The Veeteor LSR is my unique front/mid-engined self-designed V8 RWD sports racing car.
It’s been my personal project since I started assembling the parts in 2004; I tested it with all its bodywork in place back in 2008.
It has always been my ambition to design and build my own car, partly because that was what I dreamed of since I was a kid, and partly because I wanted to teach myself stuff about building cars that I had no opportunity to learn otherwise. As I've now achieved my goal, the urge to move on to the next project is nagging at me again and so the Veeteor LSR is for sale.
So how did it come about? I’ve always had kit cars or modified cars, and back in around the year 2000 I was toying with the idea of dropping the new compact light aluminium block Chevrolet LS1 engine in to my Sylva Fury. But I couldn’t bear to cut up my Sylva, and when the finances fell into place I just had to do it, and set about designing my own sports car.
A fan of circuit racing, drag racing, and top speed events like Bonneville, I wanted a car that could be competitive in all three of these disciplines, and could be road legal if I wanted it to be. I also wanted a platform that was strong enough to handle power upgrades without a problem.
In the early 1990s, a Keith Black powered 4th gen Chevrolet Camaro ran 216 mph in a Car & Driver article that was known as a “Triple Threat” - a car capable of >1G cornering, 10 second ¼ mile, & 200mph+ top speed. I loved this concept of an all-rounder and that thought was in my mind when I was dreaming up the Veeteor.
At first I imagined a sort of supersized 7, but instead of a bolt on cage I wanted the chassis and roll cage to be an integrated structure, to create an exceptionally strong platform. Like all the best hot rods, the Veeteor needed to use the best reasonably priced and readily available components, to create an affordable vehicle greater than the sum of its parts. To make the best use of your power you need lots of gear ratios and I’d seen the trend of the worlds fastest street cars combining an automatic transmission with a Gear Vendors overdrive to enable them to race while still having good on road manners. The GV units are based on the Laycock design, but are super strong and with electronic controls produce an inexpensive way of producing an 8 speed sequential gearbox.
With my choice of engine/gearbox/overdrive in mind, I settled on a front/mid engine design due to the abundance of engines and gearboxes available, for safety, and also just because I like the layout!
I commissioned Jon Webster of Webster Race Engineering to design and build the chassis, due to his experience as a draughtsman. Jon has built the UKs quickest & fastest street legal cars and he has piloted Top Fuel cars capable of 300 mph. At the time he was building an MG SVR for the Street Eliminator series, which eventually ran 8s in road legal trim. He had removed the independent rear suspension from the MG and replaced it with a 9” Ford axle to take the power, so a ready made rear suspension set up was available and sitting right there...
We used a Caterham SV nose cone and bonnet as a template for the shape of the chassis, and based the chassis design around the rear suspension roll centres and taking into account the useable width of rear tyre (295) and then worked forward to design a bespoke front end. Jon constructed the chassis from high quality tubing certified for speeds up to 300mph.
Once Jon had finished the chassis, of Aryliam Motorsport, a team specialising in Caterhams, Radicals, and vehicle development completed the fabrication & preparation. Knowing that the car would have a very high top speed, we steered away from 7-esque shape.
I set about styling an aerodynamic body with a flat floor, starting off with sketches inspired by some of my favourite sports racing cars such as the Mallock P31, Panoz LMP1, and Lotus 2-11, and eventually produced a 3D clay model about 18” long.
Aryliam boss Clive Denham used that model and my sketches to produce a wooden buck, on top of which we infilled with foam, carving out the shape as we went, and then fillered over the top of the whole shape so that we could take a mould from it.
Fibreglass Unique of Leeds produced a set of high quality moulds which are capable of producing many sets of bodywork. These moulds are available together with the right to produce more cars at additional cost.
I tested the car without bodywork at Santa Pod and it ran an easy 11.42 second quarter mile, on tyres which by this time were already old. With the bodywork on, and with a lot of wheel spin, the car ran 11.9 @ 136.75 mph. It was also tested by Clive Denham at Bruntingthorpe proving ground who found it has excellent handling and ride, & with only two pedals drives like a big go kart!
In 2019 I removed the bodywork and converted it to a seven-esque shape so that it would be easier for me to run the car on the road. I used Caterham SV nose cone and bonnet, a Caterham Levante scuttle, and custom rear bodywork with the help of ace Caterham race mechanic and fabricator Dave Keen. In this guise, the LSR has been renamed the LS-Seven; I sold the bodywork to MNR Sportscars for a project they are working on, so the LSR will be reborn with one of their chassis.
