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Originally Posted by Peter McKinley
I have a Lant or it could be a Ralt RT2 which i hillclimb ,sprint and race in Ireland. From what i know it originated in South Africa manufactured y Mel Lahner of Lant Cars. It has the large fuel cell which appears to be original ,not modified afterwards. It is wide track 62" and has conventional rocker beam suspension at the front with vertical inboard Koni's. It last came from the England where it had been fitted with a BDG. Prior to that it is supposed to have been in the far east where it was raced by an Indian Prince. It may have had a Mazda Rotary engine fitted but not sure. All the suspension uprights are original Ralt mag castings The car has an identity stamp on the top left of the front alloy bulkhead with RR 8304 stamped on it. Someone removed some stamped letters or numbers located before the RR with a rotary burr. Anyone out there have any ideas or comments as to where this car has been since the 80's
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Peter
I'm intrigued that your car is red. The only other Lant I have pics of was raced in Ireland realatively recently and was white. So maybe there really are two! Although I agree paint is cheap and easy.
When I met Bernard Tilanus a few years ago he told me that the first Lant was made from the remains of RT2-152 which was bought by Mel Larner from the Toleman team. He bought it for Bernard to drive in the ZA series. They installed a Mazda rotary engine - I have pics if you want them. They were both keen on Mazda engines so maybe one or more Lants had one. After Bernard crashed the car Mel stripped it, flattened the tub panels for patterns, copied the castings etc etc and started making parts for a sizeable number of Lants [20? 30? don't know]. Unfortunately many of these parts 'went missing' when moving to a new workshop effectively stopping the program. I too have heard that one went to the Middle East but I have nothing to substantiate that. Ian Hebblewhite has reported that one of the cars and some more parts are still known, or believed, to be in Mel's warehouse in ZA but he's not interested in disturbing things to go look.
Now that's just what I was told. Chris Townsend knows a lot more about old race cars than I ever will and he researches much more thoroughly. He also just mentioned that Mel bought an RT4 in 1981. And apparently only two Lants have known racing history in their time. So who knows - maybe, just maybe, those two Lants did originate to a greater or lesser extent from the one RT2 and the one RT4. I not saying the planned production Lant story is not true - just that there might other sides to it as well.
I'll see if I can post the white Lant pics. - Derek
By the way - I doubt if your car is an RT2 - I think the history of all six [not five] RT2s is now well established - three currently in the US/Canada, one in Germany, one now in Australia and 152 crashed in South Africa.