New CN7 Book

[lsrdatabase]

Thanks for that Sir Malcolm. Is there a link or anything re. the author ordering/DVD?

I'm very poor on my CN7, but I always thought that the core frame of 'both' CN7s was in fact the same? Thus making it the same vehicle, kind of?!

Hi All,

Your quite right there Mike. The last time I saw him, Lewis told me they used vertually the whole tub from the original car. although some bit were u/s.

Regards, Fred



'I'm just that pest, who won't go away!'

[rob565uk]

Donald Stevens (the Author) can be reached at " brindles - (at) - uwclub - (dot) - net "

In his e mail Donald has indicated that books ordered directly will not only have the DVD, that Veloce Publishing will not add to their copies, but he will write a dedication if requested.

Malcolm

I have been in contact with Donald Stevens and got a very helpful response confirming that orders made through Donald S will also include a DVD of CN7 performing at Lake Eyre. I don't know the full details but the film was made for Rubery Owen and he doesn't think it has ever been in the public domain, so it sounds fascinating.

For anyone interested, I recommend emailing him

[f1steveuk]

Watch out if your e mail address gets on Donald's mailing list, he's forwarded some very interesting e mails in the past!

CN7/60 was actually written off, and all that was used in the construction of CN7/62 was the two longtiduinal ali/honeycomb armatures, and three of the bulkheads, although even if you look at the pictures, post crash, the long runners were well tweaked at the tail. About 60% of the outer skins were re used and one of the gearboxe cases. The complex intake ducts were used but there was a new engine, and I think from the paperwork I got from Rubery Owen, CN7/62 was over 50% new, but I wouldn't venture if that constitutes a "new" car, or a rebuild. There would have to have been some mod's at the rear to accomodate the tail fin and it's mounting, and that makes me think, as the sheet and araldited honeycomb couldn't be cut down and new bits put on, so I wonder how much was actually re-used, and how much was "re-used" to keep the customs paperwork!!!

[Mike Bull]

Interesting stuff, though it still sounds to me that ultimately, CN7 was one car that was trashed, and the same car was rebuilt, to whatever degree of newness.

Going from there, if you do take CN7 as being the one machine, you could then be thoroughly daft just for fun and suggest that the rebuilt K7 on her way now will be substantially more original than the rebuilt CN7 was in '62!

[f1steveuk]

I would suggest Google-ing "Bentley Old Number 1", rebuilt around a bulkhead and a few bolts, but considered, "original"!!!!

[Mike Bull]

Well indeed, that's just into the realm of things like the so-called 'data plate' Spitfires that are flying around. I think when K7 appears in public, people are going to re-learn the whole meaning of 'original'!

[f1steveuk]

Your very right Mike. There are quite a few of the Ivan Dutton T35 Bugatti's now accepted as "original", and I can only think it's because someone wiped them with the same cloth as they polished a real one with earlier..............

[quicksilver-wsr]

Having not been on any of the forums until now, I've not had an opportunity to correct an error that has become so ingrained in use that it has now become "fact" - when it isn't.

I notice that the designation CN8 has been used in this thread in reference to Donald's rocket-car concept. I don't blame anyone for using that designation, because it has been misused by so many people for so long that it will be impossible to find out when the first misuse took place and "Whodunnit?", but I feel I have a duty to put the record back on track again.

The rocket-car concept conceived by Norris Brothers at Donald behest and promoted by Donald's publicists, Plimmers, in the mid-1960s was never ... ever .... designated CN8.

It was designated Bluebird Mach 1.1.

Yes, seven years later I tried to get this project restarted with help from Leo Villa and Ken Norris - me too young and enthusiastic, at first, to realise that I'd bitten off more than I could chew - and the designation chosen then was CMN8, but "CN8" doesn't automatically follow from that. Not at all.

You will not see anywhere in any of the Norris Brothers, DMC or Plimmers literature the designation CN8. Nor will you see it anywhere in the literature of people - and I was one of them - that tried to bring this beautiful and futuristic car concept back from the dead.

"CN8" is a moniker that has sprung out of someone's imagination in much more recent times, and I'm probably to blame - indirectly - by coming up with the number 8 in the first place (1974). It just goes to show how easy it is for history to become distorted with passing years.

Hope this puts the record straight.

[f1steveuk]

With all due respect Nigel, I have seen a Norris Bros document with "CN8" on it, a slightly more rounded and stylised version, with a rounded bubble cockpit rather than the one Ken refered to as the "sharpened pencil" front end that was a feature of the John Shinton model, but I'm 100% certain CN8 appeared on the drawing I am thinking of.

[quicksilver-wsr]

I don't doubt your word, Steve. If you say you're 100% certain you've seen it, you've seen it.

The answer to the riddle may lie in the date of the drawing, in that my use of the number 8 when we came up with the designation CMN8 was purely because I thought - at that time - that if we were building the car after CN7, it logically had to be called "CN8". Of course, that was stupid of me, because the earlier designation, CN7, had nothing to do with that car (the Proteus-engined LSR-breaker) being the seventh Bluebird. It was a reference to the fact that the final design chosen for construction was the seventh in a series of potential concepts for that car.

Going back, then, to the car that Norris Brothers and Donald announced, through the Plimmers publicity agency, in 1965 ... the car was definitely not referred to in their literature as CN8. I say that because Ken himself gave me that literature back in 1974 and I still have it. But, of course we have it from Leo Villa's book, The Record Breakers, that this car concept was called Bluebird Mach 1.1.

You are right to say that the original design of Bluebird Mach 1.1 had a more rounded nose. The nose got more pointy much later, when a fellow named Greville Dawson, whom I'm still in touch with, got a windtunnel project under way and attempted to resurrect the project - in the period just before I did, in fact. (I have that windtunnel model here in my office at home, not four feet from me as I write this.)

It would be great to see your document, Steve. I don't doubt your word. But I do doubt the use of the number 8 by the Norris Brothers, as it makes no sense. That car - the supersonic concept - wasn't the eighth of anything.

But Ken may have picked up on my CMN8 designation at some point and abbreviated it, on his own personal paperwork not for public release, to "CN8".

As I say, the figure 8 means nothing in relation to that car (the supersonic car). The eighth what? It's an irrelevant figure.

At some point I'll invite Greville Dawson to write a few words about his involvement with Ken and the Mach 1.1 concept (1973). It has never been brought out in the public domain and it really should be, for posterity's sake.

All the best.