199 replies to this topic

[fines]

Hey, where can I apply for this flattery job? I'm always in need of fresh income...

[Barry Boor]

Too late - the post is filled...........

[Barry Boor]

Thanks to Rob Ryder I can show you how murky it was on the Showboat's interior decks. This is Peter standing self-conciously by his car.


And to show that the car did look quite nice, here is a Maureen Magee photo taken during the Rothman's 50,000 practice session.

[Ray Bell]

The back suspension is a bit unusual, Barry... is that rising rate?

Looks a bit like the Bowin system... do you have any close-ups?

[Barry Boor]

I'd have to ask Peter about the rising rate. I do have some very good rear-end shots in daylight. I'll sort them out, scan and post them later today.

[Barry Boor]

O.K. Ray, here are two pictures.

The first, strange looking object is our original top rear suspension carrier. It was fabricated from aluminium (anodised red) with chrome plated steel mounting points for the top wishbone. It attached to the two lugs that I think all DG 300 gearboxes had on top.


The second picture was taken on the morning after the very first time the car EVER sat on wheels. It has a dummy DFV (IIRC 906) and an empty gearbox. It also has no dampers (just steel rods,) although I see there is one spring in there.


I haven't studied this picture for years. You can see part of the aluminium plate (also red) that carried the rear mounting point for the lower wishbone.

I should point out that by the time the car ran for the first time in July 1972 (this picture would have been taken about October 1971) Peter had had a rethink and all these anodised pieces had been replaced. The upper wishbone supports became steel tubing, while the lower ones were cast aluminium. It was one of these lower ones that broke in Austria, giving Francois a nasty moment in front of the main grandstand.

Clearly visible too is the famous glassfibre oil tank that I made and which got us (me!) into so much trouble in Austria.

[Ray Bell]

Looks like it's similar to Bowin's, but without the adjustability... hard to tell... thanks for the pics.

[bobbo]

Getting back (kind of) to the original thought of this tread, I just looked up the info on the Roger Ward Kurtis Kraft Midget with an Offy 2.5L 4 cyl that he raced in the first USGP, Sebring, 1959. Forix has a picture & this data: Started 19th, retired with a clutch problem.

Question: Was this the (in)famous 2 speed trans that the usual midgets ran? Also, Didn't Roger also race this critter rather successfully at Bridgehampton once upon a time?

Semi-Random Thought: "WHAT IF" that 2.5L Offy had been installed in an American open wheeled chassis built by, say, Briggs Cunningham, had a Chevrolet 4 speed trans, maybe driven by that kid, Dan Gurney or Richie Ginther . . . Any takers on this one?? Maybe for a new "dream car/what if" thread??

Bobbo

[David McKinney]

Earlier in 1959 Ward had won a formule libre race at Lime Rock (not Bridgehampton), against the likes of Chuck Daigh (Maserati 250F) and George Constantine (Aston Martin DBR2). I thought the engine was smaller than 2.5 litres though - 1.8?

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by bobbo
Question: Was this the (in)famous 2 speed trans that the usual midgets ran? Also, Didn't Roger also race this critter rather successfully at Bridgehampton once upon a time?

Semi-Random Thought: "WHAT IF" that 2.5L Offy had been installed in an American open wheeled chassis built by, say, Briggs Cunningham, had a Chevrolet 4 speed trans, maybe driven by that kid, Dan Gurney or Richie Ginther . . . Any takers on this one?? Maybe for a new "dream car/what if" thread??

More likely a single speed, I would think, but maybe two.

As for your 'random thought,' you've virtually described the Scarab there...

[Vitesse2]

Going back to the Hurst Floor Shifter, it was at Goodwood last year - boy was it weird!! And the Yanks said Jack Brabham's Cooper was a "funny little car" when it ran at Indy!!

