Honker II

Made a trek down to North Carolina to Kenny Thompson's shop.

One of the projects that he is working on is a duplicate of the chassis of the Honker II, the Paul Newman sponsored, Mario Andretti driven CanAm car.... one of the prettiest race cars of the era.

Jim
 

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The original Honker tub was made in England and, according to Kenny, utilizes different guage aluminium than what is/was used here.

...and over in the corner was Ken's "J" car recreation. He fired it up and due to the different (non 180 degree) exhaust, sounded more like a Cobra than a GT40 MKIV.

...and in anotehr corner his aluminum bodied supercharged Indy streamliner recreation.

Jim
 

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Rick Muck- Mark IV

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There was a famous quote when the Honker was fiirst raced, the driver was aked how the car ran and the answer was "It's purple"..................
 

Keith

Moderator
From Britain's perspective we still had a flourishing aircraft industry.. :)

Aero Engineers worked on planes...
 
Maybe stating the obvious, but it is basically an F3L roadster. I love it too.

That's because the Honker and Ford P68 3 litre were designed by the same man Len Bailey. You can see the likeness of the two cars. He was also involved with the 1967 GT40 chassis Mirage M1. He also designed the P69 which to all intents was a Ford 3 litre roadster with twin 'Chaparral' type high strut spoilers.
I always get him confused with Len Terry who designed the BRM powered Mirage M2.
Regards Allan
 
One of my college friends owned and restored the original Honker. It was great fun to go watch him run it at the historics at Road America. A very pretty car.
 
Back down at Kenny Thompson's recently. Here are some photos on the progress he;s made on the Honker II chassis.

First the original and then the recreation. Not the work on the rear "halo". On the original, te top piece is not removable. Kenny has faricated the new piece with an upper removable section much like the GT40 so that the motor and trans/dif (here a Hewland) can be reoved in one unit.

Beautiful work.
 

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Here are the blueprints... the Honker is im my opinion one of the best looking car... with a different color, and maybee a different name, it would be much more acclaimed...

Does it have a racing history?
 

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