"Russ has the formula for a roaring success" The Evening Echo

"You'd be forgiven for thinking Michael Schumacher had made a wrong turning" Rayleigh Rochford & Castle Point Standard

"twin-engine 160mph supercar .............. looks just like a Formula One car" The Daily Express

"Have you ever dreamed of taking a Formula One car out on the road" The Metro



 The car was on the front cover of the November 2005 edition of Kitcar. The article within is quite substantial & paints a fair picture of the car as it was at the time of the article, several improvements in the area of rear seating,the ignition/startup & clutch control/operation etc have been made since. There is another article relating to SVA of the vehicle & an update on progress in the February 2006 edition.

My thanks to Kitcar Magazine for allowing use of the article on the website - reproduced in full below, there are a couple of minor errors the most significant being that the bodywork was made from aluminium sheet not steel, the new car built obviously has fibreglass bodywork. Please bear in mind that the vehicle pictured & tested here is the original one-off built for myself. Things have moved on from here & the new chassis is suitable for much larger bodies, is much simplified, more up to date & a better shape.I apologise that the way the text reproduces from a Word document to the website can make it read rather strangely.


 Kit Car: November 2005


EVERY TIFOSI SHOULD HAVE ONE

You’re a Tifosi so you have the shirt, baseball cap, flag, alarm-clock with multi-rev V10 soundtrack, beadspread, towel and aftershave. In fact, every possession that can accept a Prancing Horse logo has one, and every product that is available with one already on it is in the collection but the Furore has to be the ultimate Tifosi toy.

Modena revolves around Ferrari to the extent that every shop window is a riot of the red, yellow and black that constitutes the livery of the Cavalino Rampante. The cheap shops sell the usual tat with Ferrari logos plastered over everything from tooth brushes to egg timers. The better ones offer the widest possible range of more tasteful and affordable souvenirs while the upmarket ones merely provide window shopping for most of us as the price tags on the superb models, leather goods, clothing and genuine Ferrari engine components and F1 cast-offs are prohibitive. That said, none of them offer anything like Russ Bost’s F1 lookalike christened the Furore. Nor is this a mechanically empty body for static display or for sitting in on Sunday afternoon while watching the Grand Prix through your helmet visor or using the Play Station. This is a mechanically operational, roadgoing, SVAd and registered car and while it may not muster the 800 odd bhp of Schuey’s and Reubens’ current cars, twin Kawasaki ZX10 engines provide 250 bhp with which to shift minimal mass – and they do. The only slight snag is that, should you be instantly smitten and feel that you just have to have one, it’ll be a bit different to this.
Russ Bost spent over 20 years in the garage business during which an endless succession of MOTs, routine mechanical and body repairs often gave rise to thoughts of something rather more exotic to play with. He originally envisaged a single-seater in Nigel Mansell’s Canon Williams colours and using XR3 parts for the mechanics. Nigel wasn’t yet World Champion then so it was a few years ago. Russ trained as an engineer and having sold out his garage business to his partner, he decided to make the project a reality and, after 3 ½ year’s hard work in his garage, this is it. But while I am full of admiration for the creativity, dedication and determination that has produced it, Russ looks upon it with the critical eye of one who is well aware of the car’s current shortcomings. Asked to summarise them, rather than a long list, he merely says that he started in the wrong place and worked his way round the problems that resulted. However, that in no way detracts from the achievement of the finished car but if there are future cars, they will correct the mistakes this working prototype embodies.
So how do you start on a project to realise a design that only exists in your head? Russ’s answer was to save himself a great deal of head-scratching by buying a Formula Ford 2000 to stretch by 2 ½ feet whilst maintaining the track and basic suspension geometry. He then had an extremely demanding packaging job to execute in order to accommodate the second seat, engine and transmission within the pre-determined dimensions. He’s done it and it works but the means of achieving the finished result has created a few dynamic problems and though the way forward is all planned in Russ’s head, he’s awaiting public reaction before he tackles the job and commissions professional assistance to get the job right.
So what have we got? The chassis isn’t an exotic composite monocoque, but rather uses the more basic technology of the Formula Ford to create a steel-tube spaceframe.


