I know I have pictures of Atlantic cars from the 90's, I just need to find them!
I did find this one of one of the Radisich Reynards:
Thats Lou Schollum sitting in the seat, I dont remember who else was working on the car that year, it looks like it could be Jandals and Gary Petersen?
I know I have pictures of the Pope cars somewhere, but I couldnt find them today. The colors were the same as what is on the transporter in this pic:
In the US the Reynards were gone by the time I started working on Atlantic cars. Ralt RT40's and RT41's were the norm, with a few Swift DB4's running in a "C2" class. Dennis Eade was running a couple of cars at some events called XFR's which was an abbreviation for "Ex F*cking Reynard" which were based on the earlier models but fairly extensively modified.
From what I heard about the 92 Reynard, the cars were very quick until the tech officials realized that the tunnels were very flexible, allowing the side skirts to suck down to the track and producing a huge amount of downforce. A deflection test was intoduced at tech to police this, and the Reynard lost a lot of its advantage. Cameron drove his Reynard to 2nd in the US championship in 1992, beaten by Chris Smith (son of Carrol Smith) in a Swift DB4.
The RT40/41 was the next major step forward, and we were lucky to see the first of the new series of cars in 1992 in NZ when Dave McMillan bought down Stuart Crowe and Charles Nearburg. Later on Sir Ken would get a Ralt for James Taylor.
Atlantic cars will always have a special place in my heart. The howl of the BDA and later on the Toyota was awesome, and the developments in the cars was technically interesting. Competition between the chassis manufacturers and special parts developed by the teams themselves kept everyone on their toes. Atlantic lost a lot of its appeal with the introduction of the spec Swift chassis in 1998as the series turned into just another spec series.
