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CartHemmings Sports & Exotic Car columns by Karl Ludvigsen
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Roads Not Taken IV
After about a year of working for Ford of Europe in Britain I traveled back to the States on business early in 1982 to see my Ford colleagues in Dearborn. On the agenda were issues of both motor sports and governmental affairs. After a while I realized I was getting homesick for London! I'd really taken to the city with its theater, opera, dance, concerts, restaurants-and women. I was separated at the time and living in London, commuting out to Ford in Essex, so life was pretty good.
At Ford of Europe my tectonic plates shifted when Bob Lutz went back to the States to head Ford's international business. The European chairman, to whom I reported, became the former president Ed Blanch. Ed and I were oil and water, he a clean-desk man and me the opposite. I couldn't help remembering a conversation I witnessed between Lutz and Henry Ford II. "How's Ed Blanch getting on?" Ford asked. "Oh, just fine, Mr. Ford," said the loyal Lutz. "Well," Ford shook his head, "we didn't know what the hell to do with Ed in the States so we sent him over to Europe!"
I could see hard times ahead. Ed Blanch was paranoid. Knowing that Bob Lutz and I were friends as well as colleagues, he was convinced that I was calling Bob to feed him tales of Blanch misdemeanors. Later Lutz was able to tell Blanch that in fact I'd never called him. After the first business trip I took with Ed Blanch I updated my résumé. I started to think in terms of finding a way to stay in England, with or without Ford. Without was starting to look more likely.
On Friday, February 11, 1983 Blanch asked to see me. Referring to a single sheet of foolscap on his pristine desk, he told me that Ford of Europe needed to have one less vice president, one less member of the senior bonus roll. (Such were the problems of Ford in Dearborn during my time with them that no bonuses were being paid.) Ford wasn't obliged to find me a place back in the States, though I was technically on "home office" status, because I'd been hired straight into Ford of Europe. Nevertheless, said Blanch, he thought Walter Hayes might have something in mind for me. I should go see him.
The roads ahead were starting to appear. The following week I was in Dearborn to see Hayes. In charge of Public Affairs at Ford, the wily and charismatic Hayes had once thought of me as a possible successor. Now, he said, he had in mind a spot for me in product communications. That wasn't deeply attractive. I'd lived and worked in Detroit with GM; London it wasn't.
An alternative was to find a job in Europe, ideally in or near London. Though I had a bullet-proof public-affairs résumé, it didn't easily read across to British jobs. My friend Bert Young, an experienced headhunter, pointed out that they didn't pay anything like what I'd been earning. I could do better elsewhere in Europe, Bert said, but that didn't appeal to me. Nor were there obvious opportunities with Britain's auto makers. Yet I wanted to take advantage of what I'd learned at both Fiat and Ford about corporate life and lore.
I was on the brink of deciding to set up a management-consulting business in London. There was one biggish snag, however. I needed a permit to work in Britain. Ford had obtained one on the basis that I had special skills that couldn't be found in a British employee. Had I continued with Ford for four full years I would have been home free as a British resident. But I was a year short! I explored ways of keeping a link with Ford, even offering to take a step down to run the motor-sports operation, but without success.
I explored my options. I could be the UK representative of a foreign company. I still had a business in New York, Motortext Consultants Inc., which could employ me. Retired GM Styling chief Bill Mitchell said I could represent his industrial-design company in Europe, while I was starting to make connections with Malcolm Bricklin's new car-importing company, International Automobile Importers. Would my connections with them get me a work permit?
There was an alternative. If I invested £150,000 in my business, I'd be home and dry. But how could I invest as much as that in a start-up consulting company-even if I had it? Thinking-cap time. When I left the States Ford had put my household goods in storage on Long Island. Included was my complete automotive library. When I told Ford that I wanted to separate from the company in the UK, the agreement was that they would ship over my "household goods". To their credit they never blinked at the shipping cost of what amounted to a container-load of books and files.
When the shipment arrived I had it valued by expert Kenneth Ball of Autobooks. To my delight he found it-without prompting-easily worth £150,000. That was my entrée to a work permit; thanks to good work by my attorney I didn't have to restart the clock so by 1984 I had residency. The library was installed at 105-106 New Bond Street. Ludvigsen Associates Limited was born.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Issigonis and the Mini
"The cutest girls drive Minis." This struck me when I first lived in London in 1980. Whizzing hither and yon, from Islington to Chelsea, great-looking ladies clearly preferred Minis. Indeed, I later met and married a former Mini driver-although by then she'd graduated to a Renault 4.
I introduced the BMC Mini and its creator to America in the June 1960 issue of Sports Cars Illustrated. About the car I said, "This little automobile is so satisfying and delivers so much fun per cubic foot that it makes you wonder why cars have to be any bigger." The inimitable Dennis May penned our magazine's profile of its creator, Alec Issigonis, saying that "he smokes cigarettes fast and much, talks in staccato rushes but quietly and with invariable courtesy, has a love of paradox and can be epigrammatical without having to reach for his shafts."
May it was who met my flight at Heathrow on a 1961 visit. We piled into his Mini, which he commenced to fling along highways and byways, carving Mini-sized third lanes wherever possible-and impossible. I leaned over to Dennis and shouted, "Is this legal?!" It was obvious that the appearance of the Mini on Britain's roads created a whole new style of motoring.
My 1980 arrival in Britain was to take up a vice-presidency at Ford of Europe. We were preparing the Escort Mark III for launch. I soon discovered deep concern about this on the part of Ford of Britain. Ford's UK arm was acknowledged as master of fleet-car sales. Fleets accounted for a substantial chunk of its business, so it was essential that our new Escort find favor with hard-bitten British fleet buyers. Such purchasers, I soon learned, were ultra-wary about the Mark III because it had dreaded front-wheel drive, an amenity they'd come to loathe as a result of their servicing and reliability disasters with front drive BMC-style. Somehow we convinced them that we were doing it differently.
In a previous Big Three career, with General Motors in the 1960s, I found the ideas of Alec Issigonis being treated with more respect. On a European visit GM's chairman, James Roche, was intrigued by the newly launched Austin 1800. Here was a car, thought Roche, that packaged an amazing amount of space in a vehicle of modest dimensions. On his return he asked styling chief Bill Mitchell to see what kind of car he could conjure up with similar packaging. Bill never received an assignment he liked less; this wasn't his kind of automobile at all. He let the idea quietly expire.
As a Yank I'm disinclined to treat the Mini with quite the reverence that it commands in the UK. Yes, it certainly inspired other designers to look at front-wheel drive in a new way, but the configuration that everyone eventually copied was created at Turin, not Cowley or Longbridge. It was the work of Dante Giacosa in the Autobianchi Primula, this being the first modern front-drive car with the engine and gearbox placed transversely and in line with each other instead of the engine-above-gearbox package favored by Issigonis. So when I'm told that the Mini is the "most technically significant car in the history of the British motor industry" my skepticism kicks in.
In fact a good case can be made that the original Austin Seven was Britain's "most technically significant car". Such was its novelty and efficiency that it acquired license builders in America, France and Germany and inspired car makers in Japan. Though it was introduced in 1922, the Seven was considered by Austin for production after World War II.
I'm a huge fan of an earlier Issigonis design, the Morris Minor. It's one of the British motor industry's great tragedies that between Nuffield management's dislike of the Minor-Lord Nuffield likened its looks to a "poached egg"-and its creator's lack of interest in improving this superb little car it suffered from a serious lack of TLC. The same could be said of the Austin/Morris 1100, an excellent small car that found Transatlantic friends as the automatic-transmission Austin America. Packed with positive attributes, the 1100's many virtues would have flourished had its few faults been dealt with.
Alec Issigonis's genius as an innovator was beyond question. If he had the faculty of convincing others of the applicability of that genius to automobiles large as well as small, that was their problem, not his. Great focus and drive were with him all his life, as Dennis May wrote: "Perhaps incapable of true relaxation, Issigonis seemingly isn't happy unless he's as busy as a valve spring. He is an habitual worrier and practically never gets BMC business off his mind." Here was the secret of the engineer's success: a steadfast commitment to the achievement of his goals in his manner, untrammeled by peripheral considerations. No conventional manager could aspire to be his equal.
Although its subject was the offspring of a Greek father and German mother, Alec Issigonis's is a very British story. It's told in fascinating detail in a recent book by Jonathan Wood subtitled "The Man Who Made the Mini". Like the author's superb earlier work about car making in Britain, Wheels of Misfortune, it illuminates afresh the victories and defeats of a great national motor industry in a manner that should be of profound interest to all in the UK and many abroad.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Roads Not Taken III
John DeLorean! The most charismatic man in the American auto industry was starting his own car company and I had a chance to get in on the ground floor. Was this a road I should take?
Based on my experience with Fiat Motors of North America in the late 1970s I'd told John that an auto company's communications with its audiences-advertising and public relations-should ideally be under a single manager, not split as they usually are, in order to gain greater coordinated impact. To my considerable surprise in 1979 John offered me that very job with the DeLorean Motor Company.
Of course I had questions. To whom would I report? John said that he was bringing in Bill Haddad, a prominent investigative journalist and well-placed Washington insider from the Kennedy years, as his vice president for planning and communications. I would be working under Haddad, he explained, but that shouldn't be seen as a constraint.
Where would I be based? Haddad was with John in their Park Avenue penthouse suite of offices. That would be ideal for communications but another man with whom I'd be working, head of sales Dick Brown, was ensconced in California from which he showed no signs of moving. And the DMC factory was in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I thought this was a less-than-optimum command structure for a new auto company.
While I was considering this another road presented itself. At home I was still on the mailing list for Ford's press releases. I opened one which announced that Walter Hayes, legendary British head of public affairs for Ford of Europe, was transferring to Dearborn. I realized that this would create a vacuum at Brentwood in Essex where Ford's European operations were headquartered.
I had a first-class contact at Ford of Europe. Its chairman, Bob Lutz, had been a colleague at GM Overseas Operation in New York in the 1960s. I'd kept in touch with Bob through his later moves to Opel, GM France, BMW and then Ford. Thanks to my spell with Fiat I had the credentials to be taken seriously by Ford. I wrote to Bob, pointing out that a friend of his had experience in the areas that Hayes was covering at Brentwood.
Soon I had a call from Lutz. He was coming to Detroit in January of 1980, he said. Could I meet him there for a talk? I flew to the wintry city where we had dinner at the Hyatt across Southfield Expressway from the Ford headquarters. Lutz said that when Walter Hayes heard of my availability he said, "Why, he's the American equivalent of Paul Frère." Although a typical Hayes exaggeration this was at least a positive view from someone whose approval was essential. With the distinct feeling that a job offer would be forthcoming I flew back to New York.
I had to let DeLorean know I was having talks with Ford about a job in England. "You don't want to be going over there," he said. "When the next war starts that's the first place the bombs will be falling!" Pretty soon the offer arrived for a senior post in public-affairs product communications with Ford of Europe. I had to decide which road to take.
I bounced my options off some friends and colleagues. Pelham Manor, New York neighbor Harry Newton said, "Well, Karl, you can be sure there'll always be a Ford Motor Company." I also spoke to retired GM styling chief Bill Mitchell, a mentor with whom I'd stayed in touch. He left me in no doubt about his views. "If you go to work for that son of a bitch DeLorean," he snorted, "I'll never speak to you again."
I pushed the Ford button and the wheels started turning at Brentwood. I called John to tell him of my decision and described the job I'd accepted. "Why, that's not good enough for you, Karl," he said. "You've been around, you've paid your dues. Tell them that isn't good enough and that they should offer you something more in keeping with your experience and ability."
Here was surprising guidance from the man who still wanted me to join his team. Was John right? What would happen if I now told Ford that I was having second thoughts? I decided to find out. I took a deep breath, called Bob Lutz and said that after all I wasn't happy with the offer, that it would take rather more to get me to join Ford of Europe. Bob sounded frosty-cool at this news but said that he'd discuss it and get back to me.
Soon I heard from Ford's personnel people. The Hayes empire would be divided up into two vice-presidencies, they said. One would be public relations. The other would be governmental affairs and motor sports. That was to be mine, at a senior salary level. It encompassed our political assessment and lobbying throughout Europe and our development, entry and sale of competition cars and parts from two independent operations in Britain and Germany.
