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A bit of Fiat history in The Garage

November 5, 2010 by Gary Grant 12 Comments

Alongside the great Porsche discussion on the Canadian Motorsport History group on Yahoo, there has been another thread about some early racing Alfa’s in Ontario. Our old friend George Commachio’s Alfa was brought up, as was the Fiat 124 he raced prior to the Alfa.

The car was a late Sixties (George thought ’67 but wasn’t sure) Fiat 124 Special. Twin cam, 5 speed, 4 wheel discs. A neat machine that did indeed later become the Lada, but missing a cam, a gear and had drums in the back. George eventually sold his 124 to Lloyd Service who then raced the car. There is a tale that perhaps he had a major crash with the car in turn 3 at Mosport.

I can’t remember the name of the guy Lloyd sold the car to, but I think the next guy only raced it once. It was then sold to a guy named Neil Burns. In fact, we met because of the car, when as a teenager I poked my head into the shop where he kept it.

Years later, I convinced Neil to finish the car up and race it. I don’t recall any evidence of heavy crash damage at that time so I’m not sure about Lloyd crashing it. Neil was on a tight (ie none) budget and struggled to get the car to keep running without blowing head gaskets. Even then the car ran in the high 1:50’s.
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Solstice racing debut a success!

May 11, 2006 by Gary Grant 1 Comment

Earlier this week I was watching the net hard trying to find results from the Pontiac Solstice’s first race, but yesterday I got busy & one of the big guys beat me to it!

solsticessb250.jpg

Race prepped by Phoenix Performance and driven by Andrew Aquilante, the Solstice headed out to it’s first ever race in the SCCA’s SSB class at New Hampshire International Speedway on May 6th. What a debut it was. Qualifying 2nd, the 18 year old driver was only 9 one thousandths of a second off the pole sitter’s time. Press releases haven’t given any actual race details, but when it was all said & done the car finished in 3rd place, only 1.5 seconds behind the leader.
This is actually the first Club Sport Package Solstice off the production line, so a podium finish is a big boost to the program. It’s likely that the other 2 podium cars are fully sorted racers with a couple (at least) of seasons under their belts.

The teams running Mazdas had better have some tricks up their sleeves, or else they are going to get steamrolled once the Solstice package is fully sorted.

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