The Brabini GT was the brainchild of Richard Brabbins from Wakefield; as correctly stated elsewhere sadly deceased in 2010.
Richard was a serial car builder all his life and the Brabini was his attempt at 'out-Davrianing' Davrian. I think the original mock up's for the body tub revolved around a Fiat X1/9 windscreen & front scuttle, Alfasud roof & C pillars and a Fiat 131 front bulkhead!
It's a complete carbon fibre monocoque with carbon panels running Alfa flat 4 drivetrain. The red car was 1.7 16v; the green car was smaller capacity I believe. Finished weight less than 600kg from memory.
I had a lot of hours working with Richard in the development of the original mould-tools spread over about 5 years (if you see the press article in kit car magazine the twin headlamp front end was my concept) and spent a while debugging the finished car after the initial press coverage of the completed cars - Richard was a pal of 25+ years, work colleague of my wife & my best man at my wedding.
The green car is owned by a co-builder and there were only 2 cars ever built & finished. I think the co-builder now owns the mould- tools as well (though my knowledge on that is possibly out of date).
There was a third car under development which was bike-engined (following his build of a bike-engined Mini Minus); I understand from Richard's widow the third car was cut up & scrapped when she moved house a few years ago.
The red car photographed here got redeveloped to run a Subaru boxer turbo drivetrain with the gearbox altered to make it only 2WD (FWD on the gearbox to be RWD when installed in the car). This car was unfinished though back on its wheels as a rolling shell at the time of Richard's passing and I understand it was sold on as an unfinished project. There is a side on photo of it in this configuration when it was advertised on Twitter as an unfinished project.
It's a shame this never got finished. The Alfa boxer was probably the engine to use when he started out, but it took that long to get to the stage of a running car that it was more or less obsolete by the time it ran; so his idea to go Subaru was the right move.
It was great to see Richard finally get some formal recognition for his efforts from the car building and engineering fraternities; it was hard earned and very much deserved.
Cheers!
