Norm Murdock he say:

"We're running 14" 'Kooks on the Grp2 Capri (the Ford V6 has the 2 cyls you
Saabers are missing) in which we did the Ontario PRC series this year. Seems
that size was discontinued by them. Unrelated: Ever try Green Diamond snow
tires, with the sharp bits embedded in the rubber?"

During my years in Alaska---what WAS I thinking?!---I ran across several
interesting approaches to winter driving, including ground-up walnut shells
tossed into the recapping compound. There were other materials used in these
applications as well, but I never really had much experience with them.

The ice racers---the fastest ones, anyway---used Bandag recaps with a square
block pattern. Then they'd drill each block and stud it. Sandvik ice-racing
studs were popular but expensive. Finally Terry Wolbert---I haven't seen him
in at least twenty years---contracted with somebody who had an automatic
screw-cutting machine to make pointy ice spikes and then heat-treat them to
make them hard.

As I recall, they were cheaper if you didn't bother to have them
heat-treated. . .

. . . Which was find for ice racing, but proved my undoing in Pe'klona (the
White Bear), a stage rally that took the place of Thunderbird one year. We
ran one very long ice-covered stage happily catching and passing faster cars
before coming to---gasp!---dry pavement, which reduced my pointy ice spikes
to round flat mushrooms in about a hundred yards. Then we went back up onto
icy snow-covered roads with less traction than I might have preferred,
leading to an interesting approach to a bridge---a bridge with no side
rails!---during which I tried my best to prove a Saab Sonett could fly.

For reasons that escape me, I am STILL running around the rally hills in old
Saab Sonetts, but these days we run conventional studs in Hakkapeliitta
NR09s, as I said before, or in Pirelli P-Zero rally tires, which we have
because my navigator is like THIS with Alberto Pirelli!

But back to Murdock's Capri: You mention the 2.8 V6, Norm, but my favorite
Capri is the one I saw on the Panama-Alaska Rally. It seems that in the
heyday of the Capri, the motor-mad South Africans at Ford SA discovered that
they only needed 400 cars to homologate a model. Hmmm: We make Capris. . .
And we have all these Ford V8 engines lying around. . . Think we could sell,
oh, say 400 V8-POWERED CAPRIS?! Oh, lordy lordy!
I don't know if they ever had any success back in the '70s, but nowadays you
can build an FIA-recognized giant-killer with about a bazillion horsepower.
Best of all, under the rules of this event, everything aft of the tranny was
free, so these Capris had full independent rear suspensions a la Nissan 300.

Now, THERE'S a vintage ride that should surprise your pals at Thunderbird!

Satch Carlson
Team AFRICA