That's the job for which I reported for duty at Brentwood in mid-February of 1980. Astonishingly DeLorean hadn't given up. He'd bid to double Ford's salary offer. But by then I was committed to the Ford road-thanks to the best possible advice from the remarkable man who wanted me to work for him.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Roads Not Taken II
When I left GM and went free-lance in 1967 I had another iron in the fire. With a Ferrari-obsessed colleague I'd started a company, Formula 1 Enterprises, to import and distribute car equipment, mainly from Italy where Ferrari racing director Eugenio Dragoni had excellent contacts. We were the first to import Gianpiero Moretti's Momo steering wheels. We had Sebring mirrors-also used on the G. P. Ferraris-Campagnolo road wheels, Zagato seats and other goodies.
To the end of the 1960s I tried to balance an involvement with Formula 1 with my writing, which was tricky to say the least. I even took on the management of Chevrolet's road-test cars in the New York area. For this I established another entity, Mobility Systems Company, which had a contract with Chevy's ad agency Campbell-Ewald. I think this was the very beginning of the subcontracting of such services, which is now commonplace in the car industry.
In all this I had the help of Judy Stropus, famed as a racing timer and scorer while also a first-class legal secretary. In fact we continued to work together during my free-lance years, Judy coming to my house once a week to deal with correspondence. Meanwhile we set up another company, Autosphere, to wholesale less-exotic car accessories. When the economy turned down at the end of the 1960s both companies started hurting.
Yet another string to our bow was Formula 1 Systems, which developed and sold advanced du Pont Freon fire-extinguishing systems. This was right up my street because I'd been active in the field, forming the Motor Racing Safety Society. My ideas were incorporated in some of the first fire bottles for drag racing. But I was spinning my wheels, not doing justice to either of my careers, so I resigned from these companies and concentrated on writing.
Though I'd settled happily into free-lancing, in the 1970s some other roads seemed inviting. One was an idea of my own. I was all too aware that the effects of weather on all forms of transport were costly in terms of their effects on safety, timekeeping and equipment. My thought was to establish the Transportation Weather Institute to carry out independent study in this field to mitigate weather's impact on all forms of transportation to the extent possible. I bounced the notion off my former GM colleague George Rowe, who was a planner and forecaster at Eastern Airlines, but we never made headway with it. Still a good idea!
I kept in touch with many old friends at GM, among whom was Corvette chief engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov. He contacted me with surprising news. He foresaw an opportunity to move to Opel in Germany to take up a high engineering post at that GM subsidiary. He had in mind bringing along a side-kick, namely me, to work with him. This would have been exciting-a real change of scene-but the post never materialized for Zora.
Out of the blue in 1978 I was contacted by Fiat Motors of North America, importer of Fiats and Lancias. They were looking for an Executive Vice President for Corporate Affairs to take charge of relations with the press, governments, dealers and customers. Legal affairs were also in the portfolio. I hit it off with FMNA's CEO, Claudio Ferrari-no relation to Enzo-so I decided to return to the industry in an interesting capacity.
I recall sitting down with the personnel lady to review the perks and benefits. "These are the various holidays," she said, taking me through the calendar.
"You mean these are days that I don't have to work but I still get paid?" I said in wonderment. "How long has this been going on?" There's no such thing as holidays in the life of a free-lance writer.
I added Volvo's Bill Baker to our strength to handle p. r. and Tony Ciminera to look after dealers, customers and clubs-a super team. This was the first time in my life that I had a crew to manage; it was a revelation to discover that I didn't have to do everything myself. We did some good work, including providing a security blanket for Ferrari fanatics when FMNA took over importation and distribution of the Maranello product line.
Lancia was struggling, however, and with the failure in the marketplace of the Strada, with which we'd hoped to wean our dealers away from sports cars, Fiat wasn't doing much better in 1979. When Claudio Ferrari wanted to slim down his staff I told him I was the supernumerary, not my people. From headquarters in Turin came an offer from Fiat to work in their press operations. This was an inviting road; I could have part of my salary paid in Switzerland, they said. But I was pretty sure an American wouldn't be able to progress very far in hyper-Italian Fiat.
Anyway I was weighing an intriguing proposition from John DeLorean. In my free-lance years I'd been an advisor to John, writing the brochure for his consulting company and setting up meetings with the Italian stylists he was assessing for his DMC-12. Now he was in New York, where we met from time to time. John picked up on something I'd said to offer me a sensational position with his DeLorean Motor Company. At the end of 1979 I was giving serious consideration to taking this adventurous road.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Roads Not Taken I
When I arrived as a freshman at MIT in 1952 I parked my MG TC in a spot at the end of the dormitory. I didn't realize that this was the parking area for members of a fraternity, Delta Psi, better known as the Number 6 Club. One of its members, Henrik Bull, put a note on the car suggesting that I call in to talk about cars. I did so and met some fellow enthusiasts. I'd missed rush week for the fraternities so the upshot was that I pledged belatedly for Delta Psi and became a frat boy at MIT.
This was a turning point. If I'd stayed in the dorm I would have hunkered down and concentrated on my studies instead of relishing the social life-girls!-of a Boston college fraternity. Preserving my previous good study habits I'd have graduated from MIT as a mechanical engineer and gone on to a career as…who knows?
At Number 6 I met Stefan Habsburg, a real car enthusiast. We were both interested in design in general, the result being that we kicked around the idea of starting a magazine called Function, dealing with all aspects of industrial design, a profession in which we were both interested. When Stefan was hired away from MIT to work at GM Styling Staff this idea fell by the wayside. So did classmate Albert Hahn's idea of an editorial job for me at Scientific American.
A year or so later I found myself at GM, in the summer of 1956, in the Research Studio with Habsburg. At the age of 22 I was set fair to begin a career as a designer at GM, where the potential not only seemed but also was unlimited. Burning a hole in my pocket, however, was an offer from editor John Christy to join Sports Cars Illustrated as its technical editor. This was hugely appealing, involving as it did the whole world of cars. I jumped ship and returned to New York to join SCI.
I had no choice in my next assignment, which was bring drafted by the US Army. There I had the option of an officer's commission, which I rejected because it meant staying in for three instead of two years. Another decision loomed when I completed my training as a radio repairman. Finishing first in my class I had the choice of assignments in White Sands, the Far East and Europe. I picked Europe, which turned out to be Germany.
Coming out of the Army, my first thought was to return to Pratt Institute to get a degree by topping up my mixed bag of credits from four years of college. To my immense surprise, however, my father said he saw no reason why I should do that. "Your career seems pretty well launched to me," he said. "You don't really need to go back to school." So I accepted an offer to rejoin SCI, this time as its editor.
As I've mentioned before the two years at SCI and then Car and Driver ended when I decided to accept an offer to rejoin General Motors, this time in public relations. The alternative Ziff-David offered was to move up to the post of publisher of the magazine. This meant more to do with advertising, which wasn't my bag. After two years in Detroit working with Bill Mitchell I accepted a transfer to New York as press officer at GM Overseas Operations.
While in New York several opportunities surfaced. In Europe with the Army I'd met Harry Mundy, ace engine designer, in his capacity as technical editor of Britain's The Autocar. In 1964 Harry decided to return to industry with Jaguar, where he helped create their new V-12 engine. Mundy said that he had me in mind as his successor at The Autocar. While this had considerable appeal, I was reluctant to take up the post while I was still hopeful of a future at GM.
The same applied to another offer that was considerably more interesting. I was contacted by Mercedes-Benz North America about joining them in charge of public relations. Here was an important post in a company that I greatly respected and about which I was knowledgeable. A high point was being interviewed for the job by Heinz Hoppe, the company's dynamic head of export operations. Here again, however, I was still hoping for a future at GM.
In 1967, when I had the chance to join GM Styling, I took the decision to leave GM instead. This surprised some people because I was one of the youngest executives on the senior bonus roll. I was offered a post in a new public affairs department within PR, which bid fair to offer high visibility among the company's senior nabobs and consequent promotion. But when I thought about what those people did all day, I decided that it wasn't for me.
My reasoning in casting my lot with a free-lance career was that I had some ability to describe technical and scientific matters in ways that people could understand. I set this against the certainty that the next twenty years, in the heart of my career, would bring dramatic new technological developments that would need explaining. While it didn't work out exactly that way, my forecast turned out to be sound enough. I just go so involved with cars that I had few chances to diversify.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Starting with Sting Ray
How was I to know what would happen after I wrote a story on the racing Corvette Sting Ray? When I watched it compete at Bridgehamprton late in 1960 I was stunned by the looks and performance of this silver racer. "If it had a three-pointed star on its nose," I thought, "people would be falling over themselves to praise it." Fielded by GM Styling chief Bill Mitchell with Dean Bedford, Jr. as team manager and Dr. Dick Thompson as driver, the Sting Ray easily clinched the SCCA C-Modified title in 1960.
I gave the Sting Ray feature treatment, with cutaway by Clarence LaTourette, in the March 1961 issue of Sports Cars Illustrated-our last under that title. We were the only magazine to tell the Sting Ray story. This was the last thing on my mind later that year when I was invited to lunch by Warren Jollymore, who ran GM's New York public relations office. Jolly was the quintessential PR man. A genial, avuncular character, he was exemplary of the many professionals who peopled GM's Public Relations Staff in those days.
After he joined GM in 1953 Jolly had served in the PR trenches with the colorful creator of the styling profession at GM, Harley Earl. He recalled one field trip he'd made with Earl. "Now Jolly," Earl cautioned, "I don't want to make too much of a fuss on this trip. I'd like to keep it low-key." When GM's DC-3 landed it disgorged the extremely tall Earl, wearing a broad-brimmed sombrero and an outfit somewhere between crimson and orange. "Low-key" wasn't in Earl's lexicon.
Jollymore had startling news. Bill Mitchell was putting pressure on the P. R. Staff to hire someone who had some gasoline in his blood to work with him and his people. "You have a lot of guys who can mix martinis and throw parties," Bill said to fellow GM Vice President Tony DeLorenzo, "but nobody my guys and I can talk to, nobody on my wave length." When DeLorenzo asked Mitchell for for-instances, he mentioned Wally Parks, hot-rodder extraordinaire and NHRA founder, and yours truly.
The Sting Ray story had made a good impression, Warren Jollymore told me. Mitchell was aware that I'd worked for Styling for a few months in the supper of 1956. In fact I'd fibbed to their personnel people. I told them that I was going back to university whereas actually I was joining SCI as technical editor. There was a saying that GM never hired anybody twice, but it looked like they were willing to make an exception in my case-in spite of my little white lie.
Her was an interesting opportunity. I hugely enjoyed editing Car and Driver, but a certain amount of repetition was setting in. Ahead in 1961 another Le Mans, another Monaco G. P. and another Geneva Show. At GM I would be working for DeLorenzo's P. R. Staff but on assignment to Mitchell and Styling. I decided to give it a try. Jollymore arranged for me to be hired into the New York office and then transferred to Detroit so that GM could pick up my moving expenses.
With the deal came two offices-one on the GM Building and the other at Styling in top managers' row, complete with electrically operated drapes. I didn't kid myself that this, the most stunning office imaginable, was really mine. But there was a certain amount of job flexibility in being between offices.
I got off to the worst possible start. Joe Callahan, ace reporter for Automotive News, said he'd like to interview some of Styling's people to prepare a major profile on this organization that was leading the industry with great-looking cars. I set up the interviews and Joe got some good copy on Bill's studio chiefs which he published in the first of a multi-part series.
Bill Mitchell called me into his office, pointed to the issue and said, "This is exactly the kind of thing"-was I about to be praised?-"that I don't want." For perfectly good reasons, not least their exposure to the appeals of competitors, Bill didn't want chapter and verse published about his key people. I reported back to my boss Tom Groehn, who had been with GM since 1943. Tom went to bat for me, asking Joe Callahan to come in to try to persuade him to spike his later installments. Nothing doing, said Joe. This guy Ludvigsen set up the interviews and that was that.
This was an eye-opener for me. Suddenly journalists were no longer my pals, my colleagues. They weren't going to help me out of tough spots. Indeed, we were going to be at odds on many matters. I had to check more carefully before opening our doors to reporters, making sure that what we were releasing would be of real benefit to Mitchell, Styling and GM.
