From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

Marlei (car)

The Marlei was a racing car built in Portugal by Mário Moreira Leite (bearing an acronym from his name) in the 1950s. It featured an aluminum body and Opel engine. Similar racing cars were constructed in Portugal during the same period when car races became very popular, including the DM (by Dionísio Mateu and Elísio de Melo), the Alba, the Olda, the FAP and the Etnerap.

History

The project began in 1952 when a beyond recovery Opel Olympia Caravan entered the workshop of Oficina António Sardinha a Vila Nova de Gaia company, which had operations with General Motors. Mário Moreira Leite in his late 50s was the head mechanic at the workshop, he found interest in the Olympia Caravan and started building it into a sports car in his spare time. The bodywork was in a tubular form made up of single piece aluminum most parts of the car were sourced from GM and were highly modified. It featured an 4 cylinder water cooled Opel engine with displacement of 1488 putting out 48hp assisted by a Vauxhall 4 speed transmission, all four wheels had Vauxhall braking system the total weight of the car was 580kg and reached 160kmph.

After this the vehicle went for a lengthy approval process which ended in 1955 and the car entered the competitions but due to the delay the competitor's machines were advanced years ahead of Marlei which resulted in a disadvantage anyway the car still managed to secure second place in its class at IV Rally of Porto.

References

Santos, Julio. (2020-05-19). "Marlei: a marca portuguesa que trasformou uma carrinha num desportivo".

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

car-manufacturers-of-portugal defunct-motor-vehicle-manufacturers

Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about Marlei (car) — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report