Banham are a rich vein of kit car comedy....

Ladies and Gentlemen, feast your eyes on the Banham X21

 

Yup.

That's normally what happens. You can't do anything with an XJ-S' terrible proportions. And GRP looks like Isopon.

Fortunately, aerodynamics & crash testing have actually forced a 'bland' roofline on most of the BMWs. Five or Seven, strip off the excessive arches, bulbous bumper clips and G Larson lights, the proportions are actually very good.

Steel or ally gives a sharper edge, but SMC can be very effective - few people realise the rear wings on the big M-B coupe are composite!

 

Holy Moly



I guess that was a Metro once?

My favourite shot is the "engine bay" WHY would you take a picture of that!



Sorry for spamming up your thread Nick

 

It's missing the point a bit, but there was one locally; previously it was a direct TT ripoff.

The proportions actually worked better than on the A3 platform!

If it hadn't been for the god-awful kit car panel gaps/waviness, it could have been quite neat.

The 'scaleability' of the TT shape gave magazine 'artists' an easy ride in producing a whole family of 'speculative renderings'!

 

[QUOTE=MarkB,Sep 5 2006, 01:28 PM]

I'm actually thinking of joining them (and you) once the

 

Oi - can you lot not post pictures of quite so many fugly cars on the same page. The thread starts off all nice (I presume) showing what a 6 series could have looked like then decends into fugly.

STOP! Now!

 

Ha ha! Now I'm gonna get flamed! I LOVE the 6-Series, I think it is a gorgeous design and in a darker colour with those wheels on above, better looking than an XK8, Merc CL et al. Similarly, the Z4 knocks the spots off a Boxster/SLGay for looks, albeit the S2000 is better. And the E65/E66 7-Series and E60/E61 5-Series are lovely cars, not bland and boring like the Mercs and Audis they face up to.

I like the striking nature of them, they're all well judged as well (IMO ). The true BMW mingers are the X3 and 1-Series, and possibly the bland and dull E90 3-Series. See, Bangle and his crew (including Van Hooydonk) have toned it all down in response to the wave of shock that people expressed on seeing the Flame Surfaced BMWs, and the results are cars which blend into the background

 

Matt, Specsavers are on the phone - your prescription is ready - extra thick coke bottle lenses, right.......?

 

@ MarkB!

 

No, that's just GM homogenisation.

They really don't know what to do with Saab, do they?

I was thinking more along the lines of - take one WRX, remove body panels, lights, rear seats, make a swoopy 2+2 (think TT but without the terminal driving blandness and understeer-at-will characteristics), keeping the same proportions but making it a little less....boxy and angular.

I think a case could be made for a set of panels, plus donor light clusters etc. as an economical alternative to the Lax Power method of automotive tomfoolery, it's just whether the original cars could be easily remodelled to look better than they were originally (see Banham).