Somehow Bill and I got past this awkward initiation. In fact we worked well together for the next three years. Sensationally, as well, one of the perks of my job was the chance to demonstrate the Sting Ray to visiting dignitaries. Mitchell liked to show them that Styling Staff was more than renderings and clay models, that it believed in dynamic machinery as well. A few fast laps of the Saarinen-designed lake at the Tech Center usually did the job.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Farewell Phil
"Now I really feel like the world champion!" That was Phil Hill's pleasing comment when he sat down to lunch in Bill Mitchell's executive dining room in GM's Styling Staff late in 1961. Enzo Ferrari cheated Phil of the adulation that was his due by withdrawing his team from the U. S. Grand Prix at Watkins Glen after the Californian had clinched the championship at Monza. At the time Enzo was being henpecked by his wife Laura about expenses. He saw this as a saving that would placate her.
A tremendous racing enthusiast, Bill Mitchell extended to Hill an invitation to lunch at Styling Staff. This was always a special occasion with eight top people from Styling joining Bill and his honored guest around a circular table that has a built-in lazy susan which each diner can rotate electrically to bring condiments to his place by the press of a button.
At the time I was a freshly minted member of GM's Public Relations Staff, assigned to Styling and other Tech Center Staffs. I'd just arrived from Car and Driver, where it had been my very great pleasure to follow the progress of the 1961 season through our reports and photos from Jesse Alexander. In our January 1962 issue-my last-we published an interview I conducted with Phil about his season.
The interview turned out to be controversial, because Phil was critical of his team-mate Ricardo Rodriguez. "He's damn brave, that's all I can say," he said. "I know he's a skilled driver, but to do the things he's doing you've got to be 'way out and if he lives I'll be surprised." Phil also hinted that Rodriguez had contributed to the crash at Monza in 1961 that killed Wolfgang von Trips and 14 spectators. Hill's remark foreshadowed Ricardo's death in a Lotus only a year later when trying to seize the pole in his home-town Mexican Grand Prix.
My journalistic contacts in Europe came in handy when we organized the lunch for Phil at Styling. The great German photographer Julius Weitmann sent some of his stunning images of Hill in sports and G. P. Ferraris. These were vastly enlarged by Styling's experts and displayed not only in the dining room but also in the building's entrance atrium next to a checkered-flag motif with a bold number 1 in red. Mitchell's silver Stingray racer completed a striking ensemble.
It was an honor and a pleasure for us to break bread with America's newly minted champion, then at the peak of his powers. Much was made at the time of his downbeat look after the Italian G. P. that saw the death of his team-mate von Trips, rival for the championship. "There weren't any tears at Monza," Phil told me. "I felt sad, but there weren't any tears. After all, how would you feel if you'd been through this plenty of times before? Would you burst into tears? That was just something for the press to say, that's all."
In 1958 I followed Hill as a young reporter in Europe, courtesy of the U. S. Army. This was a big year for Phil with his win at Le Mans, his bravura performance in the 500 Miles of Monza driving a rampaging 4.1-liter single-seater Ferrari against the Indy cars, plus his end-of-season Grand Prix rides that helped secure the world championship for Britain's Mike Hawthorn.
Later in the early years of the Can-Am series I reported on Hill's drives in Jim Hall's revolutionary Chaparral 2E. In 1966 Jim Hall campaigned the Chaparral 2D coupe in international sports-car races with Phil and Jo Bonnier as drivers. Their first European appearance was at the daunting Nürburgring for the 1,000-kilometer race.
As usual the laid-back Texans arrived at the German track with their race car on a trailer behind a pickup truck and went about their business with a lethargic casualness that frustrated the impatient Hill. "Don't you guys realize this is the god-damn Nürburgring?" exclaimed the man who five years earlier was the first to lap its 14.2 miles in less than nine minutes. Hill and Bonnier went on to win sensationally with their automatic-transmission car.
When I was with Fiat in 1978 I accompanied a Road & Track team to Italy to drive and photograph some of our historic cars. Their team numbered editor Tony Hogg, photographer John Lamm and Phil Hill. Phil was both congenial and professional as we inspected various vintage Fiats and Lancias. That October we also did some driving around northern Italy that included a stop at a roadside restaurant, Café Milano, where Hill had dined in May of 1958. Both he and the proprietor were delighted to find Phil's "best wishes" inscribed in the visitors' book.
My last personal contact with Phil was in 1997 when I asked him to write a foreword to my book about Stirling Moss. In it Hill recalled "that cold, blustery Easter Monday in the spring of 1950 when I first saw him race his Cooper at Goodwood." Phil was then in England to attend service schools for British-car mechanics. Did the talented Californian come a long way from those years? Did he represent to the world the very best of American talent and sportsmanship? You better believe it! And, as Phil would often add for emphasis, "You know what I mean?"
Phil Hill left us on August 28, 2008.
- Karl Ludvigsen
How Junior Grew and Grew
In 1956 Count Giovanni Lurani-Cernuschi had an idea. "Johnny" Lurani, as the tall, elegant Italian was known to his friends around the world, was passionate about cars and motor sports. For more than 30 years he'd raced and broken records in Europe and abroad. Now he was the publisher-editor of an auto magazine and an FIA motorcycle-racing official. Perceiving a need, his idea was to create a new class of racing cars.
In those days Formula 1 was for 2.5-liter engines, supported by Formula 2 for cars with 1.5-liter engines. Below that was a mish-mash of various national racing categories like the old Formula 3 for 500 cc cars, popular in Britain, and Italy's 750 cc single-seater class. Could there be a more useful bottom rung on the single-seater road-racing ladder?
To meet this need Johnny Lurani took an initiative that led to a conclave of Italy's sporting commission on November 30, 1956 at which two ideas for a "starter formula" were reviewed. One was for an Italian version of American midget racing. Although it didn't fly, its proposed name "Junior" appealed. The other, put forward by the magazine Auto Italiana, required the use of many production-car parts and set a top engine-size limit of 1,100 cc.
Based on the latter proposal, rules were drawn up for an Italian "Formula Junior". The limit of 1,100 cc was adopted with a sliding scale of minimum weights that let smaller-engined cars weigh less. With both Lurani and Auto Italiana behind the initiative Italy's builders got busy, most using the Fiat 1100 pushrod four.
The first Formula Junior race took place on April 20, 1958 at Frascati, followed by a race five days later at Monza. Roberto Lippi won both in a Stanguellini. Lippi won again at Vallelunga on May 1st and a fourth time, leading a field of twenty, in a race before the 500 Miles of Monza on June 29th. Winning a few more races, Lippi and Stanguellini were dominant in the first Formula Junior mini-season whose Golden Jubilee we are celebrating this year.
Attending the 500 Miles of Monza in 1958, I saw and photographed these first Formula Juniors. After a visit to Vittorio Stanguellini's shop in Modena I filed a story to Sports Cars Illustrated on the new formula and its leading exponent. This appeared over six precious pages in the May 1959 issue of SCI, complete with a superb Clarence LaTourette cutaway of the Stanguellini. By then the formula had been officially adopted by the FIA.
That issue appeared about the same time I was mustered out of the Army and returned to New York where I became SCI's editor. I was heartily in favor of Formula Junior, which I saw as offering tremendous fun at moderate cost, and started promoting it heavily in my pages.
Our next big blast for the formula was in our March 1960 issue. "Is it dangerous?" I asked rhetorically, "Not by any normal standards. Does it feel 'different'? Not from any good racing sports car. Is it difficult to drive? Quite the contrary. Is it fun? Formula Junior is a four-alarm ball-at least from the driver's seat of a Taraschi."
I proceeded to give my impressions of a wet drive in the cramped cockpit of a Fiat-powered Taraschi, which I found "a heart-warming kind of car to drive". This was the beginning of a fruitful relationship with Great Neck, New York's Martin Biener. Backed by the family's Pontiac dealership, Marty Biener was selling Fiats, Lancias and Alfa Romeos. Though he missed out on the Stanguellinis, which Alfred Momo was importing, and the Oscas brought in by Luigi Chinetti, Marty locked up all the other Italian Junior builders.
Happily Marty Biener had no objection to promoting his cars through our pages. We featured three of them on our September 1960 cover using Irv Dolin's striking overhead shot. Inside my lead story described my drives in Volpini, Wainer and Dagrada Juniors-the first two at Lime Rock and the last at Bridgehampton. I liked the front-engined Volpini, built on the Stanguellini pattern, with more room in it than the rear-engined Wainer-both with modified Fiat fours.
The Dagrada was seriously exciting with 100 horsepower from its much-modified Lancia Appia vee-four. Its engine, I said, "winds with a sharp, crackling rasp that can be heard and recognized all the way around a race track." With no power at all below 4,500 rpm, above that it "comes wildly, violently alive", I discovered. And this at Bridgehampton, one of my favorite tracks.
We kept the fire burning under the Juniors, in June 1960 publishing a test of the Lotus that was to dominate the class and highlighting home-built cars in July 1960. We'd become Car and Driver in August 1961 when we featured California's Dolphin Junior on the cover with an ingenious split view that showed it both clothed and naked. Cutaways inside revealed the Lola, Bourgeault and rear-engined Dagrada Juniors as well as the Dolphin.
In 1961 Harry Morrow's Formula Junior Guide listed an astonishing 64 builders of Juniors in eight countries-and he missed quite a few. The hugely successful formula was in effect through 1963, after which it was replaced by Formula 3 for one-liter cars. Junior though the category was, it made a big contribution to the sport and to the early careers of many racing champions.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Tatra Tales
Journalist Gordon Wilkins wrote that "although it has an impressive performance, it produces in the driver the uneasy exhilaration which may be got from shampooing a lion." Consumer advocate Ralph Nader called it the only car that was less safe than the much-oft unjustly-maligned Corvair. The German Army was said to have barred its officers from driving it, lest their numbers be diminished even more rapidly than World War II was already managing.
How are we to evaluate these harsh estimations of the Type 87 Tatra? I found a good assessment to be 14 years of ownership of just such a car. Why did I buy a Tatra T87 from the Honda dealer to whom it had been traded for two motorcycles? I'd always nursed a passion for the innovative experiments of the 1930s with streamlined rear-engined cars. Burney, Stout, Tjaarda, Porsche, Fuller, Bel Geddes, Ledwinka and Schjolin were only the best-known of the many adventurous designers and engineers who saw the future of the automobile in rear engines and advanced aerodynamics.
Ledwinka was 59 when the T87 was introduced at the Prague Auto Salon in the autumn of 1937. Engineer Erich Übelacker worked under Ledwinka to create the astonishingly aerodynamic forms of the T87 and its predecessor the T77 (He had a hankering for sevens.). Before he left to join Steyr in 1936, Übelacker completed the upgrading of the first model to the T77a and the design and initial proving of the T87.
Tatra's T87 was enthusiastically welcomed by the German high command as a big, fast, comfortable courier that seemed tailor-made for the four-lane Autobahns that Fritz Todt's engineers were building throughout the Greater Reich. Todt himself owned and was driven in one, according to Tatra historians Ivan Margolius and John G. Henry. It was one of the more expensive cars of the day, selling in Germany for RM8,450. A 2½-liter 6-cylinder Opel Kapitän was less than half as costly at RM3,975.
Shorter and lighter than the more cumbersome T77, the T87 was the first Tatra to combine air cooling with a chain-driven single overhead camshaft for each cylinder bank, opening vee-inclined valves through rocker arms. Each aluminum cylinder head was individually cast. Built like a light-aircraft engine, it looked like one when the big rear deck was unlocked and lifted. From its 3.0 liters it developed 74 bhp at 3,500 rpm.
Modest though this power seems today, its V-8 was capable of speeding the T87 to 96 mph with standard tires and 103 mph with special high-speed tires. This was because the T87 not only looked aerodynamic, it was aerodynamic. A measurement of a drag coefficient of 0.24 made contemporaneously on a one-fifth-scale model seemed too low to be true and indeed was. When an actual T87-Hans Ledwinka's personal car-was tested in the big Volkswagen wind tunnel in 1979 it was found to have a coefficient of drag of Cd=0.36, still a stunningly low figure for the years in which it was built. Most cars then had a Cd well over 0.50.
Tatra's production of cars and trucks was integrated into those of the Third Reich's wartime vehicle sector, the rugged and fast T87 being seen as an useful addition to Germany's military capability. Among other applications the Luftwaffe was assigned one as an experimental vehicle. A military police unit that served in Italy and Yugoslavia maintained a fleet of T87s. Production of the T87 continued through the war, without interruption, to 1950. In all, 3,056 were made.
