Manic GT: An obscure car you might not know

Cartonofmilk · May 6, 2011

Well i'm assuming but since it's all car enthusiasts here it's probably known by some.

I will claim to be patriotically motivated in posting about this car, I am canadian but more specifically french-canadian. As you surely know there is basically no such thing as canadian cars, well there HAVE been some but very few and basically since the 1930's it's all been american cars.

But in the 1960's a french canadian Renault employee in the province of Quebec had a dream. And this dream ended up being called the Manic GT. While the word Manic DOES mean something in english, it's actually the abbreviation of Manicouagan which is an indian word and a river in northern quebec where huge hydraulic dams were built in the 70's, each of those dams is called Manic (well and followed by a number to differentiate them), it was a word that evoked power and greatness in the 70's here, basically. Unfortunaltely the dream would only last three years, from 1969 to 1971, and only about 130 were produced. Despite the car being sold for about a perfectly reasonable 3000$ at the time, the company struggled and finally folded. I would resume the story of the car but it will be much better to just paste the wikipedia entry. Here's some pics first:

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From wikipedia:

"It was the brainchild of a young (born in 1938) Montrealer named Jacques About.

In the late 1960s, About, an employee of Renault Canada's public relations department, was asked to study the feasibility of importing the sporty Renault Alpine into Canada. The Alpine was a specialized sports/competition car made by an independent company (it would be absorbed by Renault in 1974), but using Renault components. Alpines were sold through Renault dealers in Europe. Although About's survey results were positive, Renault chose not to import the Alpine.

About was so encouraged by the results of the survey, which revealed a market for such a car, that he decided to leave Renault and produce his own sports car to fill the niche he was sure he had identified. After building a version of the French GRAC racing car under licence, called the Manic GRAC, a venture that garnered some good publicity, About established Automobile Manic Inc. in 1968. It was formed to build a two-seater sports coupe called the Manic GT.

The enthusiastic and persuasive Mr. About proved adept at fund-raising, and with the backing of such heavyweights as Bombardier (snowmobiles), Steinberg supermarkets, and the Governments of Canada and Quebec, he soon had capitalization of $1.5 million. A plant was acquired in Granby, Quebec, and design and production planning for the new car began. While the GRAC had been a racing car, the Manic GT was not intended for competition. It was to be a small, stylish and affordable two passenger touring car offering good performance and low fuel consumption.

About was familiar with Renault components and the company, and made a deal to use the platform and running gear of the rear-engined Renault 10 sedan as the base for the Manic. Suspension was independent all around via coil springs, steering was rack-and-pinion, and it had four-wheel disc brakes. The Renault engine was a sturdy, 1,289-cc, overhead valve four-cylinder with five main bearings. It came in three stages of tune: 65, 80 and 105 horsepower. Power reached the rear wheels through a standard four-speed, or optional five-speed manual transmission."

Personally regardless of it's origins (and hence a potential bias), i think this is a great looking car and i would LOVE to own one. It has "porschey" lines a bit.

I know TDU mods are built from models already available in other games but if I was good enough with modeling and textures to build a mod from scratch, that's the car i'd probably start with.

AZ-1 · May 6, 2011

Porschey lines, somewhat yeah....

but what I can see is a 246 DINO that's not as wide as one, and has FORD GT STRIPES!!!!:rofl:

1.3 ENGINE:happyroll: and it really looks good and is fuel efficient, with four-wheel disc brakes in the 60s WOW:eek:!!! Pity it didn't got famous worldwide.. :(

Also MANIC is a really unique name for a car :cheeky:

Bottomline- I see it as an small engine fuel efficient French-Canadian Ferrari "130" Dino and it's awesome and would love to own one classic like that :p