We’ve shared with you a couple of different videos and the story of the Postman Pat Van gangs’ new machine, a motorcycle-powered slingshot dragster, as we’ve waited in eager anticipation for the on-track debut of the miniature creation. Well, that day has come, as Tom Armitage and his crew of genius fabricators from England revealed the first bits of footage of the car on the track late last week.
With Armitage at the controls decked out in an old school open face helmet, breather mask, and goggles just as the pilot of a retro slingshot dragster should, the Kawasaki ZX9R-powered racer took on a Tiger kit car at the York Dragway. With little in the way of track prep, Armitage brought the RPM’s up at the hit and immediately began to roast the tires well out to the sixty-foot mark, but still had enough, from our vantage point anyway, to defeat to the Tiger. The 1/4-mile elapsed time and speed were in the 12.60’s at 105 mph. Armitage estimated he lost a half a second or more in elapsed time with the tire spin off the starting line.
The two cars, Pat 1 and Pat 2, then matched up against one another, clicking off side-by-side 12 second runs as the drivers shifted their way down the entire length of the 1/4-mile.
The dragster, which is considerably larger than its infamous full bodied counterpart packing a coin-operated kiddie ride body, is still much smaller and shorter than a full-size dragster, with an estimated running weight of less than 500 pounds. The engine, an 899cc, four-stroke bullet from the factory that made 141 horsepower stock, is mounted sideways in the frame with a set of unique headers that send the exhaust out both sides of the car, as a V8-powered dragster would. Of course, this thing is all for fun and show rather than all-out competition, but that doesn’t mean the gang isn’t going to try wringing all the performance out of it they can.