818 purchase and build data

[J R Jones]

Super cool. Where did you get that body?

I originally found a Karma body in WI mounted on a very rusty VW pan with a new (tech school) Harley Davidson metalflake gold paint job. The Karma styling details are illegitimate but it was hand laid cloth with good internal structure to supplement the VW pan. The guy wanted too much money. I found another in GA with a somewhat better pan and bought it for what I felt was fair. I sold-off the VW stuff and reworked the illegitimate styling. I realized that the body has exaggerated width that gives it a race-aggressive stance. I never envisioned a Dino imposter to fool people with. I have a racing background and decided I would create the look of a race car, repurposed for the street. I also found some stuff like vents do not aero properly and are not pleasing to me. I substituted details from the 275 Ferrari and the P4. It will have flush glass and a one piece rear compartment cover.
BTW I am not a roundel/numbers/stripes/sponsor decal guy. Metallic paint would be wrong too. Actions and shapes speak louder than decals.
Karma was sued by Ferrari and sold the tooling in Great Britain. It may be part of the JHC Dino on a Toyota MR2 chassis.
jim