Wide Bodied Sports Cars

Remember a couple of months ago we talked about the wide bodied Austin Healey? Well here's some pictures of a wide bodied Bolwell.

The history of the car goes back some time. Where the body and chassis came from originally I have no idea. Perhaps Gary Williamson, the current owner, may know. Anyway, it turned up in California where the owner widened it to accommodate an RX7 windscreen. Really, the plan was to go into production over there and widening it was part of getting around copyright problems (at least that's what I've been told). Anyway, before much progress was made in that direction the bloke died. His beneficiaries brought the car back to Australia and eventually it was acquired by Gary. My understanding is that Gary bought it at a good price because it had no integrity as an original Nagari, which should please the protectors of the values of credentialed vehicles. Gary had begun the narrowing process but I think I might have chucked a spanner in the works by suggesting that it looks better wider. From my point of view, the long job of taking the four or so inches out of it is not going to make it into an original car as it has no chassis number and would still be a special or hybrid no matter what. I think it has historical interest as it is in its own right and a wider car, apart from being visually pleasing, is more practical as it gives a bit more elbow room inside and maybe (dare I say it?) the provision for wider seats.

All this leads me to something not altogether different. For some time there have been these questions floating around, especially from the Eastern states along the lines of "what's John Low up to over there?". It's time to come clean. I have been involved in a project to build a "modern day" Nagari and part of the plan was for it to be not a lot different in concept to the original Nagari, e.g. front engined, V8 powered etc. (how the new Nagari should really be). But it needed to be wider to accommodate ageing baby boomers and with ease of entry suitable for half cripples such as myself. It is coming along nicely and it's not just wider, but all the dimensions have increased out of necessity and as time goes on it is looking less like an original Nagari. An approach was made to Bolwell to officially call the car a Nagari "Tribute" as that was the intention - a tribute to the original design. The response was that we must not have any reference to "Nagari" as they were down the track with their own new Nagari. It's now unofficially called a "Laro" which is a reference to the designer and builder, Simon Aram. In the words of Patrick Conlon, "watch this space". Some spy shots are on the way.