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Hi all,
This is my first GPL car project, based on the Cooper T77 of 65 Mod fame: The Cooper T73 of 1964/65. Feel free to add it to your GPL car collection
I wanted to get started in car making by first modding an existing car - and so I did, BUT it also had to be a 'new' car not available for GPL yet to make it interesting.
I chose the T73 because
A) it's a nice looking car - some people may like the somewhat 'cleaner' lines more than the T77 (no sidetank, slightly different body)
it's sufficiently similar to the T77 that I could modify it - as it is, I can only change car stuff, not add completely new parts (yet).C) it's historically correct for the 65 carset. The T73 was the Cooper of 1964, but it did some races in 65 as well.
I opted not to recreate the 65 version though, since it's so similar to the early-season T77 it would be barely distinguishable. So I went for the T73 as driven by Phill Hill in Rouen 1964 (see photo), which could then also serve as the basis of a 1964 carset and was just different enough from the T77 to go for. (Should I get multiple requests for an historically-accurate early-65 version I'll probably do a version of that too though! Shouldn't be too much work, unlike this one - car editing in GPL is much harder than it looks. <sigh> )
To install, just put the files included in this package inside your 65 Coventry/Cooper folder. That's it! Since it's based on the Lite 1.0 carset (will work with 'regular/full' too though!), it should run on all systems, including low-end and/or Voodoo-powered ones.
Here's hoping you'll like it. At least it'll drive just as lovely as the T77, since that really is a car with sweet handling!
Thanks and credits must go to the 1965 Mod team (obviously) and to David Wright, our one-man GPL encyclopedia - he provided me with techie car type and editing info and also provided a couple of good T73 cockpit photos, so I was able to go the extra mile and make it look much more like a 'real' T73 than I originally intended.
Some background info:
The T73 was a regular Climax 1.5 powered car in 1964, designed by Eddie Strait. It was no front runner, although Bruce McLaren did bring it home in 2nd place twice, in Monza and Spa. (He might even have won that last race but in the last corner (La Source, obviously) the engine went into a serious cough and one J. Clark zipped past to the finish line.)
The first version of the 73 had a rather distinctive white engine fairing but this seems to have been dropped fairly quickly due to persistent cooling problems (from some reports, even the driver felt rather cooked in early versions). Although outpowered by 1965, it did grab another two points with Bruce's 5th place in the first race of the year at East London. It was also raced in F2 spec around this time, and even fitted with a Ferrari GTO engine to take part in F1 races as late as 1967. (If someone manages to provide me with a picture of the F2 version I'll probably make a Formula 2 edition as well since 65 F2 cars are a bit thin on the ground in GPL
Regards, Rudy
(GPLRank -24)
RD_CooperT73.zip
PS. This car is Screenieware! If you get it running, please supply some screenshots when it gets into nice 'n interesting situations on the track
Attached Files
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t73.jpg 13.08K 338 downloads
tommi
beautiful work
