Quote:
The "legend " is that the the first 2000 cars were all Mimosa/black and that ALL of these cars were built prior to the car's June 73 launch date.
Steve
Legend or myth? I know of no other definition than the letter from PR saying that the first 2000 will be finished in mimosa and black. Hence, I think this relationship between the completion of the first batch (of however many) and the launch date is purely anecdotal.
All I can go on is the evidence:
1. The development in the early 70s of the head by Coventry Climax for Spen King. Keith Adams, in the AROnLine article on Project Ajax says specifically that the engine was developed to "compete more effectively in motor sport".
It's also true it continued being developed and improved up to the final cancelation of the planned mass market SD2, in early 1976. But I think that was intended to build on the existing engine and take advantage of it. It may have been used in arguing the need for it's initial development by Coventy Climax. However, there are well known shortcomings in that development. The reduced cost version of the slant-4, which, according to David Knowles, was supposed to fix problems with the head studs, seems to have died in about September 1975 when SD2 became part of TM1, which itself died in early 1976.
The electronic fuel injection was supposed to be part of the solution to meeting the US emissions legislation changes for 1976. It seems there was a real expectation in BLMC that SD2 could break into the US sub-compact market. Also, there were performance issues with the US spec 8-valve TR7 that the 16-valve PI engine should have fixed; though the use of the Rover, nee Buick, V8 was the solution chosen in the end (presumably before 1977).
It's true that Knowles has the development of the electronic fuel injection system for the 16-valve slant-4 going on to sometime during the 17-week strike BL management started at Speke in November 1977. According to Dr Brian Marren at Liverpool U, that was to give an excuse to close Speke rather than one of the core plants in the midlands. However, that's because Knowles was trying to explain the production of the 61 TR7 Sprints in 1977 – which Bill Piggott described as an enigma, with the TR8 so close to production in 1977. However the building of TR7 Sprints in 1977 is much better explained by the TR8 only nearly being ready and the FIA banning optional multivalve heads approved under the old 100-off rule, effective from the end of 1977. Graham Robson suggests that Davenport's team had no idea when the TR7V8, which needed the TR8's homologation, would be available to them till it was approved. There's another story in how that happened when only 150 of the 400 FHC TR8s needed were built. But the 16-valve TR7 was used several times in 1978 and that was only possible through the second approval of the head and that was only possible because at least 54 TR7 Sprints were built – inc. at least 4 for national type approval, and plus at least 4 for car shows.
So I think the injection system was cancelled with SD2/TM1 with the effects of BLMC going bankrupt in 1974 and the resulting £3 billion rescue plan in the Ryder Report of 1975.
2. The production of 5,446 Dolomite Sprints in 1973. The figure of 5000 never being achieved again, and production tapering off completely in the next 5 or 6 years.
3. The homologation of the Dolomite Sprint on 2 Jan 1974 (so they didn't work new years day) in homologation form number 5542. That form should say when the 5000 needed were built, but doesn't have the space filled in. The lead time between the number needed being made and the approval of the Group-3 TR7 was from February to October in 1975. That process had to be expedited with the Dolomite, if there were only 446 cars built between the requirement being met and approval given, and that may explain the blank where the completion date should go. However, there must still have been a lead time between filing the papers with the RAC/FIA/CSI and the approval being granted, if less than 7 months.
4. The change in the BTCC to a Group-1 competition from 1974 on, effectively excluding the RS1800, with its G version of the BDA, a 2Ltr, alloy block, twin-cam, 16-valve, Cosworth development of the Kent engine.
I haven't got a date for when that change to the BTCC was announced, but I'd be shocked if it was any later than 1972.
5. The successes of the Dolomite Sprint in said BTCC in 1974-6.
There has to be support for that team that can't have just been thrown together on a whim.
The Group-2 Dolomite Sprint also had some successes in rally sport, and there were some successes for the Group-4, 16-valve TR7. But they competed against the RS1800 and only really came close. Mind you, that they even came close is a real accolade in my opinion; given the relatively small development work from a Group-1 engine, and the comparatively small development of that from a mass production engine.
Now it's possible that all that is a sequence of coincidences. I'm not a conspiracy theorist myself (I think they are all in it together). However, I don't accept that level of coincidence, and I think it's clear evidence of planning. I reckon Spen King and his chain of command are deeply involved in that, but have no details.
As to the competition department having to fund production of 5000 Dolomite Sprints in 1973: Why would that fall to them? At worst, BLMC would need an additional funding stream for the extra costs of producing the 5000 odd 16-valve engine over the 1850s. I don't know what they were, but I've read the 16-valve was a couple of hundred pounds more expensive than the O-series, and that the 1850 weren't that cheap. So we are talking something like £50,000 extra in a tens of millions of pound programme.
That BL continued production of the 16-valve engine till 1979 is interesting. I think it has to do with the issues in setting up to build 5000 in one year and the losses and write-offs in shutting that production capacity down with a bang. I think the bean counters would want those cost properly amortized, e.g. over 5 years, to get the best write-off returns. That's another issue in why the story that they built 2000 and then saw how they sold before continuing is a blatant myth.
Graham
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