[bobbo]

Dave McKinney:

I'm looking at a printout from FORIX that reads: " . . .Offenhauser 2.5 L4 . . ." I dunno, maybe they are wrong, maaybe thewy got their info from a source that was wrong. In fact, now that you mention it & I think harder you're right. Thanks!

Still, . . .

Bobbo

[Graham Clayton]

One of the more unusual strange looking cars was the Sumar Special driven by Jimmy Daywalt in the 1955 Indy 500.
The car had a full streamlined sports-car type body.

Apparently Daywalt found it disconcerting not being able
to see the front wheels, so the streamlined side cowling
was removed from both sides of the car.

The car then attempted to qualify with all of the parts
that would have been hidden under the bodywork
totally visible, which gave it a very rough and
unfinished look.

 

13 years later, here is a photo. :-)

 

http://www.billvukov...achment_id=1258

Edited by Graham Clayton, 16 August 2014 - 11:55.

[Barry Boor]

Apropos of nothing in particular, I was just thinking that back in the early days of 1970, the Lotus 72 would probably have qualified for this thread because at the time there had never been anything tike it in Grand Prix racing.

Strange how the unusual can very quickly become the familiar.....

[Carlos Jalife]

There was a car racing in the Carrera Panamericana which had the cockpit of an old airplane from WWII and God knows what else. It seemed as an uglier version of the Cunningham Cadillac "Monster" which ran in LM in the fifties. It was assembled by some mexicans who thought it would be a great idea and had a spare plane somewhere in their junkyard. There is a picture in the Cimarosti book.

[Roger Clark]

Originally posted by Barry Boor
Apropos of nothing in particular, I was just thinking that back in the early days of 1970, the Lotus 72 would probably have qualified for this thread because at the time there had never been anything tike it in Grand Prix racing.

Strange how the unusual can very quickly become the familiar.....

I didn't feel that way about the 72, it was an instant classic as far as I was concenred. THere were, however, cars which were regarded as strange or even ugly when they first appeared but are now classics; the Auto-Union and the Maserati Birdcage being two examples.

[bobbo]

Carlos:

Forgot about "Lel Monstre" Talk about ugly!! IIRC, though, It did finish Le Mans (1950??), in(I think) 9th or 10th place?? A stock Caddy was also a finisher in the same race again, IIRC.

Bobbo

[Mike Argetsinger]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder they say. The looks of LeMonstre may be startling but if you have seen it in "the flesh" I don't know if you would call it ugly.

http://www.atlasf1.c...light=LeMonstre

The above thread (as well as some other threads on TNF that I can't think of at the moment - maybe the Nickname thread too - Roger Clark posted a great photo of the car at Stone Bridge on the original Watkins Glen circuit in 1950 - my father is at the wheel with my grandfather and my older brother seated next to him and it is the pace lap for the Seneca Cup race) has some of the basic info and some photos.

LeMonstre - as it was dubbed by the French press and public - was one of two cars taken to LeMans in 1950 by Briggs Cunningham in his first foray to that race. The car driven by Miles and Sam Collier was a standard Cadillac Coupe deVille and finished 10th. LeMonstre had a special aerodynamic body and many other engineering upgrades. Briggs Cunningham and Phil Walters drove it to 11th place. They would have finished much higher if they had not spent a prolonged period digging it out of the sand. The car was very fast on the straightaway and overall gave an excellent account of itself. Both cars reside today in the Collier Museum in Naples, Florida.

[Mike Argetsinger]

Here is the thread with the Roger Clark photo I mentioned.

http://www.atlasf1.c...light=Nicknames

[bobbo]

I wonder: How many of today's cars would have been "strange" to someone from, say, 1960??

Bobbo

[bobbo]

Hi!

Me again!!

Just found a photo of the earlier mentioned Nardi Twin-Boom at the Motor Pics Web Site under "events" under "Classics) and on the Goodwood Festival of Speed page. There are some other interesting critters there, too. As soon as I can figure how to copy (legally that is, if it is NOT legal, someone please tell me before I do it!) I will try to get them up on assorted threads if they fit in.

