2000 Venturi Atlantique 300 from UK and Ireland - Comments

Nothing has gone wrong with the car so far.

I've had it 6 months.

A fantastic looking car, which gets a lot of attention from people wondering what it is.

The automatic gearbox feels badly out of place - it works well enough, but this is a true sportscar with not a lot of refinement, not a long distance cruiser. I would really advise you to go for the manual version and enjoy the car for what it was designed for.

Another disadvantage of the auto is that it comes with the normally-aspirated, rather than twin-turbo version. This makes the engine less noisy, and therefore more refined, but it extends the 0-60 time by 2.5 seconds, and drops the max speed by 25 mph.

You can easily drive this car every day, but bear in mind:

A) Very little ground clearance for any speed ramps on your way to work.

B) Fibreglass body means that side winds can be VERY scary - so not a good long distance car.

The engine is the same V6 fitted to Renaults, Peugeots amd Volvos, and the switchgear I think is Citroen. Anyway, I've had no problem getting people to service it.

In summary:

Pretty, Fast, Reliable, High Insurance, but pretty good fuel consumption.

Get the manual rather than the auto.

The Venturi 300 atlantique was one of the greatest cars I've ever driven. Very sensitive steering and street contact together with outstanding performance for an only 3 litre car.

I drove the car for more than 20 000 kms without major problems, although you need to care about this car so you can solve the minor technical problems typical on low production cars with racing origin.

The interior is finished with beautiful seats and thick leather upholstery inside the complete cabin (also dash, console and doors) is much more expensive finished than Porsche, Ferrari, Bmw, Mercedes, etc.

The finest thing : it's beautiful and very rare!

The comment about fiberglass body and sidewinds doesn't make any sense.

The comment about the fibreglass and sidewinds make complete sense. If you are going to say it, state your reasoning.

Sorry about the comment not making sense, I didn't mean to sound so rude.

I just don't understand why a GRP-bodied car would be more susceptible to crosswinds than a steel-bodied car.

There is no reason for the shape of a plastic body to be different from a steel body.

The smoothness of the painted surfaces is the same,

Steel panels are typically 0.8mm thick whereas GRP panels are much thicker, I would guess between 2 and 4 mm thick.

But fiberglass is lighter than an equivalent volume of steel, so total body weights between plastic and steel bodies might be similar when you take the chassis or frame weight into account.

GRP bodies are strong, but they are not stiff so a separate chassis is always required.

A separate chassis is low and heavy, so the cg of a plastic car might be lower than an equivalent unitary body design.

I don't recall other plastic-bodied cars being known to be upset by cross winds.

These include the Corvette, Reliant Scimitar, Jensen 541 and Jensen CV8.

If your Venturi is upset by cross winds it is more likely to be due to the body shape (center of pressure), center of gravity, weight distribution or incorrect tire pressures than the plastic body. Or simply worn steering or incorrect tracking (toe-in) of the front wheels.

I think you have just assumed the plastic body to be the cause without really knowing why.

So now I'm throwing the ball back into your court:

why should a plastic body be the cause of cross wind instability?

Ah!

I know why it feels unstable in cross winds.

Having a plastic body, you think you're in a Reliant Robin!

His comment on sidewinds might have been down to a poor set of tyres. I note that he'd only had the car for 6 months when he wrote the review, and he'd probably only done a couple of motorway trips in it. A lot of people have this sort of car just for the weekend, so in six months, he might have only done 500 miles or so.

I owned an Atlantique for two years, and never had a problem with sidewinds, but it did wear tyres unevenly at the front. This could easily cause it to wander all over the road unless you replaced them as needed. He probably got dodgy tyres from the dealer.

I expect he thought the wandering steering on the motorway was down to the cars light weight, whereas it was probably a bad road surface working against worn tyres.

Funnily enough I had the TT version with manual gearbox, and although admittedly a lot quicker than the auto. I had to have the gearbox replaced three times!!

The main problem for me was that the only place that really knew how to repair it properly was in Oxford (oselli) and they SERIOUSLY overcharge. Which is why I got rid of it.

I would suggest that any in UK considering this car speak to Oselli first and gasp at the servicing costs.

Absolutely stunning car though. Always felt special.

Hi, I'm thinking of buying a Venturi 300 twin turbo.

I havent heard a lot about them, but before I hand over any money could anyone tell me who or where you would get parts or any information?

MWil61@aol.com

N Ireland.

These cars are not difficult nor expensive to sort. I would suggest you join the Venturi Communaute site. These enthusiasts have been brilliant and very helpful. The 300 is wonderful. Fast, superb handling, very beautiful and... exclusive. All this and you can get golf clubs in the boot!!

About the fiberglass body thing...

One of Newtons Laws of Motion States,

For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction.

Thus, if it were steel bodied, it would weight more. And that would take more inertia (the amount of energy it takes to make something START to move) If the car were fiberglass though, it would weigh less.

If the Car weighed lets say 10 lbs, it would take 10 lbs of force in a gust of wind to move it. But if the car weighed only 7 lbs because it had a fiberglass body, it would only take 7 lbs of force to move it.

So to sum up all these words, If his body were METAL, 30mph winds would do nothing. 50 mph winds might make it difficult to drive. If it were FIBERGLASS, 30mph winds could be disastrous and I don't even wanna know what 50mph winds would do.

Speaking in literal terms and hypothetically of course...

Hey I'm looking for a Venturi Atlantique 300 service manual. You know, the workshop style manual that tells you about all the parts and how to service it.

I'm not trying to find this because I own a Venturi - at least not yet! I'm trying to find it because I own a Delorean. And, the Venturi 300 has the same engine, so I am interested in the details of their turbocharger design so I can learn from their engineering when implementing my own turbocharger.

Any pointers?

The turbos are from Aerocharger and available at aerocharger.com. Service, oil, repairs and new turbos. These turbos have self-contained lubrication and need special oil available from these guys.