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Mike Dawson photo
(This article was first published in the August 1971 edition of Custom Car magazine)
It started with a bet. 'Look', said Mark Stratton to the man at Reliant, 'I want to stuff a 6½-litre V8 Chrysler into a Bond Bug to run at the drags.'
The man at Reliant narrowed his eyes. Neither he nor one of his Bugs could swallow that one. After all, the things are only designed to have three legs and a 700cc motor. But it was too late, Mark had made up his mind and was already on his way round to the Bond body shop to place his order. One super-lightweight Bug shell, moulded extra thin.
A few weeks later Mark walked out of the factory with a complimentary Bug shell under his arm, weighing, at 35lb, one tenth of the normal body and with an average thickness of one eighth of an inch. Official factory comment: 'It cannot be done, you'll never finish it, and furthermore you're mad.'
Just five months passed before Mark's Hustler Racing team emerged from their Northamptonshire grotto with a swinging little time machine named Metronome. A Bond Bug - blown, injected, top-heavy with cubic inches and snorting up and down on four wheels.
The project got started when Bolton businessman Stephen Cryer wandered into the Hustler headquarters and indicated that he'd got the bread if they'd got the time and know-how. As Hustler Racing in general and Mark Stratton in particular were responsible for much of the design and construction of a rapid Chevy-powered BSA Scout pick-up that in '68 ran 11.0 seconds and the Hot Wheels team's current Chevy Reliant GTE competition altered (a low 10-second machine), the answer had to be 'yes.'
Centre of the Bug plot is a '58 vintage 392-cube Chrysler Firepower block punched out to 6½ litres and hogged out with everything from a GMC 6/71 blower and Crower fuel injection to a twin-plate sintered iron Schiefer clutch. Pistons and rods came from the great Mickey Thompson's hot shop, rings are Perfect Circle products and the bearings are TRW. The crank is a stock Chrysler unit, the inlet manifold from Cragar.
Crower were chosen to supply the cam, while the valves were left in stock trim and exhaust headers were made up in the Hustler workshops. Lubrication is courtesy of Veedol, filtered by Fram. Ignition for the methanol - nitro to come later? - is in the hands of a Joe Hunt magneto wired to a set of Champions.
With all that heavy horsepower, Metronome has got to be direct drive. And it is. Well sort of direct. You see in order for the wheelman to sit nice and low between the inside of one of the big M&H Racemaster slicks and the propshaft, the diff had to be offset 7½in to one side. The big Mopar mill is located centrally on the Hustler-built frame, but set on the skew to reduce the angle that it was necessary for the prop to adopt. As if that isn't a big enough innovation, the rear axle is a composition of a 3.9-to-1 centre section from a 1953 Daimler, axle tubes from a Ford V8 Pilot, half-shafts from an Oldsmobile, brake discs from a late-model Daimler, brake calipers from the front end of an E-Type Jag and hubs made up by Hustler Racing. And of course, the whole axle had to be narrowed.
Wheels are from the American range. There is no suspension at the back but up front the crew installed a BMW Isetta leading-link assembly with stock dampers. Hustler-made spindles mate direct with the front wheels, which carry Michelin X rubber.
Steering was produced with the aid of a Morris Minor rack, coupled to a Hustler tiller. Irvin provided the para-laundry for panic stops.
Inside the super-light bodyshell - sporting a white paintjob - it's as black as night and the only gauge available to the driver is an oil pressure unit. The simple seat was made up by the crew.
Metronome is the first of a bunch of A-class competition altereds threatening to appear this year. Cryer's steed is the biggest altered on the strips in terms of engine capacity - with a potential 1000bhp on tap and a basic weight of 1500lb it will probably turn out to be the quickest. Stephen has sunk £2000 in the car - and now he's got to sink his foot in it. And God bless you sir.
Meantime Mark is understood to be trying to convince Reliant that if could get hold of a Jumbo Jet engine . . .
Mike Lintern
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