A wild-ass one-off for the Geneva Show, built from scratch in just seven weeks
They're the damndest pair I've ever met. On the one hand, you have Frank Rinderknecht, a high-intensity Swiss car nut who owns a performance shop called Rinspeed in the aptly-named town of Zumikon. Rinderknecht's forte is marketing/public relations. This guy could sell tickets to a cat fight in an alley, get it sponsored by a major multi-national and covered on the front page of the Arbeiter Zeitung.
Then there's Our equally-intense pal George Balaschak. George is. among other things, a retired rocket Scientist, yacht builder and classic car restorer. He's also the creator of a V8-powered replica of a 1938 Talbot-Lago. To pay the bills, George Puts together two or three Talbos each year at his shop in Riviera Beach, Florida. But what he really wants to do is design one-off concept cars using the fancy CAD/CAM system that has absorbed most of his time-and most of his profits-for the past three years.
The Rindernecht-Balaschak connection? To publicize Rinspeed. in 1996 Frank commissioned George to build a heavily modified production Talbo called the Yello The Talbo Yello was the hit of the Geneva Auto Show before being featured on a rock band album cover and sold to the prestigious Rosso Bianco Collection.
Encouraged by their Success, for the 1997 Geneva Show Frank and George came LIP with the Rinspeed Mono Ego. You must remember this one: a red, white and blue single-seater that was featured in every car magazine in the world. The Mono looks kind of like Roger Ward's 1959 Indy Roadster with a graffiti angel on the hood and upholstery decorated with multi-color feathers. It's Still touring on the international auto Show circuit.
Which left Rinderknecht without a drawing, card for the 1998 Geneva Auto Show scheduled in March. Somewhere around the beginning of June, 1997, Frank called George and Suggested lie build another oneoff single-seater this one reminiscent of a late-'40s Bonneville lakester made out of a war Surplus aircraft belly tank. Rinderknecht's only Stipulation was that. like the Yello and Mono. the new car had to be street-legal in Switzerland.
Armed only with a couple of hasty sketches faxed from Frank, George started to design a Car Oil his computer Screen. George works very logically. He selects the running -car he'll use and digitizes its dimensions into his computer using a Faro arm, then wraps the body and chassis around these hard parts. He starts with the engine because everything else flows from there.
The Go Power
After sonic fruitless discussion about Mercedes and Lamborghini V 12s Frank and George ended up selecting Ford's DOHC modular V8 as used in the Mustang Cobra. This Was equipped with a Vortech Engineering supercharger for 400+ horsePower, mostly because Frank knows anything labeled "kompressor" attracts extra attention. I think George is less attracted by the high horsepower than by the way the blower whistles charmingly at high rpm.
Old-time belly tank lakesters were rnostly rear mid-engined, so the V8 in George's car had to go behind the driver. Instead of the ubiquitous racing Hewland or Porsche rear axle. Frank sourced a five-speed transaxle from a front-wheel-drive Audi diesel sold only in Europe. George digitized this into place behind the V8, sat a 95th percentile male ahead of the engine and added a modified Talbo independent Suspension front and rear.
Thanks to Frank's marketing tradeouts. George's anti-roll bars Would he Eibachs. the shocks Eibach/Pilot adjustable coilovers. The car would ride oil Antera alloy wheels wearing Continental tires. The entire braking system came from George's Fordsourced Talbo parts bin, with 13-inch Mustangsteering Cobra discs at the front and Thunderbird SC discs at the rear. George also digitized a General Motors steering column Mustang rack-and-pinion, Recaro seat and Formula steering wheel, then incorporated them into his chassis drawing.
Virtual Tinkering
Once he had everything in place, George connected all the dots with a computer drawing of a triangulated space frame that Would ultimately be constructed in 1 5/8 inch 4130 chrome-moly tubing As George says, "Chrorne-moly tubing is the classic way to build a racing car frame. It's also strong and a delight to work with. Really nice stuff."
Once the chassis was laid out, he had to hide everything beneath fiberglass composite bodywork. Somewhere in this process, the classic teardrop shape of a Bonneville streamliner got lost, replaced by a rounded body that looks more like a rnid-'30s Auto Union GP car. Mostly. this was due to the tall and wide supercharged DOHC engine that's simply too large to fit within a pointed tail. The majority of those old belly tank lakesters were Pushed along by a flathead Ford V-8 that's considerably more compact than Ford's modular enging.
Because it has to pass stringent Swiss emissions and noise tests, George's car also had to incorporate mufflers and catalytic converters. And those. too, had to be covered by bodywork. Belly tank lakesters were open-wheelers, but to make a street-legal car George had to incorporate fenders and lights. If you think Frank had handed George a couple of conflicting design notions here, You're right. A street-legal lakester is an oxymoron.
George's clever solution was a car with the front fenders and headlights mounted on a horizontal aerodynamic Support that swept across the nose and was painted a contrasting color to differentiate it from the body. The rear fenders were also obviously addons. The visual conceit was that here was a full-race lakester with street equipment that was obviously an afterthought. George worked in this direction all last summer, eventually generating a complete car in the computer ready for production.
