Features
Feature articles and content from the club’s archives.
Which Car Was That – A Story of Two Loti
09/03/2019This story begins back in ‘67 when I first saw Peter Yock’s Lotus 33 in the Baypark paddock. Except it wasn’t a Lotus 33, it was a 25. The history of this car can be found in Eoin Young’s book “Jim Clark and his Most Successful Lotus”. This ties the car back to the Lotus…
A Cohort of Racing Chevrolet Coupes
23/02/2018In the good old days saloon car racing was a filler to pack out a real race programme. There was no formal championship for saloons until 1959. (That they were also called “stock cars” implies that few or no modifications would be allowed or accepted). But the championship changed all that and before long the…
Those Elusive Coupes
10/12/2017The Chevy Coupe project is not forgotten, just delayed. In the meantime here is some more appetite whetting to fill the gap, being background notes on a few puzzles about these cars in general. The first of these is how come every now and then you will come across, say, a 1938 NZ registered Chevy…
CHASSIS STIFFNESS AND TUNING – HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?
12/08/2017Once upon a time, when race car chassis were rudimentary things and suspensions were rock hard drivers were given a very hard time. This is what Mike Hawthorn had to say about the Riley on which he cut his racing teeth. “This was my first season and also my only one on pre-war cars with…
Blue Flame Bonus
01/05/2017The Snoop suggested an article on the Silvester Chevy Coupe. A quick look uncovered many more racing Coupes, so the story will be a bit bigger. In the meantime, to get the ball rolling, here is a potted history of the Chevrolet 6. Introduced in 1928 these engines are affectionately known either as “Stovebolt” or…
Edward’s Engines
01/03/2017In the late 1920’s a young engineer designed a most unusual motorcycle engine. It was a pair of OHC parallel twins geared together in a four cylinder block with a single head. The idea was taken up by Ariel and became the Square 4. The designer was Edward Turner, and his legacy is the stuff…
When is a Sports Car a Saloon?
12/11/2016The snoop has ferreted out a dusty old photograph of a sports car attempting to disguise itself as a saloon. I remember it well, having been perplexed by it myself when I first came across it. It is the ex Frank Cantwell Tojiero Jaguar on it way down the food chain. At Wigram in 1965…
Fangio’s C Type
10/09/2016Following the last newsletter Ray Deaker passed onto the snoop a video link to a mountain run demonstration of “Fangio’s C Type”. Good viewing it is too. These cars were made for fun. Google “sideways in Fangio’s C type on a wet mountain road” to join that fun. But there is more to the story.…
Motor Torpedoes and Alfa Romeos
01/06/2016The Fangio’s Toys article unearthed references to a Alfa Romeo 6C marine engine used in Argentine mecanica nacional cars. More research was in order. It turned out that there were two such cars, a 1930’s Grand Prix Alfa Romeo 8C, and an Argentine national formula one. The 8C had been crashed at Buenos Aries in…
Fangio’s Toys – Objects of Research
01/06/2016The good thing about being a semi-retired chap is that there is time to do stuff for no other purpose than filling in time. Doing this newsletter for instance. But that takes research, and the prime objective of research is to identify avenues for further research. A while back, when putting the Maserati series together,…
Technical
CHASSIS STIFFNESS AND TUNING – HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?
12/08/2017Once upon a time, when race car chassis were rudimentary things and suspensions were rock hard drivers were given a very hard time. This is what Mike Hawthorn had to say about the Riley on which he cut his racing teeth. “This was my first season and also my only one on pre-war cars with…
WHO INVENTED THE MONOCOQUE?
16/05/2014The last article in this series finished with the thought that twin tube ladder chassis’ logically lead to a monocoque. But that is not how it came about. Definitions vary as to what constitutes a monocoque, but the common thread is that it is a structure in which the skin and the frame are one…
THE EDITORS WHAT IF PAGE: THE INDIANAPOLIS FERRARI’s
10/05/2014On the face of it this is a story about a disappointing trip to Indianapolis in 1952. But it also serves as an F1 chassis design progression discussion. That part of the story takes us from ladders to spaceframes over the next five years. Enzo entered top formula single seater racing in 1948. The formula…
THE EDITOR’S WHAT IF SLOT – LADDER FRAMES
12/11/2013Preamble: When I was a lad, just beginning to muck about with car stuff, ladder frames were off the radar. The popular wisdom was that they were heavy, structurally inefficient and not good at handling torsional (twisting) loads. These days I am not so sure that all that need necessarily be so. I had occasion,…