Some Panoz GTRA/WC Info

Hello all you new Panoz GTRA/WC owners. It looks like the sale at Road Atlanta has really spurred some interest in these cars! If there is any information and/or parts you need that Panoz is not able to help you with feel free to contact me at www.tubularfab.com.

http://tubularfab.com/upload/gtra/gtrachassis.jpg

For a little history lesson on the cars:

When Don Panoz bought Road Atlanta the racing school there was still using some very worn out Nissan 300ZX's. It was decided that they should be replaced with Panoz bodied GT cars. So, the Panoz Racing school contracted with a company in Florida to help them design and build a batch of school cars - since the Panoz Auto factory was already at capacity building AIV Roadsters and working on the design for the Esperante. When the company in Florida did not prove to be up to the challenge in terms of quality and delivery time the project was finally brought to Panoz Auto. I happened to be the guy that was in charge of reverse engineering what had already been done, getting drawings out, and building the fixtures to build consistent cars. So, while I did not design these cars I did design a chunk of the individual parts and created drawings for all the other parts. The initial batch of cars was delivered to Road Atlanta in the fall of 1998 and were called GTRA's (Road Atlanta). All of the original parts numbers carried the GTR8 prefix to tell us they were GTRA parts designed to the 1998 spec...

After building the first batch of school cars Road Atlanta came up with an idea for an all women racing series with Lynn St. James at the helm. So, a second batch of cars was built with the 4.6l 4 cam Cobra engines. These cars also incorporated some safety updatews to bring up to the standards required by (at the time) Professional Sports Car racing to run as a support race in the ALMS series. The most important of these was the switch from 1.75 OD x .090 wall ERW to 1.75 OD x .090 DOM tubing on all the round tubes in the chassis. These cars were designated GTWC's (women's cup) and were built over the winter of 1998/1999. After being run as the Women's Global GT series for 2 years it was opened up to men as well and renamed the Panoz Pro series.

The next evolution of this same basic chassis came in the summer of 1999 when Panoz placed a 400hp Ford 351 crate motor in the car. This is also where the plastic body panels were first used. These cars initially were built to run as a spec series of thier own that would run within the SCCA GT1 class. They started out on treaded street tires, but like everything else on this "spec car" they evolved to slicks and finally even from 17" to 18" slicks. The cars were designated GTS cars for SCCA, and the part numbers carry a GTSx prefix with the x being the year the part was created. Most parts on these cars are GTS9 part numbers. These cars have been built to order ever since the '99 and are still available from Panoz.

Over the next couple of years 2 more batches of school cars were built, one for Sebring and one for Texas Motor Speedway. Due to availability isses with the old 5.0 mustang engine most of the Sebring cars had Australian Falcon 5.0's, and then the Texas cars had 5.0's from Ford Explorers. The Australian engines have the throttle body opening to the driver's side while the explorer engines have a rather tall plenum compared to all the others. Incidentally, the Exporer motors have the "GT40P" cylinder heads which is a cast iron head with a little better flow than the old 5.0 engines had. These cars were pretty strong on the chassis dyno...

Here is a pic of some of the Sebring batch along with the guys that built them. It appears to have been taken October 1, 1999, but I cannot remember if that is correct or not.
http://tubularfab.com/upload/gtra/sebringgroup.jpg

Wow... thanks so much. I guess that explains why my "GTRA" has teh intake going to the driver's side. It's a Sebring car w/ plastic panels.

Great to know some of the history... I'm going to print this out for my Panoz binder I'm creating to go w/ the car.

Thanks for the info. I've been thirsting for more knowledge about the history of the cars. Panoz has done great things for American sports car racing. I'm honored to own a little piece of the history.



GT-RA #42

Actually... we have car 35 which is dead center in that picture :D It was repainted by Penske and labled 15.

My Father and I when I went to NC to pickup the car, he had it delivered to his house from Florida.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v627/cobra4b/Panoz%20GTRA/BrianDad3.jpg

The guys at Penske do nice work, don't they? They have a small fleet of these cars we built specially for them that they run in a special program that are kept in immaculate condition. They needed a couple more cars in a hurry for a special event and a few of the school cars were painted to match and used briefly - something like 2 months was all. Anyway, they made for a cool paint scheme!

I also wanted to clarify my statement at the top. Always try to source your parts from Panoz first, but if they can't get it for you feel free to contact me. I would be able to repair wrecked chassis, provide replacement tubes, etc. I actually am the supplier to Panoz for the bent chassis tubes, and you'll see pics of them in batches throughout my website.

Jason

^ Well there you go.... now I have the complete story on the car. I was told something like that but it's nice to hear it from someone who knows.

Cobra - snap a pic of the motor mounts on that car - I'm curious based on some other pics you've posted...

The earlier cars had horribly flimsey motor mounts coming off the chassis going to rectangular rubber mounts. The later cars had a much more robust mount coming off the chassis and a '94-'95 mustang rubber mount which was still captured even if the rubber failed. Which does yours have?

^ I believe mine has the square mounts, I checked them last night and they're in good shape w/o any cracks.... but it most definately has the flipped manifold. All of the log books I have for it states that it's the #35 Sebring car.

Does this mean it's from the later 2 batches you speak of... does it have the updated rollcage material?

I don't have any pics showing the motor mounts, I'll take some tonight, but here's the engine area:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v627/cobra4b/Panoz%20GTRA/DSCF1134.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v627/cobra4b/Panoz%20GTRA/DSCF1131.jpg

Here's a decent picture of my left side motor mount. Any issues with throwing some solid mounts in?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v627/cobra4b/Panoz%20GTRA/DSCF1144.jpg