Technical diversity

Talking about turbo engines and such in the 1980's thread got me pondering- let's agree that under the current restrictive regulations and Concorde Agreement, if you reduce all the cars to their livery-free basic carbon fiber black, the only way to tell them apart is by the height of the noses and whether the air intake is round or triangular, so it's not surprising that data acquisition and wind tunnel time is what's put Ferrari and McLaren so far ahead, not single, inspired strokes of engineering genius.

So if design freedom produces the most interesting machinery, what year had the most varied solutions to the same problem? I would say 1976- Ferrari 312T2/boxer 12 vs. McLaren M23/Cosworth with its pioneering rising rate suspension. And just to liven things up you had the long, narrow, rocket in a straight line March, the beautiful, triangulated Brabham, the hulking but swoopy Ligier, and oh, yeah, the Tyrrell P34, with the Lotus 78 waiting off stage...

When might the cars have been equally diverse- 1955? The mid thirties? I'm thinking of the Auto Union and the Lancia D50 and the M-B W196, but I still like 1976. Am I missing something?

1958 wasn't too bad... Ferraris and their Dinos were chalk and cheese with both the 250F and the Vanwall, while the 250F V12 was there as well. On the other hand, there was the upstart upgraded F2 Coopers, and the fragile front engined Lotus 12, a miniscule thing better suited to FJr except for its engine.

How about 86-92, loads of different engines,
airboxes, shark noses, semi-automatic, active suspension, ABS, traction control, turbos then normally aspirated,
v10s, v12s. The cars were pretty different, a Mclaren looked noticably different from a Williams, from a Benetton, from a Ferrari

Hmmm, yeah, and there was 1960, when Enzo was finally starting to realize that sometimes the horse should be behind the wagon...

Nice line