So I was looking for the last lap of the GP2 race from the German GP the other week and found this by mistake.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwM5SAJJpn0
Very cool Belgium hillclimb vid. A lot of the cars seem to be off road single seater buggies with small (10"???) slicks. Crude swing arm rear suspension and virtualy no camber gain at the front with some funky roll centers. But they seem to be fast and a hoot to drive.
Not related to the buggies, but at 4:35 there's a cool Opel Manta, the car I now think I regret selling the most.
JoeyM
MegaDork
7/20/13 8:19 p.m.
Wow, all kinds of thoughts:
1) you weren't kidding about buggy-like.....That's not at all what I expected for a hill climb car. I usually think of purpose built hillclimb cars as being like staniforth-influenced.....sort of like indy-lights in appearance
whatever those motorcyle powered buggies are is very different
2) the red car around the 2:00 mark is the prettiest thing I've seen in quite some time.
3) they sound even better in the second part of the video where they are WOT
Interesting stuff. Right outside peoples doors too. Don't think that could happen in the States. 
HFmaxi
New Reader
7/20/13 9:06 p.m.
the "buggies" are called cross karts. They are also popular in euro rallyx. usually bike engine powered.
related unrelated:
look up hill dance on youtube, its the pugeot 406? with Ari Vartenen (sp?) at pikes peak.
JoeyM wrote:
Wow, all kinds of thoughts:
1) you weren't kidding about buggy-like.....That's not at all what I expected for a hill climb car. I usually think of purpose built hillclimb cars as being like staniforth-influenced.....sort of like indy-lights in appearance
whatever those motorcyle powered buggies are is very different
Being an ex-pat Brit who grew up going to spectate at Hillclimbs and starting motorsport in hillclimbs I've seen plenty of really cool hillclimb cars. I recall when F1 was 3.5L there were a number of Cosworth powered cars opened up to to closer to 4.0L running smaller lighter cars than the contemporary F1 machines. Mind blowing to watch even 20 years ago.
I do like these buggies, they seem to be a low cost way to have a lot of fun.
