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"Bill Sohl" wrote:
Like I originally said....for my daily commute, I'll take the truck. Give me a nice two lane country road meandering about the hillsides and I'll take the TR-3 (if it is a nice sunny and dry day). Rain and the TR (or almost any vintage British sports car) are natural opposites. :-) :-) The very best thing about European sports cars (including the British ones) is that they're just agile enough to get you out of trouble when you've done something stupid, like overestimated the car's, or your own, abilities. Many years ago, I went though an intersection at about 85 mph (the stupid part) in an MGB convertible. It was a narrow two lane road crossing a four lane highway, the road didn't go straight through the intersection (the road other side of the intersection was offset by about twenty feet), and, very much to my surprise, the middle of the intersection was considerably raised. If I went straight though the intersection, I'd end up in a farmer's field about twenty feet lower than the road's surface. If I overcompensated, I'd hit the cars waiting on the other side. I had no doubts I could make the slight twist in the road. What I didn't count on was the hump in the middle of the intersection - hardly noticeable at normal speeds, but, at 80 mph, enough to almost launch the car into the air. As I went through the intersection, I hit that hump and felt the car shoot into the air. I turned the steering wheel and the front tires simply squealed. The farmer's field got a lot closer than I wanted. The car dropped, the front wheels grabbed, and I was sliding sideways (straight towards the cars on the other side). The car bounced into the air again. I turned the steering wheel the opposite direction and the front tires squealed again. The car came back down, the wheels gripped, and I slid sideways into the lane I was supposed to be in. As the sliding stopped, I was able to straighten out and continue on down the road. During all that, as I shot past one of the cars waiting at the intersection in the other lane, I got a quick glace of a smiling driver clapping his hands. I, on the other hand, was not exactly a happy camper at that particular moment (terror springs to mind). I never tried another stunt like that. Any more playing around would be at a much safer location, under much more predictable conditions. But I never got over my amazement of that car's ability to handle the road. Dwight Stewart (W5NET) http://www.qsl.net/w5net/ |
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