So, what do we have here then? Well, this is something I discovered way back in May 1989! Its a one-off special called the "Sphinx SK1". It was manufactured in the UK around 1973-1974, and according to the owner at the time, was originally meant to be used for hillclimb racing. It really was one of the most unique vehicles I have ever seen...
Whilst talking to the owner it was described as having a "diamond chassis". On closer examination, what he meant was that the chassis was a spaceframe in the shape of a diamond... Looking at the photos you will see that it is very narrow at the front. I had initially thought it was a three-wheeler, but this was not the case. Unbelievably, there was one steerable wheel at the front, two driven wheels in the centre and one steerable wheel at the rear! The steerable wheels were connected by a very complicated set of rose-jointed rods and turned in opposite directions to each other at all times! How this would make the car handle in anything other than a straight line is anyone's guess - and quite possibly lethal!
The body was hand-made from aluminium and featured gull-wing doors with plexiglass side windows. The windscreen was a glass item from an unknown donor car. I don't think it would have been slow either as it had a mid-mounted tuned 1750cc engine most likely from a BMC Maxi complete with subframe. The rear "ban the bomb" lights are from a MK1 Ford Cortina but most other parts were BMC in origin.
As this car was made from all new parts it was given a new registration mark which meant (at the time at least) that it didn't need any govenment test to be put on the road. This was a peculiarity of British law at the time. This was also fortunate, as it had no parking brake whatsoever, meaning it would never have passed a test in the first place! I suspect that after the obligatory MOT (Ministry of Transport Test) was required some three years later it was taken off the road. A bit of a shame really, as it clearly would have cost a lot of time and money to build...
