Formula 1 could be

[WANHER]

Starting I hope with many obscure cars or might be :
Autoar ex-Cisitalia 4WD project from Professor Porsche
a pure beauty but to complex to buid and to maintain
record racing : none DNS BUENOS AIRES

Record attempt with C.BUCCI at the wheel

NEXT

[WANHER]

Sacha Gordine dream car by a film producer
in 1952/53 the car stood on a boat along the Seine

NEXT ONE

[Mekola]

Originally posted by WANHER
Starting I hope with many obscure cars or might be :
Autoar ex-Cisitalia 4WD project from Professor Porsche
a pure beauty but to complex to buid and to maintain
record racing : none DNS BUENOS AIRES

Record attempt with C.BUCCI at the wheel

NEXT

Argentinian Corsa magazine published in 1994 a dossier subdivided in three parts about the story of the Porsche 360/Cisitalia 4WD/Autoar. It's so famous one photo of this car with no other than Tazio Nuvolari on the seat. Clemar Bucci (Argentinian driver) tested it during late 1952-early months 1953 near Buenos Aires. Finally the car was bought by Porsche and now is in one German Porsche museum.
I must re-read the article to develop this.

Regards, Mekola

[angst]

Gordini-Renault V-8 1969, built without the authority of Renault and subsequently scrapped when they did find out about it.

[fines]

Come to think of, the brilliant Fiat 806 that was developed and raced without the knowledge of the board. When they found out, they immediately ordered the car to be destroyed, along with its forebearers! :cry:

[Roger Clark]

Originally posted by fines
Come to think of, the brilliant Fiat 806 that was developed and raced without the knowledge of the board. When they found out, they immediately ordered the car to be destroyed, along with its forebearers! :cry:

That's the first time I'd heard that story. I thought the 806 was on display in a Turin museum.

[WANHER]

I'm sorry but the Gordini V8 ran during 1968 and 1969 season
it wasn't a very succesful engine it was developped by A. Gordini
who has usual had ideas but lack of finish
It appears first in a race in 1000 km of Monza in a Alpine Renault
A 211 and if my memory is good it was driven by M. Bianchi

[fines]

Roger, I've never been to Torino (is that the Museo Carlo Biscaretti?), but the info comes from Adriano Cimarosti who's usually quite reliable and should be aware of the Torino museum since he lives in Switzerland. I've also read something to that effect in a German magazine of 1950, will have to look that one up. Maybe the museum car is a replica?

[angst]

I'm sorry but the Gordini V8 ran during 1968 and 1969 season it wasn't a very succesful engine it was developped by A. Gordini
who has usual had ideas but lack of finish
It appears first in a race in 1000 km of Monza in a Alpine Renault
A 211 and if my memory is good it was driven by M. Bianchi

I know the sports car ran, but Gordini developed an F1 car in 1969 using the same engine.

[Vitesse]

The single example of the 806 was built to the 1.5 litre s/c GP formula and was effectively redundant at the end of 1927 when the formula changed and the minimum weight was reduced from 700kg to 550kg with no engine capacity restrictions. I'll let Doug Nye take up the story ...

"In Fiat's experimental shop the prototype 806 lay under wraps until the new year and on January 14 Guido Fornaca - Fiat's very pro-racing managing director - died. As a new regime took over under Agnelli so racing fell from favour, and then came the inexplicable order to destroy the last Grand Prix car, to destroy its engines and all existing parts, and even its detail drawings. This orgy of destruction spelled an end to Fiat's noble Grand Prix career, and their ultimate racing car became so much molten metal, bubbling in a cauldron in a Fiat foundry."

from: Motor Racing Mavericks, page 56

So, whatever might be in the Turin museum, it's certainly not the original Fiat 806!!

Nye's story of the car doesn't mention anything about it being unauthorised though - he does say that Agnelli wasn't keen on it, on the grounds that failure would reflect badly on Fiat's road cars.

[Roger Clark]

I think I've seen a picure of an 806 in the Biscaretti museum but I can't remember where, and the memory is getting weak these days. Like Vitesse, I find it difficult to believe that the 806 was unauthorised with the amount of experimentation Fiat were doing, including the two piston per cylinder two stroke. Another possible reason for their withdrawal was the loss of so many of their best engineers to the opposition. If they really did destroy all their Grand Prix cars it was a terrible waste. They were the technical leaders in Grand Prix racing during the 1920s and often before that. Following the withdrawal in 1927, they didn't appear in Grand Prix racing again for 50 years, when the cars were called Ferraris or something.

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by Roger Clark
I think ...I find it difficult to believe that the 806 was unauthorised with the amount of experimentation Fiat were doing, including the two piston per cylinder two stroke....

Was this of the same type as the Chamberlain 8, Roger, with a small piston acting as a virtual valve?

[Roger Clark]

Originally posted by Ray Bell


Was this of the same type as the Chamberlain 8, Roger, with a small piston acting as a virtual valve?

I don't thnk so, but I'm not familliar with the Chamberlain. this is the Fiat, which never appeared in pblic.

[Ray Bell]

Ah yes, Commer 'double knocker' style.... but with crankshafts instead of the wierd rockers that strange (but effective, lovely noisy and fabulous-sounding) beast had.

Strange, isn't it, that they have domed pistons, when greater efficiencies could be had with flat-topped or slightly concave ones?

For anyone wanting to see how the 'double knocker' worked, by the way, there's a gif file animation of it in action on the 'Other oddball engines' thread in the Atlas F1 Technical Forum... just use the search facility and put in Commer as the keyword, desmo as the poster and you can be as fascinated as I was... look too, at the incredible Napier Nomad on the same thread (there is an 'Oddball engines thread as well).