First, we had
Noreca in Malaysia.
Now we have
Supernova in India!
Who'da thunkit!
A couple of posts from Euro-Nova to give some background;
'Welllll so Shashi Vyas must have taken the moulds with him, (though evidently not the dashboard!) And does that look like a rubber seal round the screen on the yellow demonstrator? Distinct lack of anything technical to back up the electric and hydrogen powered claims, seem to remember the UK website was similarly over-optimistic...... (I see he's also managed to make a fibre glass car 'bidegradeable' (which means it will either crash or burn?) and though it is presumably still VW based he's offering 6 speed gearboxes!) The blue one with the daftly oversized wheels and Fiat bloaty headlights still sports its Q plate (was that Sam Cobley's car Lauren?) I wonder if he'll find any of the investors he's seeking to pump 20 million into his project?
Well, who would have thought it? It has been more than a decade since Shashi Vyas disappeared off the car scene, leaving a lot of broken promises in his wake. Now he's back, with a mis-matched selection of demonstrators and a new eco-angle. Well, they do say India is an up and coming economy, maybe somebody will invest in the project!
The blue car is not Sam's old Nova, that had a Mk4 dashboard and side windows with quarterlights, pop-up TR7 lights with sidelights and indicators under glass. All things that could be changed, but the car on the website seems to be a Mk2 that was modified in the UK and exported to India. Ditto the yellow Mk1 - its an original sunroof model, i.e. an ADD car!
The blue car interior betrays a VW floorpan, there's probably a few still around in India, although Shashi would be better off using a Hindustan Ambassador!
I'm trying to remember what he looks like. When I last saw him, in 1998 I think, he had hair, but it might be the guy in the light jacket...
Steve, Shashi was exhibiting at Stones in '98, and we persuaded him to come and talk to the club about his plans for the car. He wasn't very keen on talking to us, and to be honest we gave him a bit of a hard time because he didn't seem to know what he was doing. He made a lot of promises about SVA compliance, which were completely unfounded, then announced that we should all get rid of our old cars and buy new ones from him!
I'm pretty sure Dave (Islandman) was there, and so was Giles.
After the show, he announced that he was pulling out of kit manufacture altogether to concentrate on fully type-approved twin-turbo V6 mid-mount cars for the Japanese market. Which didn't happen of course. That was the last we heard of him until now.
It might be worth keeping an eye on the site for changes, but I'm not sure this project is going anywhere, even if Shashi is back on home turf...
Lauren
Will be interesting to see how this goes, if at all.
