10k: Perplexing Choices: 2014 Velocity Exo-Contour Kit
Imagine that you are a pre-med straight A student at a major university and you aren’t doing so well in your organic chemistry class. You will certainly pass, but probably get a B+ instead of another A and the deadline to drop is tomorrow. You decide to buckle down and try to ace the final instead of retaking the class…and of course you get a B. Med school is now out of the picture, but there are plenty of dental schools that will take your 3.9 GPA all day long. You go to dental school and spend the next 20 years leaning into peoples mouths and enjoying the medium dollar and low stress hours. The mid life crisis urge hits and you decide you need a track toy. This 2014 Velocity Exo-Contour
currently bidding for $9,100 reserve-not-met on eBay with a few days to go, located in Arvada, CO will do nicely.
The Velocity Exo-Contour is an Ariel Atom-esque tube frame track rat that looks like a show winner at the next mad max reunion, but this one has been set up with the easy knob turned to Dentist. Many type-A over-achievers would have selected a boosted VW 1.8T hooked up to a 5-speed manual or the mighty 2.0T mated to a DSG…but not Mr Tuck-in-Shirt-Dentist…nope, try a 2.8 liter V6 from the VW Passat mated to a 5 speed automatic. Those 190 horsepower won’t sound like a dentist’s drill, and but the slushbox transmission will remind you of the placid waiting room with its oatmeal speed shifts.
A chipped 1.8T will easily make as much power as the V6, but the V6 adds some confidence inspiring mass to the rear end, as well as being basically free to replace. Most pick-a-part yards will give you a free 2.8l ACK/APR engine with any purchase of 4 hub caps. It is about as sexy as a post menopausal midwife, but it’ll keep your garage floor clean. You won’t need to worry about bad behavior from this beast, because the Passat was never available with a limited slip diff, and any over eagerness on the throttle pedal will be met swiftly with a flashing amber warning light. Whoa, slow down there speedy, this isn’t the Mule Tic 100!
Remember kids, stay in school…and don’t get any Bs. tips@dailyturismo.com
This thing is cool but could be SO much better.
That shifter put me in limp mode
Amen Scott. It's aesthetically pleasing, at a great price point, and looks like good fun if you could rejigger that tranny to emulate a paddle shifter. OTOH, call me old-fashioned, but I like seeing triangles in my tube frame. Also, while I understand the desirability of having the wind channeled over your head, in the event of a rollover, I'd really rather not have the windshield frame sitting in my lap.
The tube chassis on this car is pretty terrible from an engineering standpoint. Lots of bends in the tubes – a big giveaway that it was built for styling and not strength. "Please bend here" is what you are saying as a cage/chassis designer if you add in swoopy unnecessary curves. Imagine the load paths through the main tubes during a rollover or crash and you can see it would fare pretty poorly. It's more of a decorative skeleton of a body that looks like a cage or tube frame; caveat emptor.
I could go on…and I will…there's nothing tying the main hoop (behind the people's heads) forwards to the A-pillar bars so as B. Choate says above the windshield frame will just fold down into their laps. There is no diagonal on the main hoop so it will become a parallelogram when hit near the top on either side (like during a rollover). The weird "front stays" are going to help a little bit, but the top part of the main hoop above where those stays join will just fold forward if the car was to land square on the top. The "door bars" have tubes that end in the middle of other tubes, meaning they won't add much strength. Say hello to any car that T-bones you as it will also end up in your lap.
I might sound like an old curmudgeon but after building several race cars and thinking about this stuff a lot, I can say this thing is truly unsafe at any speed…in a crash that is.
Agreed. Reading the history on the vendor website doesn't give me a ton of confidence in this thing.
The Ariel Atom is butt-ugly, but you can believe it's structurally right. This one, not quite so much.
I have a hard enough time keeping my road bike clean, the idea of scraping mosquitoes out of my driving suit crotch is a bit off-putting.
I'm more interested in what's in the garage. The mustang would suit me just fine and the 356 would be a wet dream. Anyone have any clue as to the vehicle lurking over the 356's shoulder?
Hard to tell on iphone5…Europa??
did some forensic photoshoopery – i.imgur.com/Cw9iegk.jpg – beetle, right? – also there's the clue of the VW sign – don't mix up the mirror of the 356 with the headlight of the one behind
sorry – click here for i.imgur.com/Cw9iegk.jpg
That's a '68+ Beetle, and appears to be a convertible. Nice work KBZ.
Forensic indeed, KBZ. Pow!
Actually I think that's THE exo-contour. If you go to their website, the gallery pics are in front of the same Porsche, same brick driveway, et cetera.
I failed organic chemistry the first time around and I still made it to med school…