Made in 1947, my Type 87 was externally indistinguishable from the original of a decade earlier, apart from some ex post facto bumpers. It was said to have been resident in the United States for many years after being imported by the novelist John Steinbeck. Later owned by a motorcycle enthusiast who had no difficulty coping with an engine overhaul, it had clearly been driven far and fast.
Piloting the T87 produces a concatenation of impressions. Contrary to popular opinion there is some vision through the rear louvers-though an outside mirror is essential. Its rack-and-pinion steering is sublime-light, direct, precise as a fine machine tool. Yet its gear shift is redolent of an earlier era with its long, deliberate travel, distinctly notchy gate and absence of constant-mesh gearing in first and reverse.
The T87's performance is impressive. First and second gears are relatively short, well suited to hilly terrain. Sixty miles per hour is easily exceeded in third. The big Tatra cruises comfortably at any reasonable highway speed. And its top-speed claim was reinforced by the timing of a rebuilt T87 at a two-way average of 102 mph in Australia. The same car accelerated from rest to 50 mph in only 10 seconds, better than the 18 seconds recorded by Vauxhall's test of a war-weary vehicle.
Handling? Damped in rebound only-and firmly-the T87 copes brilliantly with a wide range of surfaces. Wet roads want watching but with sensible driving the Tatra is a pleasure to handle. And I experienced it at its worst: a rear-tire blowout at speed on the Connecticut Thruway! Substantial yaw angles were reached but, thanks to the T87's high polar moment of inertia and quick steering, I managed to gather it up and come safely to rest. So, I have shampooed the lion and lived to tell of it.
- Karl Ludvigsen
The Hubris Hazard
I've just come back from the Goodwood Festival of Speed. It lived up to its name with exciting machinery and the world's best drivers. Not so festive, however, was the experience of Mike O'Driscoll, the newly minted managing director of Jaguar Land Rover, the former Ford property recently sold by the Blue Oval to Tata of India.
Jaguar had a good idea. O'Driscoll would drive up the gentle slope of the Goodwood hillclimb in a historic bronze-hued XK120 coupe, the second right-hand-drive coupe produced. Fitted with a special Le Mans fuel tank, in August of 1952 it was driven on the banked track at Montlhéry in France at speeds of better than 100 mph by Stirling Moss among others to set nine speed records including four international marks. Still wearing the dust from its exploits, Jaguar LWK707 was a star of the subsequent London show and later at Paris.
Now XK120 coupe LWK707 is in the body shop for major repairs. On his first practice run up the Goodwood hill O'Driscoll left the road and hit something solid. He was evacuated to hospital for a checkup while the poor Jaguar, severely shunted for the first time in its 57 years, was hauled away in abject humiliation.
This reminded me of a much less public but no less mortifying incident on my own turf. When I was with Fiat Motors of North America in the late 1970s we imported two Fiat 131 Abarth rally cars to compete in SCCA national rallies with Alitalia backing. To celebrate this initiative with our staff at Fiat's posh Montvale, New Jersey headquarters we brought one car and its experienced rally driver to the site to give rides on the roadways around the building.
I made one point absolutely clear: no one on our staff would drive the precious race-prepared Fiat. Rides only were allowed. But for our service manager the temptation was too great. Somehow he wangled his way into the driver's seat. You guessed it-he crashed it. Just what we didn't need: repairs before we even started the campaign.
In my Ford days I had an unhappy experience of my own. A tradition in Germany was-and may still be-an "Academic" race meeting at Hockenheim at the end of the season. It was customary for interested executives of the auto companies to drive their race machinery at the track in a series of laps that were timed but without acknowledging a "winner" as such.
At the end of the 1980 and '81 seasons Bob Lutz and I took part in the "Academic". The cars were Ford's sensational Turbo Capris, prepared by Zakspeed. They had turbocharged Cosworth-based four-cylinder engines set into a tubular aluminum chassis clad in Capri-like bodywork with suitable wings and spoilers. Ultra-light with some 500 horsepower, these were serious racing machines.
Nineteen-eighty went well. The Zakspeed guys were happy with the way I put the pedal down in the 1.4-liter version of the Capri and improved my lap times at Hockenheim. Nineteen-eighty-one was another story. The Capri had a hand wheel that controlled the boost. When I started out I was so preoccupied with driving the car that I didn't spot that the boost was excessive. Had I done so I could have dialed back the pressure-but I didn't.
The result was one fried Turbo Capri four. When I okayed Zakspeed's invoice for the repairs I said that at those prices they really should give me the destroyed engine to display in my office. I wasn't entirely kidding. The day at Hockenheim didn't get a lot better. I stepped into one of our race-prepared Escorts, only to have flames burst from the hood. Not my fault this time, but not a lot of fun.
I wasn't the only executive to come unstuck in the "Academic" races. All the top men at Porsche rate themselves good drivers, which accounts for the excellence of their cars. In 1990 Porsche's board member for engineering was especially enthusiastic driver Ulrich Bez. He arranged a private test session to warm up for the "Academic". Hitting a wall, he cracked a vertebra. Bez chaired his next board-level product meeting at Weissach while wearing a surgical corset.
Of course there are excellent drivers among the motor industry's top ranks. Ulrich Bez is one of them. Now running Aston Martin, he takes part in the Le Mans Classic races with co-drivers of the class of Stirling Moss and also competes in the 24 Hours of the Nürburgring with his company's cars. Bob Lutz too is a first-class driver. He showed terrific consistency in the "Academic" lap times.
Another engineer and industry chief who could drive was Ferdinand Porsche. He won hillclimbs with cars of his own design and led his Austro Daimler team to a one-two-three victory in the 1910 Prince Heinrich Trophy. Porsche even test-drove his mid-engined Auto Union Grand Prix car in 1934 at the age of 59. On the road he was a take-no-prisoners terror.
Porsche was the reason why I was at Goodwood. There I joined with Ernst Piëch, Ferdinand Porsche's eldest grandson, to launch our new book about Porsche's early life and work titled-appropriately enough-Genesis of Genius. Ernst has had one of Porsche's 1910 team Austro Daimlers magnificently restored. He drove it up the hill with great confidence and aplomb. It seems to run in the family.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Travels in the Land of Nod
"Clunk clunk!" That's the sound I felt as much as heard, two impacts in quick succession. I was at the wheel of my MG TC. It was dark. I suddenly remembered I was somewhere in upstate Massachusetts, heading east toward Boston to resume my studies at MIT. Next to me was my friend Ben Dysart, clutching his ukulele. He looked at me in some bemusement. What was happening?
I pulled to the verge and stopped. We got out, walked around the MG. All seemed well. But then I took a closer look at the knock-off nuts on the left-hand side. Both had scrapes and scratches. The worst of them, which needed to be replaced, is in front of me as I write.
What had happened? We got back in. With no traffic on this one-way stretch of two-lane at this ungodly hour I reversed down the asphalt. Soon on the left we saw two concrete posts, flanking a culvert. With both driver and passenger sound asleep, the TC had gently veered off toward the left and just clipped the two posts with its knock-offs, waking us up.
I was reminded of this incident by the recent experience of an Irish singer named Tommy Fleming. Hailed in his homeland as one of Ireland's biggest singing stars, Fleming was booked for appearances on a string of radio stations. In one day he drove from Cork to Carlow, from there to Limerick and on to Galway, then to Sligo. He was headed home to Ballina when he dozed off and veered off the road-straight into a tree.
Fleming was knocked out. When he came to his car was on fire. Luckily he was able to get out. "I got up and in a daze began walking," said Tommy. "The car blew up twenty minutes after I got out of it. It all seems surreal when I look back on it because so many things happened that could have killed me." What Tommy Fleming thought was whiplash turned out to be a broken vertebra that put him in a brace for four months.
Sitting in my MG in the dead of night on a deserted highway in Massachusetts I felt pretty surreal as well. Like Fleming I could just as easily have piled straight into those posts. With no seat belts or air bags the result would have been certain death or disablement. Someone, it seemed, had decided that I should be saved for another day.
In spite of this near-disaster I continued to reckon that all-night driving was one of my strengths. I carried on commuting between my home in Michigan and schools in the East, some 800 miles, in straight-through drives in those days before Interstates. I shrugged away the "clunk clunk" incident as a one-off and persevered with marathon motoring.
In the summer of 1956 I was working at GM Styling Staff in the Technical Center at Warren, Michigan. As wheels I had a white Alfa Romeo Giulietta spider, a nifty car by the standards of then or any day. In the autumn I left the services of GM after accepting the post of technical editor of Sports Cars Illustrated. That meant a trip in the Alfa from Detroit to New York with some of my worldly goods.
I did one of my usual overnight straight-through drives, stopping in the Catskills to see my girlfriend, who was working in one of the area's famous resorts. After we spent the day together I headed for New York. The day was warm and sunny, the New York Thruway broad and gently curving. My view ahead was one of those curves, curling off into the distance…
…until, to my shock, instantly the view was a row of toll gates approaching me at a good 60 miles per hour. They…were…right there! My Alfa was aimed not at one of the long concrete abutments that extended out between the toll gates but rather right into one of the gates. In it was a car, possibly a Pontiac, whose driver had a languid arm extended in expectation of change.
I slammed on the Alfa's powerful drum brakes. Its Michelins howled as they scrubbed off speed. The Giulietta yawed slightly and was still at a slight angle when, slewing between the toll gate's concrete piers, it smote the rear of the Pontiac, which lurched forward.
Though impact speed was low, damage resulted. The front of the Alfa was crushed at the angle of its yawing closure. The Pontiac's lady driver claimed whiplash with the usual lengthy and tedious insurance consequences. I was all right, albeit mentally bruised and mortified.
This was a most miraculous avoidance. I could easily have gone off the road anywhere. I could easily have remained asleep when crashing into the toll plaza. I could easily have been aiming at one of the abutments instead of the gate; there'd been no time to think of changing the Alfa's trajectory. As fortunate escapes this topped the "clunk clunk" episode of a few years earlier.
Needless to say, I gave up overnight drives. In fact since then I've never been a fan of long motor trips. I like short, sharp drives with plenty of curves and corners to test both car and driver. I guess I'm pretty lucky to be around to enjoy them.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Picturing Rudy Mailander
I'm not sure when the penny dropped. I arrived in Stuttgart in February of 1958 as a private in Uncle Sam's Army, trained to fix field radios. My Signal Corps unit was based at Böblingen, south-west of Stuttgart, where I cooled my boots until they decided where in Germany they'd send me to carry out second-echelon repairs.
Needless to say when I knew I was Germany-bound I hadn't been slow to make contact with Daimler-Benz, about whose cars I had written before my career as technical editor of Sports Cars Illustrated was cut short by the draft. When called from Böblingen I was put through to the Mercedes man who dealt with the foreign press, a fellow named Rudy Mailander. We agreed to meet; he fetched me from the Kaserne on a snowy evening.
We enjoyed a genial dinner in downtown Stuttgart, opposite the Bahnhof, and he drove me back to Böblingen. During that dinner it must have dawned on me that my host was the Rodolfo Mailander, the photojournalist whose illustrated reports from Europe I'd enjoyed in Auto Speed & Sport. In this worthy effort by Robert Petersen in 1952 and '53 to barge into Road & Track territory with a monthly for the sporty set, Mailander's material was among its strongest offerings. I'd also seen the Mailander credit in Automobile Year among other publications.
Since 1955 the cosmopolitan and polished Mailander had been working for Daimler-Benz. Though he'd sold his Leica-to his later regret-he still had his photographic archives. During my spare time from radio repair I was still writing for SCI, so I went through his contact prints and asked for a number of images that I needed for my own journalism.
Our relationship became more than professional. Rudy and his wife visited in Munich, where I was assigned, and we saw them in Stuttgart as well. We kept in touch when I returned to the States. During these years Rudy joined Fiat, he and Helga settling in a wonderful old house part-way up the vertiginous climb to the Superga Basilica on the eastern outskirts of Turin. From 1902 to 1960 this was the venue for the 2.9-mile Sassi-Superga hillclimb. So steep was the twisting road that the arrival of front-drive Fiats in the 1960s meant that in winter it could only be mounted in reverse.
The Mailander house was lovely, set back into the hillside. The only problem was that it was threatening to slide down into the road and off the hill. In the early 1970s Rudy decided to fund the necessary building work by selling his photo archive. He and I had kept in touch on this topic. As luck had it I was able to prevent his well-ordered negatives and contact prints from joining the Kurt Wörner archive at Road & Track.
