9 replies to this topic

[Paolo]

On a book called "Ferrari Mugello" (describing the Ferrari meeting held there in 1991) there are pictures of a Pininfarina F1 "dream car".
This is not the 70's Sigma, wich I already knew, but the weird (and fascinating) Pininfarina ZAZ.
It appers to be based on a 312 T4 chassis, but I'm not sure.
The book says it is a late 70's prototype, never unveiled until 1991.
I'll post a pic when I 'll get my hands on a scanner..
Anyone has details ?

[Keith Young]

How much of the 550 Barchetta was Pininfarina direclty involved with? I know the official name is the Ferrari 550 Barchette Pininfarina. I think that had to do with some sort of aniversary.

[Jezztor]

Thats not what he's talking about. Paolo, I saw a Ferrari documentary on Discovery on sunday morning and they had a little piece of it. If we're talking about the same thing, it initially was Ferrari's concept of a CART car, but being the politicians they were, and the FIA etc, (or the governing body at the time), they wanted Ferrari to stay in F1, so they converted their Cart car to a 312 T4 (i think) which wasn't to FIA regulations or some shod, so they just made a show car out of it which currently stands in the Ferrari Museum in Maranello.

Jezz

[scarbs]

There's some confusion or perhaps I'll only add to it.
The Ferrari CART prototype wasnt the ZAZ, in fact I know nothing the of the ZAZ.
The CART prototype was made (as I recall) as Enzo's kick up the a** to the FIA who were upsetting him so he threatened to race in the US instead, this was not long before his death.
The car was never seen on the US tracks but looked to be heavily based on the F187 with revised fuel tank, ground effect sidepods and different engine, it probably wasnt a definitive car to have a pop at the series, but the prototype looked to be a serious attempt at making their current F1 car compatible.

Image link

Has any one got any other image sof failed F1 prototypes, I recall all the teams had their 1983 gound effect cars built and waiting in the factory when the FIA brought in flat bottoms. Harvey Postlethwaite described the original 1983 ground effect ferrari as "Absolutely Bomba", the orginal flat bottom test mule of the ferrari had sidepods that sloped all the way down to the ground, and one windtunnel protoype used a full length spoiler to overcome the loss of downforce over the flat bottom, I 'll scan the image in sometime.

Williams had the six wheeler, Arrows tested a high mounted full width front wing (sounds familiar) and Alfa romeo (remember them...) tried a full width wing behind the cockpit that it was quoted almost sucked Mauro Baldi out of the Cockpit...! Gordon Murray threw all the work on the Original BT53 in the bin when the regs were changed. where are these car and drawings now...?

[Paolo]

I finally had the ZAZ pics scanned.. but got no website to post them.
If anyone volunteers, I'll send them to be shown on this thread.

[desmo]

Paolo, better late than never!

Send one or two to me via the email link here and if they're not too big I'll try to find some server space for them.

[Ray Bell]

Why not post them to celebrate the thread's second anniversary?

[desmo]

[Rat_Fink]

Isn't that the car from the start of the Pink Panther cartoon!

[Paolo]

Desmo was faster than me in posting the links... thanks.
Forgive my poor scanning abilities ; one of the pics was (horrible habit some publishers have) printed through two different pages.
I see a strong relationship with Ferrari 312 T4 -T5 ; the car has probably a lower Cx than the original, but front aero downforce adjustability might have been a problem.
A brilliant piece of design, in my opinion, and a strong example of lateral thinking.