18th March 2009, 07:35
| #1 |
| Newbie Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Detroit
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19th March 2009, 00:54
| #2 |
| Team-BHP Support   Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Bombay
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19th March 2009, 03:20
| #3 | |
| Newbie Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Detroit
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| Quote:
It was a bit of a controversay when the Vector was first released with promoted claims of the car hitting 242 mph (as tested at the Bonneville Salt Flats by the owner of this car). The fist few owners of the early W8's couldn't find an insurance company to cover the car as it was far and above the top speeds of the other supercars before it (IE, 288 GTO, 959, F40, Countache). To abaid the situation, Vector claimed the top speed was "200+ mph" The Automotive magazines saw this as evidence that Vector's claims were just that. There is always a back story; the same goes today. The windshield is the largest single piece of automotive glass that was ever made in production... and would cost about $7-10,000 to replace with a production run of 10. Each display option is clearly visible here... http://nthimage.com/Detroit/photosho...r_W8_int_1.jpg http://nthimage.com/Detroit/photosho...r_W8_int_2.jpg http://nthimage.com/Detroit/photosho...r_W8_int_3.jpg http://nthimage.com/Detroit/photosho...r_W8_int_4.jpg As to the neighborhood "Tom Foolery" ... sight distance is quite high, and chance of something unexpected is very low. Ultimately, he didn't go WOT whatsoever until on the two lane road... but he definitely did load the engine. The white car is one of the few later cars with a dual-plane rear wing; most of them are a single plane to reduce the cost of producing the hand moulded carbon kevlar aero-surfacing. It also was made after all the other aero adjustments were made compared to the early cars. At high speed, the early cars experienced front end lift from 180-190 mph before settling back down. Additionally, the sun-roof was removable on the early cars, until high speed testing showed the low pressure nearly lifting the glass right off the car. The early cars are discernable easily because the strakes and vents on the car look more like gills. And, I'm happy to oblige  | |
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20th March 2009, 11:48
| #4 | |||
| Team-BHP Support Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Bombay
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| Thanks for the detailed reply nthimage. I know little about Vector besides the brief reading i did after seeing your post, but ofcourse i have been familiar with them thanks to this image that i have had on my computer for the last 10+ years : WX-3 i believe  Quote:
Not the top speed, but trying to insure a car incase it crashes at 200mph+ ...given that you will probably be in it! Quote:
Do you mean 10 extra windshields were produced (in addition to the production run of 17-19 vectors W8s?). Thats a fairly high number. I guess they didnt want to take any risks given that it was the largest peice of automotive glass! (Does that record still stand today though?) Quote:
Thanks, R Last edited by Rehaan : 20th March 2009 at 12:03. | |||
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20th March 2009, 20:40
| #5 |
| Senior - BHPian  | |
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21st March 2009, 05:56
| #6 | ||||
| Newbie Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Detroit
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That is another story in and of itself. There are currently no spares. The tooling still exists. To build them, an order of $50-70,000 would be necessary. That basically means that a group of Vector W8 owners would have to do a group-buy. Quote:
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The Vector M12 isn't a Vector to many purists. Basically, Suharto had extra Diablo chassis, and wanted to sell them as "new." In order to do this, they took the basic look of the AWX-3 Coupe, and streateched, and shrank the design to fit the wheelbase, and chassis of a Diablo. They than used a chopper-gun Fiberglass body; rather than the Carbon Kevlar body on the W8's. The engine is flipped 180 degrees, and attached to a Getrag 5 speed instead of the diablo's native unit. It's put together like a kit car. There are about 20 M12's out there... +- | ||||
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21st March 2009, 23:33
| #7 |
| BHPian  Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: new delhi
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