Rudy Mailander and I became professionally linked at the end of the 1970s when I joined Fiat Motors of North America; we had some business areas in common. By then he'd risen to the top floor of Fiat's headquarters at Corso Marconi 10 and a senior role as aide-de-camp to the Avvocato himself, Gianni Agnelli. Thanks in part to his mastery of the main languages he was widely active in Fiat's governmental and quasi-governmental contacts and initiatives around the world.
Early in the 1980s Rudy and I shared similar portfolios when I moved to Ford of Europe in England to look after governmental affairs as well as motor sports. When I bought a Stratos from Lancia he garaged it for a while at his new house in the country, not far from Fiat's proving ground at La Mandria.
Rudy's life was clouded when Helga died all too young. Their daughters, Monica and Carolina, are beautiful and brilliant reminders of that relationship. Later Mailander met and married Carla, with whom he shared the Turin home and a flat in Nice. Our friendship was the best possible reason for my wife Annette and me to head for Turin during the autumnal white-truffle season. Rudy reciprocated by visiting London when many of his stunning images of the Mille Miglia starred in a major exhibition at Connollys.
The Mailander images are the core of the holdings of the Ludvigsen Library, which provides car and motor-racing images to publishers and collectors world-wide. I first started drawing on them in depth in 1997 when they richly illustrated my biography of Stirling Moss. Rudy and Moss became friends in 1950 when the young Briton was first campaigning seriously on the Continent. When Rudy asked Moss where, on a circuit, he should position himself to get the best photos, Stirling was quick to help. After Moss crashed two races in a row just where he'd suggested that Mailander stand, he quit providing advice!
I last spent quality time with Rudy when I was planning my book Ferrari by Mailander, which features 500 of his images. We had a great time looking through them while he recalled the people and events. I'd planned to do likewise for an upcoming book, Porsche by Mailander, when I received news that Rudy was seriously unwell. He left hospital for his home, where he died in the early morning of April 1st at the age of 85. I'm missing him a lot. But thanks to his daughters and their families I'll still feel very much at home in Turin.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Meeting Mister Mercedes
While studying industrial design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1954 I received an unusual request from an old friend. Tom Mix at Foreign Motors in Boston had bought a Type K Mercedes and wanted it picked up from the New York docks, where it had just arrived from England. This K lost its bodywork during World War II and for some time suffered the ignominy of being used for "agricultural purposes". It then acquired a rudimentary two-seater body before falling into Tom's orbit..
We're talking about a big, impressive and exotic Mercedes, the work of Ferdinand Porsche during his five-year spell as the company's chief engineer. The first cars of this type were built in 1925, roughly six months before the merger with Benz, so were thus strictly Mercedes vehicles. Officially the Type 24/100/140, they became known as the 33/180K in England and simply as the Type K after their successors arrived in the form of the Types S, SS and SSK.
Tall and imposing, the K was powered by six cylinders of 94 x 150 mm for 6,245 cc. Two overhead valves per cylinder were operated by rockers from a single overhead camshaft, which was driven by a vertical shaft at the rear. The magnificent vee radiator was of true honeycomb construction while three great outside exhaust pipes were protected by chromed flexible covering. When engaged by pressing the throttle pedal, a vertical Roots-type blower at the front of the engine boosted output to 140 bhp at 3,200 rpm, up from the usual 100 bhp. Big cable-operated brakes were assisted by a Bosch-Dewandre vacuum servo.
Tom warned me that a split plate in the clutch prevented its full disengagement. As well the generator and starter were inoperative. Armed with this encouraging information, plus goggles and sou'wester, I confronted the personnel of Cunard Dock Number 90 in New York. Their incredulity was unconcealed. Yes, the old crate would run. Yes, I was going to drive it to Boston. Yes, I guess I was nuts.
At a nearby garage the essential liquids were added. Then I went through the starting drill, which went as follows:
- hand throttle shut;
- ignition fully retarded;
- mixture control full rich;
- open fuel shut-off under cowl;
- prime by lifting float lever under hex nut on back of carburetor;
- open hand throttle six notches;
- turn on magneto;
- turn on coil;
- pull up smartly on crank.
The several score bystanders were dumbfounded when the Mercedes roared to life on the fifth twirl, but I just casually moved the spark to full advance and mixture to lean. I then lowered myself into the ample bucket seat behind the cord-wrapped steering wheel on the right-hand side. My right knee shared space with the handbrake and gear lever, the latter sliding smoothly in its machined gate. The pedal arrangement featured an accelerator between the clutch and brake.
My first concern was getting used to the gear-selection system. Each ratio had its own distinctive screech, whine or growl. Starting from rest was eased by a transmission countershaft brake. Clutch action was remarkably smooth but the split disc caused drag even when fully disengaged, drag which quickly brought heat and even more drag. A gear could only be disengaged at that precise moment passing from acceleration to overrun when no power was being transmitted. Only near Hartford, Connecticut did I finally achieve smooth and silent progression through all speeds.
On good roads the K's steering was superb with about one-and-three-quarters turns lock to lock. Direction changing was a matter of thought rather than effort. Over bumps, however, this same sensitivity resulted in strong steering-wheel kickback so my grip had to be loose to avoid the worst of this. While the suspension soaked up small irregularities, the low sprung-to-unsprung-weight ratio at the rear made that end more sensitive. On one bumpy bend I was really motoring until car and steering wheel started leaping about alarmingly. I sat back entirely helpless, waiting until the oscillations died down.
Trundling out of New York up the West Side Drive I'd been disappointed with the feel of the car and engine because it seemed loose, noisy and disjointed. When the cruising speed of 2,000 rpm (or 60 mph) was reached, however, individual disturbances seemed to blend and smooth out as the K got into its stride. The big six responded instantly to the throttle with a sharp and regular exhaust note.
This was as naught compared to the sensation when the blower was engaged. Past a distinct stop in the throttle's travel things began to happen. With the whistling shriek of its blower and a spirited exhaust crackle the Mercedes surged forward with renewed purpose. To be at those lofty controls, blasting along with the wind howling over the racing screen, was a great motoring experience.
The trip to Boston was, of course, eventful. The Mercedes and I came to a classic boil on a detour, smoke and steam pouring from every crevice. We managed to average 40 mph for the trip, however, and traveled 9.5 miles for every gallon of gas. Most rewardingly I was able to get an inkling of the responsiveness and sheer brute power which, developed and refined, were to carry Rudy Caracciola, Hans Stuck and Manfred von Brauchitsch to many immortal racing triumphs.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Bravo Paul Frère
I first read about Paul Frère in the June 16, 1948 issue of The Motor. Two of its editors were visiting Belgium to try various American cars, including the Frazer for whose importer Frère worked as service manager. The Englishmen were important contacts for car-mad Frère, who was beginning a career as an automotive journalist while also competing successfully in motorcycle trials and races.
Born in France of Belgian parents in 1917, Paul Frère moved frequently on the Continent as a youth. This brought him the flawless command of Dutch, French, German, Italian and English with which he communicated with people at all levels of the industry and sport. Having earned a commercial engineering degree from Brussels University, as a Belgian citizen young Frère managed not to be caught up in the war's devastation. He started writing for various local journals including Belgique Automobile.
A career breakthrough came in 1952 when Frère was appointed co-editor of Royal Auto, the organ of Belgium's Royal Automobile Club. His joint editor was Jacques Ickx, who had an outstanding reputation as editor, journalist, historian and all-around expert. The generous Ickx, father of future racing driver Jackie Ickx, gave the 35-year-old Frère warm introductions to leading industry figures. With this as a stable base for the first time, Paul started taking his racing seriously.
While most auto journalists fancy themselves excellent drivers, Paul Frère really was. And he was successful in the most unlikely cars. In 1952 he won a production-car race on Belgium's Spa circuit driving an Oldsmobile 88. The next year he won his class in the demanding Mille Miglia. His mount, which was all but brakeless for the last 400 of the 1,000 miles, was a 1952 Chrysler Saratoga with Torqueflite transmission.
His 1952 success with the Oldsmobile led to an invitation to compete in that year's Belgian Grand Prix if he could find a suitable car. Paul approached the British HWM team, which offered him a mount for a lesser event at Chimay instead. This the journalist promptly won, setting a new lap record when taking the lead on the last corner of the last lap. This sealed a seat in the team for the Spa race in which Frère finished an excellent fifth.
This remained Paul's best result for HWM, for whom he drove a few more times before switching to Gordini in 1954, when he retired in his three outings. He did enough, however, to come to the attention of Ferrari. Frère raced Formula 1 cars for Ferrari three times, placing fourth in the Belgian G. P. in 1955 and an excellent second in the same race in 1956. After this fine result Enzo Ferrari offered Paul a permanent post at Maranello in charge of car preparation and testing plus a regular place in the sports-car team. He decided against the move to Italy that the job would have required.
Sandy-haired, open-faced and very fit, Paul Frère kept racing with the Ecurie Nationale Belge, whose patron Pierre Stasse was publisher of Les Sports for which our hero was now writing. Starting in 1952 Paul was a regular competitor at Le Mans, driving class-winning cars. After co-driving Aston Martins to second place twice in a row Frère decided to make an all-out attempt to win. This meant a Ferrari, so in 1960 he pulled some strings to wangle a seat in a Testarossa. He and Olivier Gendebien were the team's only survivors - and the winners.
As an industry insider Paul Frère was often asked for private opinions about new models, a role that developed into regular consultancies for a tire maker and for Lancia, Fiat and Mazda. His close relationship with Ferdinand Piëch at Porsche led to several books about their racing cars and his stand-alone work on the 911. As well it gave him the chance to test-drive almost every racing Porsche of his era. For almost 40 years Paul was a regular contributor to Japan's Car Graphic while his tenure as European Editor of Road & Track was almost as long.
For a dozen years Frère was a member of the FISA Technical Commission that drew up rules for international racing. His was the idea that led to the Group C regulation starting in 1982 that controlled cars only by the amount of fuel they were allowed to carry. Though Paul wasn't entirely happy with the way this was implemented, it led to a great era in endurance racing.
Paul Frère's many fans were delighted when he put his personal experiences between hard covers in On the Starting Grid, Sports Car and Competition Driving and My Life Full of Cars. I didn't hesitate to comb them for gems that could sparkle in my own works. My latest book, Red-Hot Rivals, is about the epic battles between Ferrari and Maserati from the 1940s through the 1960s. He recalled "team manager Nello Ugolini briefing us - Farina, Trintignant and myself - on the morning of the 1955 Belgian Grand Prix and making his recommendation: 'We know that the Mercedes will be very difficult to beat, but our main target is to beat the Maseratis.' On that occasion we did, Farina taking third place and myself fourth."
Thanks for that, Paul, and farewell. On February 23, at the age of 91, Paul Frère died at Saint-Paul-de-Vence in the south of France where he had long dwelled.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Morganantics
While a student at MIT in the early 1950s I had quite a lot to do with Morgans. One of my hangouts was Gaston Andrey, Inc in Chestnut Hill, where ambitious and able Swiss Gus Andrey sold, repaired and race-prepared foreign sports cars. He took the Morgan to heart, so effectively in fact that in 1955 he drove one to the SCCA's E Production National Championship.
For a Boston advertising agency chief who wanted more pep from his Morgan, Gus Andrey's team carried out one of the pioneering Chevrolet V-8 installations in an import. This was late 1955 when folks were just picking up on the potential of Ed Cole's Chevy eight. Andrey's conversion created what was certainly the first Morgan Plus Eight. Weighing only 2,050 pounds, with a standard 162-horse V-8 it accelerated to 60 in 6.8 seconds and reached 100 mph in 18.5 seconds. Strong stuff for 50 years ago. I likened it to "sitting astride a keg of dynamite".
My next outing in a Morgan was in 1956 when I road-tested a race-prepared Plus Four for Sports Cars Illustrated. Stripped of front bumper and grille, this blue-striped white roadster had a straight-though exhaust that earned my neighbors' disapproval. Its zero to 60 time of 11.2 seconds didn't fully reflect its liveliness because I had to shift from second to third at 58. Don Typond and I clocked its top speed at exactly 100 mph.
"That long, louvered hood is best viewed from the driver's seat," I concluded my test, "where we guarantee it will give the meekest of chauffeurs an anticipatory thrill. It's no ruse, for the Morgan knows its purpose in life and has been at it a lot longer than most of these upstarts. Just tell it you're the boss and you'll have made the sincerest of friends."
