Replies to post #17148 on Strategy Central

[John French]

Steve, I was a big fan of the AP6 in Australia, I had two. The second one was fairly standard but the first one was something I bought off a guy who was figuring to hot-rod it but lost interest (or ran out of money). It had a 225 cubic inch (3.7 litre) Slant Six and a three speed column shift with extractors. For the first six months it was in dire need of a paint job so it looked like something out of Mad Max but it sure did shift.

At the time I was in Adelaide when they still had the Aussie Grand Prix and for two weeks or so pre-race my route to work took in the main straight down Dequiteville Terrace. Needless to say in what is the rev-head capital of Australia (despite what you may hear to the contrary) the morning commute often turned into something more akin to drag-racing.

The AP5 was a real beauty with (believe it or not) push button gears on the dash.

BTW I changed my DD limits from -5%, -10% and -15% to -3%, -6% and -9% and the data set to date returns for the ETF model went up by some 20% overall but for the Fidelity Model (which I am really regarding as my out of sample test) the data set to date (1989) $'s went up by more than 60%. Life to date realized on the Fidelity model is around 25%, there is a DD of 19% in 2001/2002 but other than that 11% in 1997 and nothing else above 5%.

With the ETF model the annual %age is close to 30% with an 11% DD in 2004, 9% in 2002 and then nothing >3% for 2000 through today.

John

[euterpe1]

Similar story to mine. 4 of us that were into autocrossing and Solo I. One of the guys ended up becoming my best friend and just recently my best man. I had a 1981 Rabbit that I bought in 1984 from an older lady with 17K miles. She must have been cool, because it was a stick. After 3 years as a school car I bought a wrecked 1984 GTI and had the motor bored, added forge pistons, mild cheater cam, match ported head and balanced and blueprinted engine. Car was making about 123 hp with the mild cam and about 130 with the big cam which I only put in for the Solo I events. OK hp to 4 grand, but then it screamed with the bigger cam. Bear in mind this car with a full cage only weighed about 2000lbs with the smaller battery and lighter seat. I added a Quaife limited slip to the trans so you had 99% traction all the time. What made the car competitive against the CRX's was the suspension. We could not buy stiff enough springs, so we had perches machined out of billet aluminum to fit in the stock strut housings that would allow us to run the 2.5 inch id racing springs off a formula car. Stock springs on the GTI were 100lbs. a corner. I was running 200lbs in the front and 250lbs in the rear. That's how you get a front wheel drive car to have neutral handling. If you have never driven a car with a fully bolted in cage, it makes the car feel as if it were machined out of a billet of aluminum. Zero chassis flex. Cool stuff and what a blast. Street legal go cart(before they started checking for the catalytic converter).