Whatever happened to the Banham Motor Company? It seems their website is down.. I suppose the company went bust then? They made some interesting vehicles though.. for some reason I was quite interested in the Banham Bat. I couldn't decide if I loved it or hated it.. but now the site is no longer working, I strangely miss the weird thing.



[Edited on 24/1/06 by akumabito]

Most of the Banham designs were apparently sold to a company called Rally Sport Replicas who made amongst other things an RS200 replica based on an austin maestro!!!

I believe they went bust

I quite liked the Austin Healy Sprite replica based on a Metro....

Ahh, I see their website is still under construction.. hmm...

The Austin Healy Sprite replica was and still is based on a mini. It's still available to buy as a kit and is advertised in the mags. Can't remember who builds them though.

I stand corrected Mini based it is...

I still liked it, never get the mags though so that would explain my ignorance

I was going to build a Sprint (Frog eye) as it looks very close to the original. I bought the construction videos and that rather put me off. Paul literally threw the car together and didn't take much time in making sure everything was right.

The ones i have seen on the road do look very good although they look like they are riding too high.

Would i buy one now? Maybe if it was built well as i love the little cars. Theres a proper Frog eye up my road that i sat in and found that there was not enough room for my feet in the foot well. I could almost cover all 3 pedals with one foot. I would have to make some mods to the pedals/tunnel in order to be able to drive the thing. At least the spring has plenty of room seeing as it's mini and front wheel drive.

I believe (i.e. I have no evidence to support what I'm about to say ) that future SVAs will cover conversions such as these - 'body conversions' that look totally different to the original. It certainly has been discussed & debated.

It's not a market I'd want to be involved in, just at the moment...

BTW: I used to own a Sprog-eyed Fright - so little power I used to get passed by 1500cc VW Beetles, but used to corner as though it was on tracks. Heaps of fun, but as crude as hell, design-wise. Someone on the Isle of Wight used to make a mini-based replica that was a far superior vehicle, but it was quite expensive.

David

[Edited on 25/1/06 by David Jenkins]

There is a Sierra based Frogeye kit on ebay at the moment , no idea who makes it though ebay item 4606231043

Banham went bust and sold the moulds twice.
Once to Rally Sport Replicas which also went bust. Apparently that set of moulds was legally dodgy.

The other set (of the AH Sprite, Porsche 550 ish clone and Porsche Speedster) all went here: http://www.356sports.co.uk/ AFAIK they are still in business

The Maestro based RS200 was also a banham, but he had the original RS200 moulds (originally from Reliant who made them for Ford) so it was dimensionally perfect - RSR were trying to put a proper chassis underneath it but always seemed to have too many irons in the fire!