A Morgan flickered on my radar again in 1963. Mortified by the damage being done to my 300SL Gullwing by the salt on Detroit's streets - it was my daily driver - I parted with it. Now I needed a new two-seater for my commute to GM's offices at the Tech Center and West Grand Boulevard. But what about the salt? Aha, I thought, the Morgan! Ash-framed body and wooden floor panels! What could be better?
I got in touch with the Morgan dealer in Lansing, who was able to supply a British Racing Green Plus Four - just the ticket. After they delivered it to me in Pleasant Ridge my wife and I headed for Woodward Avenue for a first impression. Quite a change from the 300SL! It was - and felt - rough and basic to say the least. But the view down that louvered hood was indeed the greatest.
Heading into winter as we were, the first order of business was to sort out a heater. This amenity, not to be overlooked in snowy and icy Detroit, was neither standard nor an option on a Plus Four. At first glance I could see why, because there seemed no place to put it! However a look at the ever-reliable Sears catalogue revealed the solution: an under-seat heater. No, not under the Morgan's seats. Virtually on the floor, they consisted of nothing but rubber bladders. Instead we mounted the heater with its electric fan under the dash and plumbed it into the engine. It did the job extremely well.
Of course the Plus Four was a top-down kind of car. Its ride quality was all but non-existent while its handling combined strong understeer with heavy steering, leading me to conclude in my road test that "the Morgan will go wherever you have the strength to point it. The rear end just follows along and never gets out of hand." It shifted well and had plenty of punch from its twin-carb Triumph TR four.
At the end of '63 I took the Morgan to New York, where I had a new job with GM's Overseas Operations Division. There it was my habit to drive into the Bronx and park near the station from which I took the subway to work. One day I'd had a lift home so the Morgan was still parked when, sitting down to dinner, I had a call from the police. A truck driver had lost control and skidded, on a downslope, into the Morgan. It was no longer driveable.
My insurer decided to repair the Morgan at a body shop in the Bronx. This was all very well in principle, but getting the needed parts was beyond anyone's capabilities. Morgan, it seemed, was much more interested in using parts to build new cars than in wasting them on cars already on the road. Luckily I had friends in England, the white-coated Doctors of Motors you may recall from the Connaught saga. They came to the rescue by traveling personally to Malvern Link to collect the parts.
The poor condition of New York's streets was my cue to sell the repaired Morgan. It had been one of my shorter relationships, one from which I concluded that a Morgan was less a car than it was a state of mind. I was glad to have owned it, lacking though it was in many of the attributes that a modern car requires. Okay, so how come I always gravitate toward the Plus Fours when I'm leafing through the classic-car magazines? Maybe I haven't quite gotten Morgans out of my system.
- Karl Ludvigsen
How Big Are Wankel Engines?
Your editor's eyebrows shot sky-high when I submitted my article on the design of the Mazda RX-7. I said that its rotary engine had "a displacement of 573 cc per working chamber. Since there were two rotors and three cells per rotor, that added up to a total capacity of 3,438 cc."
Cue editorial response! "It's been my understanding that the 12A displaced 573 cc per rotor for a total of 1,146 cc," queried Mr. Fitzgerald, "and for Japanese tax purposes the engine was rated at 1.5 times the nominal displacement for 1,719 cc. I've never heard of the 12A being described as anything other than a sub-2.0-liter engine."
The reason for that is simple, I told Craig: Mazda has been misrepresenting the actual displacement of its rotary engine for decades.
I first got involved in this in the early 1970s, the Wankel's heyday. That's when almost everybody was interested in this ingenious new engine, for good reason. Covering it closely as a journalist, I was happy with the convention that the displacement of a singe rotor was rated as double the swept volume of one of the three combustion chambers that surrounded that rotor.
There seemed to be some logic to this. At the output shaft this matched the pattern of power strokes of a four-stroke engine. This was the rating used by the international racing authorities for Wankel displacement. As well heavyweights in the Wankel world, Daimler-Benz, Ford and General Motors, concluded that the "equivalent displacement" was double that of a single chamber. On that basis the RX-7, with its two rotors, would have a displacement of 573 cc x 2 x 2 or 2,292 cc.
Then one evening in 1973 I was dining at the Dearborn Inn with G. Fred Leydorf, an advanced-engine engineer at American Motors. Fred had worked on a joint rotary-engine project with Renault and was liaising with Curtiss-Wright on the Wankel engine that was scheduled to power the Pacer. He knew his rotaries.
"The thing about the Wankel," said Fred, "is that its displacement is bigger than people think. You have to follow all its chambers through their complete working cycles. With the Wankel that takes three revolutions of its output shaft, not the four-stroke reciprocating engine's two revolutions. If you do that, you find that all three chambers of each rotor complete the four-stroke cycle - so they have to be counted in its displacement."
The light dawns! Suddenly the Wankel is seen for what it is: a brilliant design that packs a lot of working volume into a small package. You'd think its creators would be boasting about how much "cylinder" capacity they've managed to build into its compact housing, a tribute to Felix Wankel's genius. In a 1963 study of racing classifications one of Europe's most respected engine experts, Prof. Eberan von Eberhorst, came down firmly in favor of a triple-chamber rating.
That's just the way the engine was seen at first by Germany's NSU, the little company that took the gamble of licensing and building the first Wankels. When Max Bentele, then a Curtiss-Wright engineer, first visited NSU in mid-1958 he copied down a list of all NSU's present and future Wankels. NSU showed the displacement of each as triple its single chamber. The first engines, which had 125 cc chambers, were classified as 375 cc. Projected engines with 500 cc chambers were described as 1.5-liter units in single-rotor form and as 3.0-liter engines with two rotors.
Bentele brought the NSU engineers up short. "Aren't you asking for trouble?" he said. "We have no problem in the US with taxation on the basis of engine size, but you do in Europe. Why do you mention three chambers when you could mention only one?" NSU did indeed go back to a single-chamber rating for all its Wankels. Mazda did likewise and has done so ever since.
I did some writing on the subject in 1973 that led to correspondence with many experts including Felix Wankel. Then I got involved in the discussion for real in 1974 when I learned that the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) was setting up a Rotary Engine Subcommittee to establish clear definitions for the engine's components and functions so that all engineers could sing from the same song sheet. I managed to wangle a place for myself on the Subcommittee.
Needless to say I pushed hard for all three chambers to be counted in a definition of displacement. My first proposal was for that to be adopted in parallel with an "SAE displacement" of two chambers per rotor to pacify the car makers who were comfortable with this. At a Subcommittee meeting on February 25, 1975 I made a major presentation, complete with slides, defending the counting of all three chambers of any and all rotors.
Had I not weighed in as I did I'm pretty sure that SAE J1220, approved in June 1978, wouldn't have included a definition that counted all three chambers. In fact, unable to agree, we hedged our bets by satisfying everybody. One chamber was defined as "Geometric Displacement", two were "Equivalent Displacement" and three were "Thermodynamic Displacement".
You can take your pick. But believe me, if you want to understand the Wankel's pros and cons the best way to do so is to consider all three chambers of each rotor - even if Mazda doesn't want to!
- Karl Ludvigsen
Connaught Capers - Part 3
I was at the Brooklyn docks to collect - with some trepidation - the 1949 Connaught L2 sports car I purchased in May of 1968 from London's Portobello Motors, one of the quirkiest car dealers on the planet. This was the company of which my friend Dennis May had written that it's "the sort of firm, scruffy and insouciant to the nth degree, that I'd hate to do business with at a range of 3000 miles." Dennis had been scathing about both the dealership and the condition of the Lea-Francis-based Connaught.
By now my expectations were so modest that when I finally set eyes on AHC 82 I was pleasantly surprised. The dark-green Connaught was complete as described, with the regrettable addition of a fresh dent in its rear. Having brought a tow rope on the recommendation of Portobello's Eric Lister, in view of the supposed tightness of its recently rebuilt engine, colleague Judy Stropus gave me a tug. The 2.5-liter four fired up, ready to rumble. After stopping for gasoline I was soon home in Pelham Manor.
Representing as it did a net investment of $450, the Connaught didn't disappoint. It did indeed have a dash full of instruments that all worked. There was no sign of the smoke and noise that had alarmed my inspectors. Although the bodywork had been modified, with added space behind the seats and a flow-through line joining the originally individual fenders, it had its own funky character. And it was a Connaught, the fourth car made by the company in Send, Surrey that in 1955 had scored Britain's first post-war Grand Prix victory.
I was eager to show off my exotic new acquisition at a Bridgehampton meeting of the Vintage Sports Car Club of America. The trip out to the end of Long Island and back went well and the Connaught was competent on the demanding circuit. Its only fault was a tendency to jump out of gear; I took a passenger whose job was to hold it in.
Back home in Pelham Manor I was looking the car over when I noticed water where water shouldn't be. I reported my findings to Eric Lister: "I have discovered that there is an extensive crack in the upper right water jacket of the Connaught block. I know this didn't happen during shipping because the weather was not cold and because the crack was covered up by some kind of plastic goop, over which was a fresh coat of red paint. Now, it's evident to me that the presence of this crack must have been known to you or to your mechanic, if you had the engine out for repairs, as you say you did and as I believe you did. This crack presents me with the most fundamental kind of additional work on this car."
Completely in character Lister was insouciant in reply. "Most unfortunately our star mechanic Black Jake was recently involved in a rather serious industrial accident in the welding shop," he wrote, "and as he is in hospital I just can't broach the subject with him at the moment. However I have spoken to his assistant who tells me that he did have knowledge of such a crack. As I am not a mechanic myself I was not aware of this and would have notified you if I had been."
I was on the horns of a first-class dilemma. I had a Connaught whose non-original engine - 2.5 instead of 1.8 liters - had a cracked block. It was a nice enough engine made by Lea-Francis that had been in the car since 1953. Should I fix it or should I find a 1.8-liter to replace it? Deciding on the latter course I found that VSCCA member Tom Stewart had a disassembled unit of just the kind I needed. Late in 1968 both the engine and the car were at the workshop of mechanical genius Jim McGee on Long Island to be rebuilt and mated.
Jim never got around to the job. When after several years I collected the Connaught the proverbial trees were growing through its cockpit. AHC 82 languished in my garage while I continued to contemplate her future. Should the body be restored to its original shape? What about the engine? I hadn't made a decision when, in 1980, I went to work for Ford of Europe in England. Soon I arranged for the Connaught and its spare engine, still disassembled, to return to the country of their birth.
The veteran was now in a sorry state. I explored options for restoration in the UK but the projected costs were daunting. Meanwhile with my Aston Martin I was starting from Bath on a classic-car run in 1986 when none other than Eric Lister came up and introduced himself. After some to-ing and fro-ing he met me in London at the Royal Automobile Club. Over a good lunch we put our differences behind us.
Ultimately in 1987 I sold the Connaught to Duncan Rabagliati, eminent historian of racing cars in general and Connaughts in particular and a renowned collector of lost causes. Over years Duncan gradually brought her back to life, ultimately for his daughter to drive. I saw AHC 82 again in 1998 at a gathering at the old Connaught works to celebrate 50 years of the company's founding. She looked good. But I had no regrets.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Connaught Capers - Part 2
Last month I'd had the reaction of Eric Lister of London's Portobello Motors to the findings of the two men whom I described to him as "among the leading U.K. experts on Old Cars" concerning the Connaught L2 sports car I was planning to purchase from the other side of the Atlantic in 1968. "Mr. Rolls and Mr. Royce perhaps?" he hazarded in his reply. The concerns of my experts about the Connaught's smoky, noisy and erratic running had caused me to pressure Lister that the car's problems would be sorted before the car was shipped.
Why - you might well ask - was I still willing to consider buying this car? After my Doctors of Motors had rendered a negative verdict on both condition and originality? Good question. But I was besotted by the idea of a Connaught. Starting with the sports cars, of which they made 14, Connaught went on to produce their A-Series Formula 2 racing cars and then, in 1954, their B-Series Grand Prix cars. Driven by Tony Brooks, one of these was the first British car to win a modern Formula 1 race at Syracuse in Sicily at the end of 1955. Connaught carried on through 1957, after which season it closed its doors. When its assets were auctioned they gave Bernie Ecclestone his first step on the Formula 1 ladder.
In 1963 I'd met Rodney Clarke, Connaught's creative spirit, when he visited New York. His designs and ideas were always advanced, sometimes too much so for the modest finances provided by his backer Kenneth McAlpine, and his engineering standards first-class. Thus in addition to admiring the achievements of this pioneer British racing-car company I felt a personal link through the tall, red-haired Clarke, who'd been the first to build and race a fuel-injected Grand Prix car.
