KITS AND PIECES
IS IT A SKATEBOARD? A HOVERCRAFT?
Noel Snook is a petrolhead who likes to doodle. In fact, he is an award-winning artist. Since 1995, he has been self-employed, running his own product-design business, Snook Design, from his home in Whangamata, where he enjoys the occasional surf with family and friends. As we sit chatting in his office, my eyes are drawn to a onefifth-scale mock-up of an unusual supercar, a car that Noel designed in 1989, and actually built, but which remains more of a dream.
Doodles that became cars
Noel showed me a photograph of an earlier car project, which started life as a 1974 Suzuki Fronte Coupé powered by a three-cylinder 360cc two-stroke engine. He replaced this, and the back seat, with a three-litre Ford V6 engine, mated to a Type 3 VW transaxle. Noel fabricated a new subframe and roll cage, as well as a steel bodykit and aluminium rear wing, to make the car look as good as it now performed.
Noel drove the car to work in Auckland, where, in the mid ’80s he was a design engineer for a manufacturing company. A colleague, electronics engineer Fred Onrust, spotted the car, and the pair were soon discussing car design and their dreams and aspirations. Fred was interested in building a road-legal club racer, and Noel sketched some designs of an open-top sports car with a wind deflector aero screen; a cross between a Lotus 7 and the legendary Cobra. It was 1990, and they thought that they could build the car within two years. Turned out that making a car from scratch is a lot more involved than modifying an existing Suzuki.
Starting to build it
For the running gear, they settled on the Nissan Skyline FJ20 2.0 litre twin cam four-cylinder motor, five-speed gearbox and independent rear end. Noel produced a 3D CAD model of the chassis for reference, setting the motor well back in the chassis, aiming for a 50/50 front to rear weight split. The crank pulley was 300mm behind the front axle line, and the driveshaft was only 200mm long!
Something in steel
The 25mm square tubing for the chassis was cut and tack welded together then set up on a jig prior to the prototype chassis being fully welded. Fred drew on his karting experience to design the front suspension, which consists of inboard coilover shocks, cantilever top arms, and lower A-arms. The Nissan Skyline rear subframe, with semitrailing arms, was bolted into the new chassis. It was a bit heavy at 100kg, but it would do for the prototype.
Something in plastic
For the body, the pair tapped into the expertise of Rob Treanor and Bruce Stratton of Ultralite Aircraft Manufacturing, now known as ‘Composites International’. As a side-line, Rob and Bruce had also produced bodies for other kit cars, and they were working on their own kit car called the ‘RD Wasp’. Potentially, they could also produce the bodies for the SR1.
Work commenced on the plug for the exterior of the car using a combination of plywood formwork, urethane foam, and fibreglass. Once the exterior plug and associated moulds had been made, Noel and Fred produced the first set of handlaid fibreglass exterior body panels. Once mated with the
chassis, they started on the ‘interior’ plug forms, again followed by the construction of more moulds. Noel recalls that something like 23 individual moulds were made for the car. Early in 1993, the first body was pulled from the moulds and the plug was destroyed — a rueful moment for Noel knowing how much sweat and elbow grease had gone into it. They now had a quality body and interior, but they were still a long way from finished.
Starting to look like a car
Surprisingly, seven years had passed. Fortunately, they had started the certification process early, and the detailed drawings that they supplied to the certifier meant that no changes had to be made to the car.
Noel painted the bodywork and then reassembled it on the chassis. Autosport seats were reupholstered with neoprene wetsuit material. Fred took care of all the wiring and electronics, which included making a complete ‘loom board’ for future production.
By 1997, the car was 95-per-cent finished, and it was with great pride that they displayed it, first at the Ellerslie Classic Car Show and later that year at Big Boys Toys. While there was a lot of positive feedback, other events had overtaken them: the Japanese import invasion was well underway, and highperformance cars were now readily available, and for a much lower cost than it would take to build an SR1. After some serious reflection, the pair decided not to risk pouring more money into a project that had potentially no future market.
Time for a change
The car then sat in Noel’s garage for a time, and when a friend of Fred’s offered to buy the car, they decided to let it go. Fred continued to work on the car for his friend, taking it through to final certification and getting it road legal. On the way, he replaced the Nissan subframe with lighter top and bottom A-arm suspension. He also added a decent turbo with intercooler.
The prototype weighed 850kg before swapping out the rear subframe, and, with the motor now producing around 224kw, the performance and handling were quite exceptional. Using an accelerometer and laptop, Fred recorded a 0–100mph (0–160kph) time of around 7.9 seconds.
The SR1 remains a one-off, but the jigs and moulds still exist and are safely stored, should anyone be interested in buying them.
“Considering the design is now almost 30 years old, we think it has stood the test of time pretty well,” says Noel.
Had the car been ready to go when they had planned, in the early ’90s, it could have been a different story. Fred and Noel remain friends to this day and I am sure that they will occasionally wonder, “What if?”