Aluminum Fiat Bertone X1/9?

If my math is correct. The aluminum body X is only 137 lbs lighter than the steel one. So any one here with an Autocross car probably has a lighter car.

:)
 
Upon close inspection I find...

that NONE of them are... not even the factory workers...

I think I may have gone too far!
 
jjay911 said:
If my math is correct. The aluminum body X is only 137 lbs lighter than the steel one. So any one here with an Autocross car probably has a lighter car.

:)
Click to expand...

It's just part of the X1/9 folklore which is fun to rehash time to time.

I remember Steve Hoelscher mentioning he spoke with Kim Baker long after the ASV was crashed and Kim said it was a 200lb.weight reduction and the car handled great.
At the time Steve wished he could find one of those ASV bodies.
 
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I worked at Alcan labs (Banbury) as a summer intern 1987. There were 3 All ali X1/9's there but I only saw one which I walked past most days. I was told it weighed 600kg and was very fast as a consequence. The main reason for building these cars was to develop adhesives (later used in the Elise I believe) for the body and also to develop finite element analysis techniques (with IBM) for modelling ali bodied cars. These x1/9's were covered in what looked like trolley dings caused by stress loadings that are fine for steel but not for work hardening Aluminium.
They also worked on corrosion prevention, it is a myth that ali cars don't corrode, they do because (I was told) the AlO2 oxide layer that would normally protect static ali fractures and breaks off. Catalytic corrosion (as did for so many Aston's) is a different problem but also present if steel and a battery are.
I was told at the time that 100 ali X1/9's were built but most if not all were recycled in order to make sure they could not be used to reverse engineer what they'd done in any way.
Alcan hired a well known motor industry designer, I was introduced to him in 1987, his name was Harry, he was retired but worked a couple of days a week on this project on a consultancy basis. I am pretty sure this was Harry Webster, he had god like status in the Labs.
I sat in this Ali x1/9, I think it had about 60,000 miles on the clock but certainly had done plenty of miles. It was a finished car, fully trimmed inside. Apparently it did not suffer from self disconnecting electrics as the steel cars did because the ride was much better and you could lift it off it's front wheels with the front bumper it was that light, although I was told this made the handling a bit lary and most of them had been off the track repeatedly!
 
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