Portobello's Lister did his best to reassure me that I wasn't altogether leaping into the unknown. "I would like to stress most emphatically on Black Jake's instructions," he wrote, referring to his mechanical minder, "that you must run this car in very carefully as it is exceptionally tight and that means that you should not exceed 45 mph in top gear for at least 1000 miles and then increase the speed progressively. The engine has been running for six hours only since the new crankshaft and bearings were fitted; it is still very tight indeed. When she feels easier, have the carburetors tuned and synchronized.
"Don't forget my remarks about old cars," Eric Lister added. "They do give trouble, but this can be kept to a minimum if you put into them what you take out. It is my own policy never to drive old cars fast as they last longer if you treat them gently. It is quite ridiculous what people do with old cars. They expect a 20-year-old vehicle to have exactly the same performance as when it was brand new. No respect at all for nice old machinery." These admonitions weren't exactly what I wanted to hear, because as a member of the Vintage Sports Car Club of America I was planning to race the Connaught!
After he drove my Connaught "out of the garage and made sure that it was fastened securely onto the transporter on its way to the docks at Southampton," Eric Lister felt it was time to brief me on what to do when it arrived. Doubtless, he wrote, "the battery will need charging as it really has to be at peak charge to start her, so these are the instructions: pull out choke to right of steering column; flip the first three switches on the left of steering column down; you will then hear the electric pumps clicking. With it being an open car, I am assuming that sometime during its journey people will fool around with the switches, so make sure that they are all up before attempting to start it. Then if she doesn't start on the button, fix a tow rope to the front axle, pull her for about 50 yards in third gear and she will definitely start.
"After that," Lister admonished, "make sure the battery is very well charged and run her at least 500 miles at very low speeds before gradually opening her up a bit. The 'T' key for opening the trunk is under the driver's seat. There are no ignition keys, so make sure all switches are up before leaving the car. Side curtains are at the rear of the seats and that's just about all."
The Connaught was put aboard the Blue Grass State on May 13th, 1968. The pre-shipment list of damages for insurance purposes contained an impressive litany of faults: "seat back seams split - upholstery and dashboard soiled and damp - rear panel and number plate surround chipped, rust and dented - boot lid chipped all over - left door chipped all over and scratched - right door chipped edges - bent left rear wing scratched and chipped, large piece touched up" and much more of that ilk.
Before the end of May the Connaught was decanted at the Columbia Street Pier in Brooklyn. Al Rappaport of General American Shippers arranged for its customs clearance. With my assistant Judy Stropus and a tow rope I drove to Brooklyn to have my first sight of the fourth Connaught L2 to roll off the production line almost 20 years earlier.
To be continued!
- Karl Ludvigsen
Connaught Capers - Part 1
A friend and business partner of Eric Lister wrote that "we started, as an expensive hobby, the Portobello Motor Company, mainly to indulge ourselves in the classic cars we loved to drive." Last month I related the saga of my non-purchase of a Burney in 1968 from Lister and his dealership in London's Notting Hill. At the same time I was negotiating with Lister the acquisition of a 1949 Connaught L2 sports car.
Some explication may be in order. After World War II Rodney Clarke and Mike Oliver of Continental Cars, Ltd. in Send, Surrey were looking for a project to replace the Bugatti work they'd been doing in the 1930s. They hit on the idea of building a competition sports car on the basis of the post-war Lea-Francis. This had a conventional but effective solid-axle chassis and a 1.8-liter four with high-placed twin cams and hemispherical combustion chambers.
They shortened the Lea-Francis frame, hopped up the engine and had new aerodynamic bodies fashioned in aluminum. The result was dubbed the Connaught and given the series designation "L" in recognition both of the car's origins and the fashioning of its body by Leacroft. Backing for the project came from Kenneth McAlpine, a wealthy racer and enthusiast. Completed in 1948, the first car was his.
In 1949 four more L2 Connaughts took to the road. The first owner of the fourth car built, registered AHC 82, was P. L. Jonas, who raced it at Goodwood in 1950. In May and August he was seventh and sixth respectively in short races won by McAlpine in his sister car. In the early 1950s a new owner made substantial changes in AHC 82. He replaced its original engine with a 2.5-liter Lea-Francis four and modified its body with straight-through side panels and additional space, for youngsters, behind its bucket seats.
"It has been rebuilt mechanically during the last three months," Lister assured me. "The engine has had a new crankshaft and has been thoroughly overhauled, likewise the gear box. The bodywork is hand painted but very neat and has a new hood and weather equipment, quite decent upholstery plus a very impressive array of instruments. The car runs well and has only done a few hundred miles since it was overhauled so the engine is rather tight but this will ease of after a couple of thousand miles."
It was this point that, as related last month, I wrote from New York to ask Dennis May to have a look at the Burney and Connaught for me. When Dennis and Steady Barker arrived at Portobello "they didn't appear to be expecting us to either drive it or be driven," although ample notice of these intentions had been given. "Under gentle pressure they fitted its battery and a passenger seat and tried to start the engine. It refused to start on the button so all hands turned to and pushed. It then finally came to life on two and occasionally three cylinders, emitting a terrific noise from faulty gaskets and leaking near-lethal doses of exhaust gas into the cockpit (the top was up).
"I couldn't legally drive it myself because it wasn't licensed," Dennis continued, "so I rode as passenger with their tame demonstrator, an amiable bearded negro. He excused the erratic running by saying he hadn't had time to tune the carbs, though why not I couldn't imagine; wasn't four days enough? The condition of the body isn't too bad but it's a rather ugly non-standard thing. They vowed it was standard but neither I nor Steady (a firm he worked for in his youth used to make bodies for Connaught) ever remembered seeing its like. It just doesn't have that distinctive horseshoe-like cross section at around the plane of the scuttle - know what I mean?"
This was not very comforting. Nevertheless Eric Lister sought to reassure me. His mechanic "Black Jake", he wrote, "gave them a drive around in the Connaught which I am told performed very well." I replied that "in view of the findings of my Doctors of Motors…I can't be as sanguine as you about the operation of the Connaught. I gather that it had to be pushed to start it…this is not a condition in which I'd want to drive a car anyplace, even the relatively short distance from the Jersey docks to my home." I asked Lister for his "most candid and realistic summary of the condition of these cars [including the Burney] and the specific work you plan to put in hand on them before I send any more dollars over to follow those that have already emigrated."
"We would like to use that well known New York East Side expression 'not to worry'," Lister replied. "I have found that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and most people who come around to examine the cars think they know a lot more than they in fact do." This about two experts who'd seen more exotic cars than he'd had hot breakfasts! The push start, he said was needed because the battery was flat, while the noise was from "a rough temporary positioning of the silencer (you say muffler) which needs repairing or replacing as necessary and new exhaust gasket." Water in the plug wells had caused the misfiring, he explained, adding, "All these faults will definitely be rectified."
To be continued!
- Karl Ludvigsen
Burned by a Burney
In Motor Sport of February 1968 the Portobello Motor company in London's Notting Hill offered an astonishing array of cars. Why I didn't leap at the M-Type Allard for £265 or even the Maserati 3500GT Spider at £950 I'll never know. Instead my eyes were drawn as if by magnetism to "1930 Burney Streamliner, the best on offer, the only one on offer. Offers."
Unfortunately I knew what a Burney was. Fascinated by the rear-engined experiments of the 1930s, I knew that a few such cars had been produced by Sir Dennistoun Burney, creator of the R100 airship. Responding to my query about this curiosity, Portobello's Eric Lister said that his Burney "was the very first car manufactured under license by the Crossley Motor Company." This made it a Crossley-Burney, of which some two dozen were built in 1933-34, powered by Crossley's own six-cylinder engine. This had been replaced, said Lister, by a Vauxhall four.
That the Burney was admittedly "rather shabby and needs restoration" was vaguely attested to by three tiny, fuzzy photos. Remarking on these, I judged that "they were taken with the same special camera that is passed around from one British establishment to the next, prized for its ability to show the general outlines of an automobile without revealing too many details."
In reply Eric Lister explained that "My grandfather purchased our Brownie (type) camera on a visit to Hong Kong in 1923. The street trader who sold it to him gave an unconditional guarantee. Although this is written in Chinese we are assured by scholarly friends that if any fault develops in this camera during the remaining years of this century, all we have to do is contact a certain Mr. Loo Fong in Hong Kong and he will be obliged to repair or refund the money on the camera. As yours is the first complaint we have received about our photography we are attempting to contact Mr. Fong by telephone today.
"Believe me," Lister continued about the Burney, "I will be most sorry to see it go as it has become a kind of pet of mine which every now and then I go down and stroke. Actually I was hoping that it would go to a good home in this country where I could visit it occasionally. However, if you will invite me to your home when I am next in the New York area I will bring over a few carrots to feed it."
In spite of (or because of) this hokey blarney, and with Lister's assurance that "it can be driven away from the docks", I offered $900 for the Burney and put down a deposit. As a precaution, however, I wrote to an old friend and colleague, Dennis May, asking him to visit Portobello Motors. He did so, taking along another knowledgeable friend, Ronald "Steady" Barker.
On March 27, 1968 Dennis reported on his trip to Notting Hill. He found Portobello "the sort of firm, scruffy and insouciant to the nth degree, that I'd hate to do business with at a range of 3,000 miles." He judged the Burney "positively decrepit in every sense except its engine does run." It had an ENV preselector transmission, which Lister's man said lacked bottom gear but was otherwise fine. On the day, however, "there wasn't drive on any gear at present, so all he could do, and did, was to demonstrate that the Vauxhall engine runs in neutral. See what I mean about insouciance?"
Insouciant as ever, Eric Lister took the inspection visit by "two gentlemen…both wearing identical white coats" in his stride. "Our genius mechanic known in the trade as 'Black Jake' (no kidding) because you can't see his face for hair and oil, started the Burney which requires some gear box adjustment before emigrating to the United States."
"This 'runner' turns out not to run at all," I replied, "due to malfeasance by the ENV box. Are you sure that adjustment will suffice? There is a distinct shortage of ENV experts over here and I would very much like to have this part of the car, at least, in reasonable shape before it comes over." "Blake Jake has removed the gear box," Lister reassured, "and finds that there is very little adjustment left so the gear box has gone back to the preselector experts in London and will be overhauled as necessary. Just leave it to us to sort out the aggravating bits and pieces."
In May, while discussing shipping arrangements, Eric Lister added to the "bulging files" of our correspondence with the note that he was "particularly sad to let the Burney go to America", adding, "The other day I had a representative of the British Science Museum looking at it. He was most intrigued and knew quite a lot about these cars and said he was very disappointed that it was going abroad, which made me feel a bit of a heel but, as you say, that's the way the cookie crumbles."
In June, my feet getting colder by the day, I was able to relieve Mr. Lister's conscience with the news that I was relinquishing my deposit and wouldn't be taking the immobile Crossley-Burney after all, "especially in view of the interest of the Science Museum in this important car." But I did buy another car from Portobello Motors - about which more next time.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Crown Wheels
For many years my abiding criterion for car ownership was never to buy the same make twice. I figured there were enough good and interesting cars out there that I'd always be able to find something that suited me without having to duplicate brand ownership. Also in the process I'd learn a lot about different cars and their makers.
This strategy was put to the test after I left General Motors in 1967 to pursue a free-lance writing career. It was time to check out these Japanese cars that were starting to make inroads in the American market. Did the Japanese have anything that would suit the Ludvigsens?
The answer was yes: Toyota's Crown. This was the top of the Toyota range, newly restyled and enlarged for 1967 as the S50 series, as I learned in Jeff Koch's story about the Crown in our August 2007 issue. Take a look at the sedan at the bottom of page 92. This was a handsome piece of kit on which the ever-ambitious Japanese stylists had, for a change, shown some restraint.
Now imagine it as a station wagon with glazing all the way to the rear - a good-looking and spacious load-carrier. Ours was cream with a black interior. Transmission was automatic, a three-speeder with torque converter, while steering was manual with five turns lock to lock. Suspension was conventional for the time with a live rear axle and coil springs at all four corners.
