Fire Breather

John Chesnut raced a Lister, successfully, in the 2000 Run And Gun. But John wanted more…so he, along with two partners, sought a new design and a new way to go for the 2001 kit car triathlon.

Often, the best ideas are not new at all, but are simply enhancements of previously successful creations. John and his company, Dragon Motor Cars, took these enhancements and created the Dragon. Its styling captures the look and feel of those wonderful vintage Listers, Maseratis, and Cheetahs. Especially reminiscent of the times are the high, gracefully sloping wheel arches, the door dip, and the raised hood bulge. But that’s where the similarity ends. Because this car was never intended to precisely replicate any specific production car, certain liberties could be taken by Dragon Motor Cars that other manufacturers were not afforded.

One thing that John and his Dragon co-owners (Paul Carlson and David Childress) recognized was the simple fact that a large portion of today’s population doesn’t fit comfortably into a truly replicated vintage race car. To create a friendlier atmosphere in their car, they stretched the wheelbase out to 98 inches and widened the track to a full 63 inches front and rear, which by the way, is slightly wider than the C4 Corvette’s front and rear track. But the suspension components used in the construction of the Dragon are unaltered and the difference comes from wheel offset. Because of the weight difference between the Corvette (3,200 pounds) and the Dragon (1,980 pounds), the transverse fiberglass monoleaf front and rear springs were replaced with coilover shocks, an improved antisway bar system at the rear, and urethane bushings. The coilovers not only allowed a huge amount of adjustability, but also went a long way toward simplifying the suspension installation. In conjunction with the ’88-’96 Vette suspension, the Corvette power rack, and the large rotor (13-inch front, 12-inch rear), power-assist disc brakes were used. Another thing they did to ensure the greatest reliability possible was to install only the heavier Dana 44 rearend with a 3.07:1 gear and limited slip to be mated to whatever trans-mission the customer selects.

All of this tried-and-true technology was bolted to a skeletal structure fabricated by Fred Rosner at Rosner Race Cars in Gill, Massachusetts. It’s a perimeter-type frame composed of 4-inch round tubing that is further strengthened by a truss system constructed out of 1-½-inch tubing. This truss system ties the front and rear of the car together and provides additional side-impact protection. For just a bit more rigidity, a cowl hoop and a rollbar was added to the structure, creating a very strong fabrication and a wonderful base for the fiberglass body that will cover all the mechanicals.

The frame is constructed to accept any small-block Chevrolet engine and a variety of transmissions, including four-speed, five-speed, Tremec six-speed, or the automatic of your liking. For the Dragon prototype car seen on these pages, a 427-cid Motown Motors engine that dyno’d at 538 hp and 521 lb-ft of torque was selected. That’s approxi-mately 3.6 pounds of weight per horsepower, which isn’t bad when you consider that the average modern performance car packs something like 10 pounds per horsepower. With this engine, this guy driving, and the five-speed Richmond road race transmission, this car is a rocket. If you’re not into rockets, or what John likes to refer to as “scary-fast cars,” then Dragon Motor Cars will be happy to furnish the kit with a milder 355-cid engine and any one of the trans-missions that it’s designed to accept. John took his scary-fast car to a First Place autocross finish in last year’s Run And Gun, and blazed down the dragstrip in 13.457 and 103 mph before a mishap took him out of the competition.

Bill Houge at Houge Composites in Norwell, Massachusetts, crafted the body molds that are used for the Dragon. As we said earlier, the body is a combination of many different ’50s/’60s-style road race and CanAm cars. The interior can be viewed as austere or purposeful, depending on your intentions. Seating is molded in the basic structure and covered with snap-in vinyl-covered padding to sepa-rate the driver from the unforgiving fiberglass. The instrumentation is by Auto-meter and the shifter by Hurst—there just isn’t much else in there. Of course, those things can be altered by the owner during the buildup, meaning that the interior (and the entire kit, for that matter) can be put together in as elaborate or as minimalistic a fashion as the owner/builder chooses.

That’s the neat part about building a kit car. You can make it as simple or as complex as you would like it. You can make it the rage of the road course or a civilized boulevard cruiser—it’s your choice. You can make it anything you want it to be. John Chesnut made his the way he wanted and offers the kits to the public to help them make it the way they want. Whether you want a fire-breathing dragon or a purring lizard, it looks just awesome.