It’s been my personal project since I started assembling the parts in 2004; I tested it with all its bodywork in place back in 2008.
It has always been my ambition to design and build my own car, partly because that was what I dreamed of since I was a kid, and partly because I wanted to teach myself stuff about building cars that I had no opportunity to learn otherwise. As I've now achieved my goal, the urge to move on to the next project is nagging at me again and so the Veeteor LSR is for sale.
So how did it come about? I’ve always had kit cars or modified cars, and back in around the year 2000 I was toying with the idea of dropping the new compact light aluminium block Chevrolet LS1 engine in to my Sylva Fury. But I couldn’t bear to cut up my Sylva, and when the finances fell into place I just had to do it, and set about designing my own sports car.
A fan of circuit racing, drag racing, and top speed events like Bonneville, I wanted a car that could be competitive in all three of these disciplines, and could be road legal if I wanted it to be. I also wanted a platform that was strong enough to handle power upgrades without a problem.
In the early 1990s, a Keith Black powered 4th gen Chevrolet Camaro ran 216 mph in a Car & Driver article that was known as a “Triple Threat” - a car capable of >1G cornering, 10 second ¼ mile, & 200mph+ top speed. I loved this concept of an all-rounder and that thought was in my mind when I was dreaming up the Veeteor.
At first I imagined a sort of supersized 7, but instead of a bolt on cage I wanted the chassis and roll cage to be an integrated structure, to create an exceptionally strong platform. Like all the best hot rods, the Veeteor needed to use the best reasonably priced and readily available components, to create an affordable vehicle greater than the sum of its parts. To make the best use of your power you need lots of gear ratios and I’d seen the trend of the worlds fastest street cars combining an automatic transmission with a Gear Vendors overdrive to enable them to race while still having good on road manners. The GV units are based on the Laycock design, but are super strong and with electronic controls produce an inexpensive way of producing an 8 speed sequential gearbox.
With my choice of engine/gearbox/overdrive in mind, I settled on a front/mid engine design due to the abundance of engines and gearboxes available, for safety, and also just because I like the layout!
I commissioned Jon Webster of Webster Race Engineering to design and build the chassis, due to his experience as a draughtsman. Jon has built the UKs quickest & fastest street legal cars and he has piloted Top Fuel cars capable of 300 mph. At the time he was building an MG SVR for the Street Eliminator series, which eventually ran 8s in road legal trim. He had removed the independent rear suspension from the MG and replaced it with a 9” Ford axle to take the power, so a ready made rear suspension set up was available and sitting right there...
We used a Caterham SV nose cone and bonnet as a template for the shape of the chassis, and based the chassis design around the rear suspension roll centres and taking into account the useable width of rear tyre (295) and then worked forward to design a bespoke front end. Jon constructed the chassis from high quality tubing certified for speeds up to 300mph.
Once Jon had finished the chassis, of Aryliam Motorsport, a team specialising in Caterhams, Radicals, and vehicle development completed the fabrication & preparation. Knowing that the car would have a very high top speed, we steered away from 7-esque shape.
I set about styling an aerodynamic body with a flat floor, starting off with sketches inspired by some of my favourite sports racing cars such as the Mallock P31, Panoz LMP1, and Lotus 2-11, and eventually produced a 3D clay model about 18” long.
Aryliam boss Clive Denham used that model and my sketches to produce a wooden buck, on top of which we infilled with foam, carving out the shape as we went, and then fillered over the top of the whole shape so that we could take a mould from it.
Fibreglass Unique of Leeds produced a set of high quality moulds which are capable of producing many sets of bodywork. These moulds are available together with the right to produce more cars at additional cost.
I tested the car without bodywork at Santa Pod and it ran an easy 11.42 second quarter mile, on tyres which by this time were already old. With the bodywork on, and with a lot of wheel spin, the car ran 11.9 @ 136.75 mph. It was also tested by Clive Denham at Bruntingthorpe proving ground who found it has excellent handling and ride, & with only two pedals drives like a big go kart!
In 2019 I removed the bodywork and converted it to a seven-esque shape so that it would be easier for me to run the car on the road. I used Caterham SV nose cone and bonnet, a Caterham Levante scuttle, and custom rear bodywork with the help of ace Caterham race mechanic and fabricator Dave Keen. In this guise, the LSR has been renamed the LS-Seven; I sold the bodywork to MNR Sportscars for a project they are working on, so the LSR will be reborn with one of their chassis.
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