Small town car company

[notmytarga]

This article appeared in my local paper - I cut and pasted the contents so a sign up isn't needed to read. I won't comment further - I'm just offering up for all you car guys! Anybody familiar with the Cobras? Emerson Motorsports - Bespoke Performance

Emerson Motorsports - Bespoke Performance are those belt driven axles??!
____________________________________


Bill Emerson was working as a boat mechanic in Redding when he got the idea to build high-end Cobra sports cars.

These would be road rockets built from the ground up, no kits, with the input of customers willing to pay six-figures for their thrill ride.

“We build them and customize every detail to fit the owner,” said Emerson, who started Emerson Motorsports in 1992. “The seats, pedals, powertrain, and cockpit are built around the guy who owns the car.”

The Cobras start at $157,000. Emerson has built roughly 100 in 20 years, and his customers have included NFL owners, athletes and Silicon Valley executives. Depending on the customer’s specs, it could take Emerson from eight months to two years to finish a Cobra.



Emerson doesn’t advertise. Most of his sales come via word of mouth among the small fraternity of collectors and car performance engineers who know the Emerson name.

“Bill, he builds from the heart,” said Marlon Kirby, who built the Maxximus G-Force to be the fastest street-legal car in the world. Kirby’s racer has been clocked from 0 to 60 mph in 2.134 seconds. Emerson worked as a consultant for Kirby in the production of the Maxximus G-Force.

Now Emerson, working out of his shop between Redding and Anderson, has started production on his own extreme car, the Ballista, an American-made supercar that he envisions competing with famed Italian automaker Lamborghini for customers.

Emerson Motorsports has five in production. All have been sold. The turbo-supercharged bullet has a projected top speed of 277 mph. Emerson calls it a “million-dollar all-American supercar.”

Bay Area businessman John March hopes to have his new Ballista by year’s end. March, who’s driven a Lamborghini, said Emerson’s Ballista will be a “big, old steak that hangs over the plate” to Lamborghini’s “fancy plate of pasta.”

“This is going to roar; it’s not going to sing, it’s going to roar,” March said.

The Ballista has 1,700 horses under the hood and weighs 1,635 pounds.

March has a friend who owns an Emerson Cobra that he purchased in 1999. The car has nearly 100,000 miles on the odometer and the “quality of the car continues to be mind-boggling.” March said he will feel blessed when he takes the keys to his Ballista.

“It’s extreme. I have worked my entire life in the car business and I have been involved from racing to building to just enjoying them,” March said. “At this point in time, I find a car like this sort of the icing on the cake for my life-long involvement with cars.”

Emerson describes his upbringing on his company’s website as kid who grew up dyslexic “in a hardscrabble existence, bouncing across small towns . . . as his father chased job opportunities.” He talks about how some teachers wrote him off.

But blessed with a photographic memory and high-performance-engineering mind, Emerson’s skill levels did not go unnoticed by his shop teachers He would go on to work as a mechanic for the U.S. Forest Service, Marine Corps and California Army National Guard before taking over an appliance and small-engine repair shop in Oregon.

“I am just a dyslexic guy from Redding,” Emerson said. “I have been in this business for 30 years. We have a lot of experience and I have been fortunate enough to hook up with some of the best drivers on the planet.”

Emerson calls the many drivers and engineers he’s worked with friends, many invested in the Ballista by donating their time and expertise.

“There is no way a guy in Redding, in my position, could afford this level of engineering. It doesn’t happen,” Emerson said.

© 2013 Record Searchlight. All rights


Redding sports car maker ready to take on Lamborghini » Redding Record Searchlight

[sammyg2]

LOL, yep. 1700 belt driven horsepower. What could go wrong?
And check out that state of the art air ride suspension!




Nascar engineering at a formula one price.

[onewhippedpuppy]

Cool story, but his new car is fugly. Like a GT40 nose tacked onto a Miura. Belt driven axles are interesting, I'm curious how those would hold up under power. Building a car from scratch is typically where these guys fail, it's hard to match the engineering and experience of established automakers.

[kach22i]

I wonder why what these guys offer:
Emerson Motorsports - Bespoke Performance

Look so much like what these guys have been offering?
Factory Five Forums - The Front Page

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by onewhippedpuppy

Cool story, but his new car is fugly. Like a GT40 nose tacked onto a Miura. Belt driven axles are interesting, I'm curious how those would hold up under power. Building a car from scratch is typically where these guys fail, it's hard to match the engineering and experience of established automakers.

belt manufacturers provide all the info necessary to determine load capacity of belt drives. it's pretty simple.
I know this because we use similar cogged belt drives on fans and blowers in my plant (several hundred of em).
I prefer the gates polychain systems.

BUT, cog belts like that don't like dirt. it get embedded into the rubber and acts like an abrasive wearing away at the pulleys.
The wider the belt, the higher the torque, the more that wear gets accellerated.
Having them down there at ground level is going to be hard to keep them clean.
Won't last long.
A belt that wide is expensive, but replacing it fairly frequently won't cost as much as the labor to replace the pulleys.
And what happens when one breaks and the other does not? Right turn Clyde.

[cashflyer]

Unnecessary weight and complexity? Brilliant!

[EMJ]

I'd get a new repro Cobra complete with drivetrain before this. $50 - $60k, new. My mechanic has one and it's stunning.

[onewhippedpuppy]

If you read through the website there's a lot of self-serving hyperbole but not much actual content. Lots of blurbs about "engineering" written by someone who is obviously not an engineer. I got a chuckle about how the owner has the gift of being able to visualize the geometry of a suspension in motion. Hey Red Bull F1 - screw the expensive 3D kinematics software, hire this guy instead! Not only that, but they utilize a solid rear axle because the IRS of the AC Ace was designed to "negotiate cobblestones" and in a modern car is "unsafe". It couldn't possibly be because a solid rear axle is cheaper and simpler for a man to install in a shed, could it?

[GWN7]

A shed would be a upgrade I think. He clearly works outside of shipping containers.

[LWJ]

I was wondering who jarred his teeth, and abused his ears for 100K miles from 1999 to current.

[911SauCy]

Would NEVER consider thinking about possibly entertaining the idea of spending $$ on this guys stuff...

[petrolhead611]

On a visit ti the Pillippines some years ago I went to a shop that made replica Jeeps in a dirt floored shed.Chassis were welded up on a couple of tressles.The stainless steel bodywork was probably bought in as it was very nice. The stainless steel suspension, I kid you not, even swaybars,they claimed to make themselves.Power train was all Toyota. When I asked about a parking brake, they said they didn't fit them as it was too difficult!! I declined to buy one of their vehicles

[javadog]

Originally Posted by onewhippedpuppy

If you read through the website there's a lot of self-serving hyperbole but not much actual content.

Man, that guy's as full of **** as the proverbial goose. Clearly, he's never stayed a single night in a Holiday Inn.

JR

[asphaltgambler]

Belt driven rear wheels???........................................U h No. Thought that kind of s**t went out in the early 1920's trucks. Rediculous.