 Connaughts starts May 2005. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Will it? Won't it? The Connaught Type-D GT Syracuse is the latest in a litany of resurrected British sports-car marques (think Jensen and Invicta). But this is a project with a difference: its creators are supremely confident that it will succeed - and in viable volumes too.
Now that we've seen the first prototype in finished steel, aluminium and composite forms, we can see the reasons for their confidence.
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Name: Connaught name from 1950s Formula One racing car company. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
You may have read about the Connaught already, how it revives the name of a 50s racing-car company whose Formula One car scored the first Grand Prix victory by a British driver in a British car. The race was the 1955 Syracuse Grand Prix in Sicily; the driver was Tony Brooks, scoring his own first GP win. We saw the Connaught Type-D as a static concept at the 2004 Goodwood Revival meeting, at which point it was planned to have a hybrid powertrain with an electric motor added to Connaught's own 2.0-litre V10 engine.
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Engine: Ten cylinders in vee doesnt get more exotic than that. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
That model is still on target for introduction this coming autumn, but Connaught has decided to launch the Type-D to the world with a supercharged Syracuse version of the V10. With 300bhp at 7,000rpm, 274lb ft of torque at 3,000rpm, a 171mph estimated top speed and a sub-5sec 0-60mph time, this is the firebrand of the Type-D range.
Production of the limited-run (100 examples) Syracuse begins in May at Coventry Prototype Panels, a company with long experience of the hand-formed aluminium panels that clothe the Type-D. Afterwards, production will move to EPM Technologies, known for its racecar construction and poised to take over 100,000 sq ft of MG Rover's mothballed Longbridge plant.
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Weight: Rear-wheel drive 2+2 weighs just 850kg. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
The Type-D is a front-engined, rear-wheel-drive, two-plus-two coupe, claimed to weigh just 850kg thanks to its lightweight construction. Its brutish styling comes from an idea by Andy Plumb, now a designer at Bentley, but the transformation from idea to workable, habitable car is the work of Geoff Matthews, the ex-Talbot/Peugeot/Matra designer whose best-known project is the original Renault Espace. Matthews also designed the interior, a riot of shiny aluminium that will be toned down for the production cars to reduce reflections on the windscreen.
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Pricing: Connaught will cost about 60,000. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Who, then, is behind Connaught? Tim Bishop is the engineering director: an intuitive engineer who used to troubleshoot for Saab in the old two-stroke days, he was behind the project to bring the Czech Tatra to the UK and get it through Type Approval, and has worked with Jaguar on the XJ40 and latterly the X-type. The Type-D's V10 engine and the unusual suspension system are his ideas.
The other principal engineer is Tony Martindale is an ex-Jaguar man who has experience of quality gateways, time management, supplier relations and all the other things that go with a modern manufacturing project.
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Interior: Interior is 'a riot of shiny aluminium'. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Working with these two are several other ex-Jaguar engineers, who have enabled the entire project to be designed on a CAD system, so every part of the Type-D is digitised. In fact, the front grille's crossbar on the car pictured is a resin component created directly from the data by stereolithography, because the proper article hadn't arrived in time for the photoshoot. The computer data has proved very accurate; Coventry Prototype Panels said it had never known a prototype go together so smoothly.
Some of our photographs show the Type-D under construction at CPP. You can see the stainless steel tubular chassis frame, the powder-coated mild steel superstructure (which incorporates rollover protection), aluminium panelling and the very light - just 32kg - composite tub made of Twintex, a glass-reinforced polypropylene. This tub forms the bulkheads, the floor, the centre tunnel and the shapes of the rear seats - roomy enough for 50th percentile adults, incidentally.
When production moves to EPM, the aluminium body panels will be pressed on soft tooling. By then, the interior trim panels, currently leather-upholstered aluminium, will also be made of lighter composite. There's some work to do on the bodywork's fit and finish, most obviously the unresolved shutlines between door and forward-hinged bonnet, which emphasise the slab-sidedness, but the shape is certainly distinctive. The wheelarches are more flared than they were on the concept model, because they need to cover wider 19in wheels, the rear track has been broadened and there's lots of mesh detailing. The lights are neat, too, with old-fashioned, 7in diameter round headlights grouped with indicators and driving lights under a semicircular cover bounded by the bonnet's "eyebrow" and separate rear units set into the bodywork.
The mesh look continues inside on the air vents, whose direction will be controlled by a "mouseball" system on production cars. The aluminium five-dial fairing on top of the dashboard is striking but impractical, with all that reflective metal and there's more aluminium for the pedals, the handles and a pair of longitudinal struts along the centre tunnel. To one of these is mounted the handbrake, which has gas-strut assistance, an over-centre action and operates on the propshaft. The five-speed gearbox is by Mitchell Cotts, which also supplies Caterham.
The all-aluminium engine is highly interesting. Its vee-angle is a narrow 22.5 degrees, so it's light and compact. Two valves per cylinder and one camshaft per bank don't sound very high-tech, but the cylinders are so small, and the revvability so high, that such a valvetrain suffices.
It helps that air is forced through the engine by the Swedish Opcon supercharger at up to 1.5bar pressure, which is a lot. Right next to the supercharger, between the cylinder banks, is an air/water intercooler so placed to minimise the distance the air has to travel between throttle body and inlet valves. Intercooler radiators either side of the main radiator take away the intercooler's heat via their own water-cooling circuit. Other engine niceties are a two-stage electric water pump, able to cool just the heads or the heads plus block, as required, and a crankshaft built up from 22 separate parts with very large main bearings.
The engine sits well back in the chassis for a 50-50 weight distribution; this and the light weight remove the need for power steering despite the quick steering ratio, says Tim Bishop. We'll see if customers agree.
The suspension is by coil-sprung double wishbones all round, but with a difference. The lower arms pivot along a transverse axis instead of the usual longitudinal one, so the front ones are leading links, the rear ones trailing links. This has the effect of reducing dive and squat, the geometry also causing the roll centre to rise during cornering. This reduces roll and means there's no need for anti-roll bars. That's one reason why the Connaught is likely to have a supple ride.
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</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- END OTHER FEATURE STORIES -->These 100 Syracuse models will cost around 60,000 each, depending on equipment, but the later hybrid Type-D - with 163bhp and, eventually, full Type Approval - will be rather cheaper. Other models are also in the plan; Connaught talked of an Eclipse semi-open version back in 2004, with overlapping, slide-back glass roof panels, for example. One of the main investors in the project even has tentative plans to create a longer-wheelbase, four-door car along Bentley Continental lines using stretched Type-D technology and a V12 version of the modular V10.
So that's the Connaught Type-D, a brave and very British project which seems, so far, to have a fair chance of success, provided it can get the funding needed to finish the job. (That's why the Syracuse has leapfrogged the hybrid to launch, because the latter still needs more R&D.)
The proof will come in the driving and in the order book, with the first production car already reserved by property services company Connaught plc (no relation, incidentally).
source:
http://www.channel4.com/4car/feature/preview/2005/connaught-typed-gts/index.html
