6 replies to this topic

[Norell]

Greetings fellow car racing enthusiasts!

 

I am collecting 1/43 F1 models and recently bought Striling Moss' Mercedes W196, the Silverstone victory version from Brumm.

I noticed when I opened up the box that the car is much longer than my previous W196, but about the same length as the W196 Monza (streamliner). After digging the Net all I came up with some photos where it seems like the W196 came with at least two different wheelbase. It would make sense to use a shorter version on circuits like Monaco and a longer one for tracks like Silverstone or Monza, but I couldn't find anything that would confirm my theory.

 

Was there indeed a longer and a shorter variant of the car? Or was it an "evolution", something like streamliner -> long base-> short base? Was the streamliner's wheelbase longer than the later model's at all, or simply the replicas are inaccurate in that regard?

 

Thank you for any information!

[Collombin]

Do you mean Aintree rather than Silverstone? I was under the impression that the Aintree car was short wheelbase, as per Monaco.

[Ray Bell]

There were three different wheelbases...

 

Discussed at length in The Design and Behavior of the Racing Car (Moss and Pomeroy), there was a test done at the Nurburgring where Fangio (and Moss?) were quickest in the short wheelbase car while other drivers were slower in it.

 

The short wheelbase car didn't have the inboard front brakes as they ran out of room for them. Most races were run with the intermediate wheelbase cars.

[Tim Murray]

The three different wheelbase dimensions used in 1955 were:

Short: 2150 mm
Medium: 2210 mm
Long: 2350 mm

They also tried moving the engine in the chassis by 6 cm. My understanding, like Collombin’s, is that the four cars raced in the 1955 British GP at Aintree were all short wheelbase with outboard front brakes. See the discussion in this earlier thread:

Uhlenhaut/Mercedes/Monaco 1955

ETA: The outboard front drum brake is clearly visible in this shot of Stirling at Aintree:


Photo: Photographic/REX/Shutterstock

[Norell]

Thank you very much for the info!

[D-Type]

The Brumm model is a very poor one.  It is well out of scale.  I make it possibly 1:40 or even as bad as 1:37.  It is top of my list of Brumms to be replaced by something better.

[Roger Clark]

The three different wheelbase dimensions used in 1955 were:

Short: 2150 mm
Medium: 2210 mm
Long: 2350 mm

They also tried moving the engine in the chassis by 6 cm. My understanding, like Collombin’s, is that the four cars raced in the 1955 British GP at Aintree were all short wheelbase with outboard front brakes. See the discussion in this earlier thread:

Uhlenhaut/Mercedes/Monaco 1955
 

I am intrigued by the change in engine position.  

 

The 2150mm/outboard brake cars first appeared at Monaco for Moss and Fangio. Michael Riedner, in Last of the Silver Arrows says that Moss’s had the engine mounted 60mm further back and Fangio’s was in the normal position. However, Denis Jenkinson, in Motor Sport and Racing Car Review and Karl Ludvigsen’s Qicksilver Century both say that Fangio’s car had the engine mounted further forward. I assume here that they are talking about the position of the engine relative to the driver. The engine would have been moved forward relative to the front wheels by the elimination of the inboard brakes. 

 

Fangio drove a 2150mm car in the Dutch Grand Prix. Four such cars appeared at the British Grand Prix, with similar cars for Kling and Taruffi. Michael Riedner says that all four had the engine in the normal position. Does this mean normal as in Fangio’s or Moss’s Monaco car?  Moss was faster at Monaco in Fangio’s car than in his own so it might have made sense to have adopted that configuration for all the cars. The only other appearance of a 2150mm car was Taruffi at Monza. Michael Riedner was the source for all this. 
 

Daimler-Benz were capable of modifying the wheelbase of individual chassis, so chassis numbers, even if available, aren’t much help in this.