In September, Frank and George had their first big approval meeting. There were many changes, enough to require more months Of Computer work. The fenders grew into aerodynamic shapes not unlike those on Frank Lockhart's 1928 land speed record car. Headlights were taken from a Ford Taurus and taillights from a Mercury Sable, but turned to give a very different appearance.
Compared to the initial drawings, the car-now being called the Rocket-was evolving in the direction of a full-bodied sports car. It was obviously distinctive. but only marginally reminiscent of Bonneville streamliners The Rocket had grown its own personality. I think it ended Up as the perfect car for Rinspeed's sporty clientele. a mid-engined racer for the street.
At the same time the Rocket was evolving in the computer, George and his friend Chuck were redesigning a computer-controlled five-axis cutting too] that Could be used to carve anything Lip to a 16 x 8 x 8 foot block. George's idea was that he could use this machine to carve Styrofoam molds from which the body of' the Rocket Would be quickly made.
All wonderful in theory, but as with so many other things that involve computers, more difficult in practice. Debugging this expensive gadget cost twice as much in time and money as George originally figured. So while the deadline for the Geneva Show was rapidly approaching, Frank was requesting time-consuming changes to the design while George was wrestling with it devilishly complex Cutting too] that needed to he accurate to +/- .0 10 inch over a span of 16 feet.
No matter what, the completed Rocket had to board a plane at Miami International Airport the morning of February 24. 1998 in order to make it to the Geneva Show. A promotional video Plus Still photography for the Rinspeed press kit and for SCI had to be done in Florida by three different groups of photographers before the car shipped.
On January 6. 1998, George finally started cutting chrome-moly tubing to build the frame. Three weeks later, with work progressing nicely on the chassis. lie started carving female molds for the body pails Out of foam. Thanks to his thousands of hours Of computer time. the complete set of molds took only four days to create. The body panels were then hand-laid of fiberglass in these one-off molds, which were destroyed in the process of breaking them away from the fiberglass parts. From start to finish, the making of the body took less than a week.
All Available Hands
Driving straight through from Connecticut, Jean and I arrived at George's Riviera Beach shop just after 8:00 pm Saturday night. February 21. George, Frank and half-a-dozen of George's friends were deep in a collection of auto parts that looked as if they might someday make up a car.
The Rocket's body was still a collection of fiber-lass bits lying around the paint booth awaiting primer. Nobody had slept for four nights, dinner for the group was peanut butter sandwiches and trail mix left over from our lunch somewhere in South Carolina. A grumpy German photographer who'd been waiting around for days in order to do the press kit photos added to the funereal ambiance.
Jean and I completed a leftside door panel, a leather steering wheel pad. an instrument panel installation and a carpeted shift mechanism cover before running out of energy. After 19 hours driving in SLK from Connecticut to Palm Beach. then five hours upside down in the Rocket cockpit, we finally gave upand stumbled off to sleep on George's 46-foot Grand Banks trawler. By the time we left, the chassis was essentially complete, the body ready for the color coat. George and the crew continued working through the night.
When we came back at 10:00 am Sunday morning, the pile of parts had become a car! Overnight, the body had been painted metallic silver, clear-coated and attached to the chassis. All-well. most--of the little details had been handled, and Frank Rinderknecht was driving the Rocket around the parking lot. The German photographer had been joined by a fashion model as thin and happy as he was fat and gloomy. She was wearing a silver lame outfit and bright blue wig, because Frank had cut some soil of deal to unveil the Rocket at a nightclub in Geneva with an Outer space theme.
George went home to sleep, while Frank in the Rocket. pursued by a carload of' mechanics, the German photographer mit model and ourselves blasted off for the Palm Beach County Airport for still photos.
That occupied the rest of Sunday. Monday. Frank and the photographer flew back to Switzerland, while George, the model and a U.S. film crew shot a three minute video with the same spacey theme. Our photos done, Jean and I went to the beach. then had dinner with friends at the Cafe Europa in Palm Beach.
Tuesday morning at 7:00 am, a truck picked LIP the Rinspeed Ego Rocket and brought it to the airport in time to make the plane to Geneva. Tuesday afternoon, George met Lis at a friends house in The Keys for his first vacation in three years. In between boating snorkeling and devouring lobster, all he Could talk about was the car he wants to build for the 1999 Geneva show. It'll be a Coupe reminiscent of the Pierson Brother's famous '34 Ford Bonneville hot-rod but with a folding hardtop utilizing the mechanism Out of' a Mercedes SLK. But that's next year's story.
Encouraged by their Success, for the 1997 Geneva Show Frank and George came LIP with the Rinspeed Mono Ego. You must remember this one: a red, white and blue single-seater that was featured in every car magazine in the world. The Mono looks kind of like Roger Ward's 1959 Indy Roadster with a graffiti angel on the hood and upholstery decorated with multi-color feathers. It's Still touring on the international auto Show circuit. 
The Go Power