Bobbo

[Barry Boor]

There is ugly and there is UGLY!

Milan has asked me to post this image, which I do, with pleasure.

[fines]

"Luigi Colani" is one of a kind. He would never go for a straight line if he could design a curved one. That is one of his designing principles! I don't recall that car, can somebody point me to a year? Must be late sixties...

[Doug Nye]

How dare you speak thus of the woman I love - 'Le Monstre' ugly?????!!!! You all listen to Mike Argetsinger....now here's a man with taste...

DCN

[Option1]

Another pic of Le Monstre:

Neil

[ry6]

Surely we need all these wierd, strange, radical, different cars otherwise things would be mighty uninteresting.

Once saw a photo of Mini pick-up truck, with an aerofoil (yes a wing standing up on stilts) racing in an International 3 Hour enduro. I think it was in Rhodesia. The pic was in a '70's Motoring News.

[David M. Kane]

The Chevron B20 was pretty strange looking to me.

[Ray Bell]

Eldred Norman's Double 8 must be a contender...

Though it ran in a number of guises, the fundamentals of a scout car chassis and truck wheels were with it always. Two Ford V8 engines coupled to run as a V16...

[Ray Bell]

While I'm on the job... here's a very rare pic...

The Doug Whiteford Kaye Special, here at the Rob Roy hillclimb, circa 1948, from the Campbell McLaren collection. Unfortunately the print is very small and very blurry.



Look closely... there is not support whatever for the steering column! Basis for the car is a pre-war V12 Lincoln Zephyr.

[Leif Snellman]

Try to beat this one!

Einar Alm (FIN) with his "Tail" Ford Special.
With this car he finished 6th in the 1935 Norwegian GP and third in the 1936 Estonian GP.

[Schummy]

I hope he doesn't get lateral wind or it is going to go to geostationary orbit

[Option1]

Originally posted by Leif Snellman
Try to beat this one!

Einar Alm (FIN) with his "Tail" Ford Special.
With this car he finished 6th in the 1935 Norwegian GP and third in the 1936 Estonian GP.

And 4th in the Oslo to Tallinn airraces of '35 and '36?

Neil

[uechtel]

found a new candidate:



It´s a 1100 cc Neander sports car with 36 hp twin-cylinder engine with tandem-seat!

The picture is from 1938, taken at the Schottenring. And if you look a little further back in the row you can see, that it was a quite common appearence on German race tracks in those days.

About the designer Ernst Neumann-Neander is to say, that he was an artist painter (who wonders looking at the car?). Inspired by the advertisement posters he created for various automobile manufacturers he began designing coachworks for cars, which became his main profession between 1910 and 1923.

From 1928 on he concentrated on - as he called it - drivemachines ("Fahrmaschinen"), which were extravagant three- or fourwheelers, generally light vehicles with comparatively powerful engines.

Between 1934 and 1939 he continuously produced single-piece works of those vehicles, which were certainly only suitable for racing purposes and besides that only bought by some real enthusiasts

(from Werner Oswald: Deutsche Autos 1920 - 1945)

[ThomasR]

1. Eifelland
2. McLaren 1995, even worse is the "nige special xxl cockpit"
3. The 1975 Maki, this blue Citizen sponsored thing driven by Tony Trimmer in the qualifying

[dmj]

Many thanks for Neander, Uechtel. Even I can't use any of my usual adjectives describing that car... I could call it interesting anyway. I don't believe any survived?

[damamaho]

Didn't the KAUSHEN 005 look weird in 1979?
DAMAMAHO.
www.asag.sk/danny.htm

[bobbo]

Recently, I've been looking at photos of some of the specials of the '40s, '50s and early '60s and more than a few of them were, how shall we say, "less than pretty" . . .