  It’s basically the stretched FF frame with modifications made as and where necessary. It’s a 1”, 16 gauge spaceframe with 2” x 1” top and bottom rails and a few round-tube sections. The result is stiff and, with the driver’s feet behind the front axle-line with over 2’ of non-triangulated, deformable crumple zone up-front before any object struck encounters the big front wheels and tyres, it’s also safe. The front suspension is FF with lower rose-jointed wishbones and upper rocking arms operating inboard FF coilspring damper units and clamping fabricated steel uprights. The steering is the FF rack and pinion unit with a hyper-quick1 ¾ turns lock to lock allied to a modified Fiat Panda column with two UJs to satisfy SVA requirements. The pedals are also modified Fiat Panda.
The rear suspension uses the FF fabricated steel uprights located by twin lower links, single top links and twin trailing-arms. The brakes use the FF 235 mm front discs with Renault callipers while the back end is served by the FF discs clamped by Ford Granada Scorpio callipers with a hand-brake facility. There’s no servo as Russ wanted to maintain the feel in the pedal in addition to which, at an SVA confirmed 680 kgs, it’s light enough not to need one. Finally, the wheels and tyres are 8 ½ x 18 F and 10 x 18 R fitted with 285/40 and 255/45 tyres respectively.
The driver is comfortably accommodated in the seat. At over 6’, I was comfortable with sufficient leg room but the controls crowd around you with precious little space for mounting instruments etc. Russ has got a big rev counter to the right of the minimal dash with warning lights dead ahead. The gear-change is to the left of the wheel and the handbrake to the right with sundry switchgear mounted on the cockpit chassis tubes. Considering the lack of space, it all works well with nothing that’s inconvenient to operate. But if the driver is comfortable, the same cannot always be said for the passenger. As is the way with tandem two-seaters, the passenger sits behind the driver with his feet either side of the driver’s centrally mounted seat. The only trouble is there isn’t much room for his legs such that he’s forced to adopt a knees-up attitude that will rapidly become uncomfortable on any but short trips. One of Russ’s pals got cramp very soon after setting off so Russ had to go home, get the BMW and come back for him!
With the second seat eating into the rear space, Russ was faced with a problem in respect of the engine. His solution was to go for two Kawasaki ZX10 1,000 cc units mounted side-by-side with each engine driving a rear wheel independently of the other. It’s a logical solution and though it caused a few scratched heads at SVA, as Russ says, it works pretty much like an LSD and has caused no dynamic operational problems in use, which is not to say it hasn’t caused problems.
The side-by-side mounting is OK but, with the engine output sprockets on the same side, the arrangement results in one long driveshaft and one very short one. Then there’s the ignition. Russ has the ignition starting the right engine and then the left. The problem comes with a right engine stall which means turning off the left engine, getting both in neutral and initiating the start-up procedure again. Of course, that can be overcome but the biggest problem is rather more difficult to solve. With the rear suspension limiting the size of the drive sprockets that can be fitted, the current set up with 18” wheels delivers gearing capable of 85 – 100 mph in first! This makes moving off, especially on any sort of incline a problem. It’s nothing Russ can’t handle but it naturally detracts from the driveability of the Furore. Russ has thought about it and has had some alternative engine output sprockets made up which he will soon get around to fitting but, while it will improve matters, it won’t completely cure the problem. Naturally, Russ does have more radical plans that would involve a redesign


 but before committing time, effort and funds to the project, he is keen to assess public reaction.
The body isn’t in GRP but steel as Russ knows how to use and work it and it also kept the manufacturing costs down. From the tip of the long pointed nose to behind the cockpit, it really looks the part but thereafter, the steeply raked back covering the second seat and the wide nature of the twin-engine installation slightly detracts from the low, svelte form that modern F1 cars reflect. Even so, it looks superb and, as most people only catch a fleeting glimpse of it, to all intents and purposes they assume Schuey went straight on at Copse!
So what’s it like on the road? Well I didn’t drive it as it requires rather more than the usual quick familiarisation. However, I crammed myself in the back, donned the helmet and plugged in the intercom while Russ took the controls. The car isn’t currently equipped with reverse but Russ has a steeply sloping drive that allows him to roll out backwards and go. The track leading up to the road is unpaved but with a bit more than the usual few millimetres F1 ground clearance, the car made short work on it although the hill start at the top was complicated by the fact that you have to take a slight leap of faith and stick quite a bit of the nose out before you can see what’s coming. Nothing was so Russ slipped the clutch a little and we were soon righting and lefting through a housing estate in search of more open roads. The kids were on holiday so there were plenty of stares, shouted comments and thumbs up. And then we were in town. I’ve often heard the expression but never before have I seen peoples’ jaws drop. I’m well used to peoples’ reaction to extrovert cars but this just seems so out of place – like finding an elephant in your back garden.
Naturally, urban traffic poses problems for the gearing and I could see that Russ was really concentrating on driving. He was also anticipating traffic lights and junctions, hanging back from bunching traffic so as to have to stop as little as possible. However, when the road opened up, a bit of throttle had the car really living up to its image. Each engine has 125 bhp @ 10,000 and 76 lbs ft @ 9 such that the power to weight ratio works out to 374 bhp per ton. In the back, I could see more behind us via the mirrors than I could looking round the back of the driver’s seat but I could certainly feel the sensations of the Furore’s movements. Considering rose-joints and FF coilspring damper units, I was impressed with the ride while, when Russ did use the throttle, grip was also impressive, especially when minimal movements of the wheel had the car scything through large, open roundabouts, other traffic being treated to a blur of red and white as the car flew across their bows.
So far, Russ has only driven the car on the road and doubtless, a circuit would reveal a more detailed and in depth picture of its dynamic ability but certainly, other than the aspects of engine lay-out and gearing, it all seems about right.
So what now? Given the current problems, the job could be tackled by cutting the back off, stretching it a bit more to increase passenger space, modifying the engine installation with one bike or car engine and attending to the gearing. The thought has naturally occurred to Russ but he favours a start again approach during which he can attend to all the smaller items with which he wasn’t fully satisfied first time round. In addition, if the car does generate interest, he will enlist professional assistance to address quality and finish which have been secondary considerations on this prototype. Should you decide you cant live without a Furore in the garage, then you could well become part of the project but initially, you can find out more by visiting www.furorecars.co.uk, e-mailing russ@furorecars.co.uk or calling him on Tel: 07905 879407.
We wish Russ and the Furore project all the best for the future.








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