{"id":12185,"date":"2017-04-28T08:10:42","date_gmt":"2017-04-28T08:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.totalkitcar.com\/?p=12185"},"modified":"2017-04-28T08:10:42","modified_gmt":"2017-04-28T08:10:42","slug":"whos-noddy-holde","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tkc.grainwork.co.uk\/index.php\/2017\/04\/28\/whos-noddy-holde\/","title":{"rendered":"WHO'S NODDY HOLDER?!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The name Leigh Whiteman is a well-known one in the kitcar industry stretching back well over twenty years.<\/p>\n

With his dad, Terry he was part of Lytham St Annes-based Car Craft Centre initially with the \u2018Noddy\u2019-inspired Zero, a Vignale (Fiat) Gamine replica, launched in 1991.<\/p>\n

Then came a change of direction, having sold the Zero to a South Norwood company in 1995, having sold 21 kits, with the launch of the amazing Cyclone, one of the finest handling kitcars of all-time, in my opinion. Some 32 examples were sold but frankly, it should have been ten times that number, so good was the Cyclone. If you ever find one for sale, buy it, without question. You won\u2019t regret it.<\/p>\n

The Whitemans sold the Cyclone project to a company called Lawrence Garside Engineering in year 2000. Sadly, almost immediately, the partners Mark Lawrence and Paul Garside fell out and the moulds were destroyed, thus stalling any possible chance of a re-launch. Best not mention to Lee that he could have sold loads of a revised Cyclone!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Leigh and Terry meanwhile, decided to concentrate on general kit-building and their existing car painting operation under the Auto Mirage banner. They are pretty good at applying paint to cars.<\/p>\n

However, as we all know kitcars are in your blood they stay there, so moving forward to the present-day Stoneleigh 2017 will see the launch of the Mirage Auto Developments 250, a rather stunning piece of kit that has been under development for seven\u00a0years or so. They’ve joined forces on it with software engineer, Matt Potts, and with Terry’s mechanical skills and Leigh’s handiness with a spray gun, they make a formidable team.<\/p>\n

Underpinned by a multi-tube backbone chassis with built-in crumple zones front and rear, with fabricated double wishbones all-round along with Hi Spec Motorsport brakes. Power comes from BMW 3-Series, either E36 or E46 generations and Leigh reckons that the M52 unit from the former, available in various strengths from 150-190bhp or the latter\u2019s newer, M54 unit, with the latter available in a multitude of outputs from 168bhp to storming M3-spec version delivering 343bhp.<\/p>\n

More details on this one in next week\u2019s show round-up although in the meantime visit www.mirageautomotive.co.uk<\/a> or 01253 734 743 ENDS.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The name Leigh Whiteman is a well-known one in the kitcar industry stretching back well over twenty years. With his dad, Terry he was part […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkc.grainwork.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkc.grainwork.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkc.grainwork.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkc.grainwork.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkc.grainwork.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tkc.grainwork.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkc.grainwork.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkc.grainwork.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkc.grainwork.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}