The BuMerc, several of the Cadillac and Mercury V8 powered specials come to mind, also good old Ol' Yaller (in any version) wasn't a candidate for beauty queen either. Although, results DO count

I'm sure some others could also qualify for this thread.

Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder . . .

Bobbo

[D-Type]

Originally posted by Ray Bell
Definitely not the Nardi I saw at Hamilton's in Melbourne about twenty years ago... lined up alongside a 906, a 917... where is that drool smiley?

It had totally separated booms, as I recall, more or less joined only by some spars, aircraft style... the idea was to get the driver and engine in line with the wheels to reduce frontal area. Worked, apparently, in the Monza record attempts....

That sounds to me like Taruffi's Tarf record breaker from around 1951. It had Piero in one boom and the engine in the other. I think the engine was a Maserati 4CLT but can't remember.

[Ray Bell]

That's the one... and that's the engine it had, I'm sure.

Where is it now? It's not in Allan Hamilton's toy shop, or not that I saw last I was there...

[arttidesco]

As has been mentioned else where the external radiator Vanwall was a curious mixture of 50's elegance and Edwardian style.

One of the strangest cars in NASCAR has to be the rear engine Tucker which retired after a lap or two with drive shaft failure.

[arttidesco]

How about the 1966 'Mexican' Spec BRM P83 ?

[Terry Walker]

The extraordinary "Vindid" from Western Australia. It started life as an MG J2, I believe, and over the years and through several names acquired a Vauxhall 4 cylinder engine, VW front suspension, de dion rear suspension, by which time it was a front-engined special known as the Alpha. Then the builder, Vin Smith, shifted the engine into the driver's seat, the driver into the engine bay, fitted this anteater shaped body, and turned up at the racetrack.

"Who built that???" was the inevitable question, and the answer was "Vin did." Hence the name.

It was not a success, so Vin started from scratch and built a brand new, more conventional rear engined single seater known as the "Sevin", a pun on his name and his usual race number.

[TimArnold]

I just noticed this thread and quickly scan read it, so if I missed someone posting this already, I'm sorry. But no-one seems to have mentioned the various six-wheel F1 cars which did look pretty strange when they first appeared... the Tyrell with four front wheels being the most succesful of these designs I think, and perhaps not looking too far away from conventional...



..but March and Williams produced six-wheelers with four rear wheels that, I though, looked very strange at the time...

[Graham Clayton]

The Panhard 702S sports car:



Source:
http://www.dlg.speed.../autos/1474.php

The plexiglass fairing looks bizarre - the drivers head is stuck out in the airflow, plus the fairing doesn't appear too rigid. It would seem to me that there would be a lot of buffeting and shaking.

[Catalina Park]

That would be Le Mans 1960. The rules that year forced higher windscreens on all cars. They all looked strange that year.

[Graham Clayton]

An extraordinary Cadillac that competed in the 1953 Carrera Panamericana:



Source: http://www.leblogaut...-cadillin-1.jpg

Does anyone have any more information on this car?

[alansart]

Looks like they've fitted the canopy from a WW2 fighter.

Edited by alansart, 02 May 2013 - 08:07.

[Tim Murray]

Mentioned briefly earlier in this thread:

There was a car racing in the Carrera Panamericana which had the cockpit of an old airplane from WWII and God knows what else. It seemed as an uglier version of the Cunningham Cadillac "Monster" which ran in LM in the fifties. It was assembled by some Mexicans who thought it would be a great idea and had a spare plane somewhere in their junkyard. There is a picture in the Cimarosti book.

Good to see a picture of it at last.

[arttidesco]

Looks like they've fitted the canopy from a WW2 fighter.

The Ham Special looks even better from the front

On this blog the cockpit is described as coming form a Consolidated-Vultee BT-13 “Vibrator”, which in Wiki looks like a Harvard unless I am wildly mistaken ?

[TIPO61]

This deep into...whatever, has thus far failed to include the Chaparral 2H with the 'Surtees' wing.
So I nominate it now.