My grandfather’s MGA. When I was a kid, we’d visit him in NJ and on Sunday morning he’d get it all warmed up, put on his string-back gloves and cap, and the two of us would blast around the back roads. I was 6 years old and hooked...

Just finished ‘Faster’ by Neal Bascomb and next week I get my hands on ‘Some Unusual Engines’ by LJK Setright. ‘Shakespeare for Squirrels’ by Christopher Moore is also in the queue.

I’ve had great results with Just One Bite poison, it worked where nothing else has. And for the smells, Bio-Kleen Bac Out Stain and Odor Remover does the trick. It even got rid of cat piss smell!

I was lucky enough to see these race at the 1986 Olympus WRC event, and even have video of Dan Gurney checking out the engine and turbo set up. I seem to recall he had some influence on the Gp. B engines because he was so successful with it in his IMSA car (or was it the other way around?) In the night stages they…

I didn’t realize Liberace built engines!

Ground effects, my friend. I believe it topped out at 200 mph at Bonneville and I’m told it was quite stable. It was designed (in 1974 no less) with the entire chassis as an aerofoil and having followed a few of them in the rain they pull up a lot of spray.

In a word, stuffy. I was at the Tech Center in the 80's and loved doing things but ran up against ‘appearance’ and doing things ‘properly’. The work and facility was great but I truly found most of the people awful. But I learned software and went into programming so that was cool! And the severance package was…

Hi Russ, long time! Tom E here, sad to see the condition of the cars but hopefully they’ll end up in good hands and be displayed. It’s a legacy that needs to be remembered.

And yours, well, uh, not sure what to say :-) I avoid Chuckanut now because it’s always so crowded but was lucky to commute on it for many years in the 80's. Only 2 wrecks in all that time, guess I wasn’t trying hard enough.

Isn’t that the solution to all racing problems? :-)

Right on! It was surprising when we went to competitions that the ‘engineering’ schools produced cars that wouldn’t run (but lots of data to back up the design) and the smaller school’s cars would win because they actually worked. It was a fabulous education and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I was part of the team that cast and machined the DOHC heads, what a project! We got it to run on CNG and then shipped to Japan where it was displayed in the Fuji HI headquarters for a while.

You can pretty much just walk into the VRI anytime and someone will give you a tour. There’s some amazing stuff lying around in storage!

Viking 1 was built for the first SCORE competition with emphasis on city driving. The front wheels turned a full 180 so it would turn in its own wheelbase, excellent for tight parking spaces! It finished 2nd, beaten only by University of BC. BTW, their winning car is still displayed in a glass case on campus in…

The license plate is a state one, won’t be with the car! Yes, the cars worked, had lights, wipers, sometimes heaters, seatbelts, you name it. We drove Viking 4 across the country twice in economy events, drove V2 to a from Bonneville and Detroit, V6 to San Diego and back to Vancouver for Expo 86, and so on. That was…

Viking 4 at Bonneville with a very turboed, very bored out Subaru running on compressed natural gas using our patented carb. We never got it run well and eventually it blew up. Not saying which of those people is me.

The street legal part is sticky, all you’ll get is a bill of sale. They were state vehicles when built and never officially registered or licensed. We got pulled over by the cops a lot and had to do a lot of explaining!

Hey, I resemble that remark! Actually, they laid me off (thank you, thank you, thank you)!

I believe the fronts at 10" and the rears are probably 15". It understeers like a mutha!

I was a student there and worked on Vikings 2,4, and 6, and it’s sad to see they’ve gotten to this state. The university doesn’t have the funds to restore them or even store them properly, so this is better than having them rot. We had a lot of fun building them from scratch, modifying them, driving them across the…