Toyota went to some trouble to design an advanced in-line six for its Crown. It had an aluminum cylinder head and carried its crankshaft in seven main bearings. A single overhead camshaft was chain-driven. Its 2,253 cc were produced by dimensions of 75 x 85 mm, unfashionably undersquare but aiding shortness and lightness. The under-hood scene was impeccable, an object lesson in neat and orderly disposition of piping, wiring and accessories that contrasted vividly with the chaos of British imports.
When asked about the Crown I would answer, "Well, it does everything I want in a car except go, handle and stop." It did not have strengths in these departments. Elegant though the engine was its output was a modest 115 bhp at 5,200 rpm, and that by the SAE's gross rating. Referring to an Autocar road test of a Crown sedan I see that leaving the Toyoglide in "D" gave zero to 60 acceleration in 21.3 seconds. That's about what my MG TC managed. By holding it in second gear this could be reduced to 16.0 seconds. The standing quarter-mile took 20.1 seconds.
Once it got up to speed the Crown cruised comfortably at 70 mph and 4,000 rpm. Irrelevant thought it was, its top speed was between 95 and 100 mph. I don't recall testing its fuel mileage but Autocar measured 15 mpg for its sedan. The wagon would have been worse. This was our first air-conditioned car, a great luxury when driving from New York to Michigan and back for summer holidays.
As for stopping, I recognize the Autocar comment about the brakes that "At first they seem alarmingly ineffective. The pedal scarcely moves and seems to meet dead resistance." Though vacuum-assisted, the front discs and rear drums needed heavy prodding to get their attention. Braking was available but required a powerful poke at the pedal. A peculiarity was a clicking noise from the brake-light switching relay.
Handling wasn't even a consideration. The Crown could be aimed with reasonable accuracy. Though sluggish, its helm would eventually begin to respond. Looking back, this was clearly a car that was waiting for radial tires.
"This is the most substantial and refined Japanese car we have yet tried," said Autocar, "and it offers very comfortable and roomy transport for five." This is what I was looking for and this is what I got in a transport machine that suited a family with two young children.
An important part of my Toyota experience was watching the settling-in of the network. When I bought my Crown the dealer on the Boston Post Road in New Rochelle was little more than a hollow shell. He had a showroom and a back shop with a few tools scattered about. Luckily for him and his colleagues Toyota built its cars to demand little in the way of service. Parts supply, especially for the exotic Crown, was nothing to brag about in those early days.
Gradually, step by step, New Rochelle Toyota started looking like an ordinary car dealership. Shop equipment arrived as did showroom décor. By the mid-1970s it was evident that Toyota was here to stay.
One day we were heading out toward Bridgehampton when, in a bizarre accident, we smashed into the side of a Lincoln. I turned around to see our youngsters, still wearing their lap belts, bent over at the waist because their seat back was pushed forward by the Lea Francis engine I was delivering to Jim McGee. We were all okay but the Crown needed parts, some of which were slow to arrive.
In 1977 I replaced the Toyota with Chevrolet's new Malibu Classic station wagon, sheer-lined and functional with a V-8 under the hood. This was, come to think of it, the first time I'd bought the same make of car twice. It was about time I got around to abandoning what was, after all, an unedifying criterion.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Newton, Franciamore and BMW
I met Harry Newton in 1964 when I moved into his town, Pelham Manor, a New York enclave squeezed between the Bronx and New Rochelle. Harry was a man of many parts in the world of the automobile. A shrewd and often controversial observer of motor-industry trends, Newton made a living selling cars as varied as Aston Martins and Cadillacs.
Soon after I met him, Harry Newton went to work for the legendary Max Hoffman. Max was then in his final phase as the importer of BMW cars. Though struggling with the perception among many folks that BMW meant "British Motor Works", Max was doing his best to expand sales of the Bavarian-built cars in which he wholeheartedly believed. On both coasts, using the finest architects, he erected new and handsome BMW distribution centers.
Max Hoffman was a strong supporter of the new generations of BMW cars in the 1960s. But when in late 1965 he saw a new model the company was planning to launch he was flabbergasted. It was a slimmed-down, short-wheelbase, two-door version of its sedan, powered by a 1.6-liter four. As far as Hoffman could see it was a high-cost car that BMW would have to sell for a lot less money - a guaranteed profit-killer. He told BMW's executives that they were in for a big disappointment.
BMW went ahead anyway. In fact at celebrations of its 50th anniversary in the center of Munich on March 8, 1966, surrounded by classic cars and motorcycles, it unveiled its new 1600 model. The next day the two-door was on BMW's stand at the Geneva Salon. There'd been a previous 1600, a small-engined version of the four-door New Class BMW, but this was a different animal.
When I left GM and started free-lancing in 1967, I needed wheels. Interested in the 1600, I asked Harry Newton about it. "It's the perfect car," he said with his habitual assurance. In fact it was. Here was a four-passenger car weighing only 2,030 pounds powered by a smooth, high-revving overhead-cam four producing 85 bhp. All-independent springing gave it a good ride coupled with agile, neutral handling. In an airy interior with tall windows, gauges were handsomely cowled in a driver-centered nacelle. The trunk was huge and seats were decidedly upmarket.
If BMW were going to lose money on these, I decided to take advantage. Harry recommended specific tires for it and Max offered a friendly discount. Soon I was the proud owner of a dove-gray BMW 1600. It immediately commended itself in many ways. Frameless door glass made its light doors a snap to open and shut. Visibility in all directions was unsurpassed. The wide hood gave excellent access. Top speed was just over 100 mph while second gear was good for 60 mph and in third it reached an astonishing 90 if you revved it to 7,500, which the sweet four easily attained.
Drawbacks were relatively few. Floor-pivoted pedals were passé; oddly they were suspended on right-hand-drive cars. Outmoded too was the six-volt electrical system. No tachometer was provided but I arranged to fit one. The speedometer was wildly optimistic. With discs in front and drums in back its braking was good but not amazing.
The 1600 was an ideal choice for my peregrinations from a New York base around the East Coast to cover various stories. After its warranty expired I drove it into the Bronx for servicing. I'd noticed that a repair shop there was called "Quattroruote", the name of the Italian monthly for which I was the American correspondent. Ignazio Franciamore chose the name to express solidarity with his native Italy.
Iggy and his team performed yeoman service on various cars in the Ludvigsen stable. They ingeniously adapted a Saab muffler to my Type 87 Tatra. And when the BMW started getting tired they carried out a stem-to-stern restoration, including new ventilated wheels that I sourced. Although passionate about Alfa Romeos, for which he eventually became a dealer, Iggy had to admit that the BMW's independent rear suspension had the advantage in wintry conditions.
Later trading as F&S Motors, Sicilian-born Iggy Franciamore's success in car repair and sales helped him satisfy his interest in fine Italian cars. One of his first acquisitions was a 1954 Lancia Aurelia with a rare PF 200 body by Pininfarina. Its unique design, with a jet-like air intake, attracted an Award of Excellence from the judges at 2005's Concours Europa in Greenwich, Connecticut.
In 2000 the same concours featured Iggy's 1927 Fiat 509 touring car. Spotting it lurking behind a pizzeria on his way home from Watkins Glen, Franciamore bought the Fiat, which its owner had acquired in Sicily in 1987. Incredibly, its Italian papers showed that among its previous owners was Franciamore Senior, who had driven it in taxi service in Agrigento in the 1940s before selling it to a fishmonger who'd planned to convert it into a pickup truck, but didn't.
I relied on my mini-Bimmer for a long time, well into the 1970s. Harry Newton lasted only briefly with Max Hoffman, finding the latter's business methods incompatible with his ideas of good practice. For a while Harry published a very insightful car-dealer newsletter and at the end of his career was a respected author on sports and classic cars. Sadly Newton, who gave me good advice on many occasions, is no longer with us.
- Karl Ludvigsen
The Skid-Pad Saga
The idea of a so-called "skid pad" is to drive around a circular track to explore the steady-state handing of an automobile under controlled conditions. On such a continuous corner you can learn a lot about tires, suspension, steering and handling as the car approaches the limit of its ability to hold the road.
Skid-pad testing of cars was first perfected in the mid-1930s by General Motors under the guidance of British engineer Maurice Olley, a far-seeing pioneer of suspension and handling research. By 1937 he and his colleagues had tested and defined the handling attributes of many cars, GM's and others. In 1952 Olley was asked to head up a new research and development section for Chevrolet Engineering. He brought along his skid-pad know-how, which was quickly absorbed by a newcomer to R&D, Zora Arkus-Duntov.
A Belgian-born Russian engineer, Duntov was asked to race on the Porsche team at Le Mans in 1954. Unimpressed by the unpredictable handling of the early 550 Spyders, Zora suggested to Porsche's Helmuth Bott that he try testing on a skid pad. Bott found a suitable area: a paved runway at Malmsheim, west of Stuttgart. The airstrip's width limited the pad's diameter to about 260 feet. This was enough for the size normally used by Chevrolet, a 100-foot radius.
Bott's tests were fruitful, hugely improving the Spyder's handling. They led to the establishment of a regular skid pad at Malmsheim, which was also used by Mercedes-Benz for tire testing of its 1955 Grand Prix cars. When Porsche established its own proving ground at Weissach one of its first and most prominent features was a huge skid pad. A similar pad soon became a feature of Mercedes's test track at its Untertürkheim factory.
I was reminded of skid pads by an article in Racecar Engineering. Engineer and author Paul van Valkenburg recalled his work with Mark Donohue's Trans-Am Camaro in 1968, which was so useful that Mark set up a pad near the Penske racing shop in Reading, Pennsylvania. Skid pads were early speed secrets for both Donohue's Can-Am Lolas and Jim Hall's Chaparrals, tested on a pad at Hall's own Rattlesnake Raceway in Midland, Texas.
As technical editor of Sports Car Graphic, Van Valkenburgh included skid-pad testing in the magazine's highly instrumented road tests from 1969. Using a pad of 100-foot radius, these gave remarkable detail, including maximum roll angle, maximum cornering grip in percentage of "g" or gravity for both clockwise and counter-clockwise running, and steering characteristics. Paul's tests, which far outshone any being done now, also revealed front and rear lift or downforce at 100 mph and aerodynamic drag as well. As he said, "that would still be an interesting comparison today."
I took a different tack with skid pads. In Sports Cars Illustrated I established a super-duper road test, the Road Research Report, to take an in-depth look at important new cars. The first RRR appeared in our February 1960 issue. A feature of the RRR was a graphic representation of what I called "steering behavior". It showed the car's steering wheel and, at its rim, the amount of wheel movement that was needed to maintain the car's course at increments of 10, 20, 30, 40 miles per hour and upward to the highest speed the vehicle could maintain on a circle of 200-foot radius.
This gave a useful guide to steering responsiveness and handling behavior. If wheel position changed little for increasing speeds it showed that the handling was neutral or nearly so. Cars manifesting this quality were the Plymouth Valiant, Austin-Healey Sprite and Maserati 3500 GT. If higher speeds meant a lot of wheel-turning to stay on course this showed the onset of heavy understeer. Cars like the Volvo P1800, Studebaker Avanti, Peugeot 404 and Facel-Vega Facellia were in this category.
Strong but not excessive understeer was a feature of the short-wheelbase Ferrari 250 GT, which with the Jaguar XK-E and Shelby Cobra reached 55 mph on our circle. Most sporty models could attain 50 mph while 45 mph was the limit for the Austin 850, Pontiac Tempest, Lancia Flavia and Jaguar Mark X. Slowest around the circle were the power-limited VW Karmann-Ghia and Renault Caravelle. The highest-speed figures required the wheel to be back-tracked for the early Corvair, the Tempest and the Triumph TR4, showing their oversteer at the limit.
SCI, later Car and Driver, was headquartered at One Park Avenue in Manhattan. Where in the vicinity would I find a skid pad of 400-foot diameter? Thought you'd never ask. Not far from where I lived in Pelham Manor were the roads into Pelham Bay Park. Taking the exit from the Hutchinson River Parkway, the road led straight to a big traffic circle which measurement showed to be 400 feet in diameter. This was my skid pad.
One disadvantage of course was that I could only navigate it in the counter-clockwise direction. Another was that fellow road users might object. A third was that the cops might take a dislike to my shenanigans. It was the job of the riding observer to look out for the fuzz while jotting down the driver's assessment of the wheel angle needed at each increment of speed. We got away with it, though I'll never know how. Wailing around that traffic circle in the 250 GT Ferrari was a highlight of my days in the editor's chair.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Wheeling Yarns
Every few months a planeload of us senior Ford of Europe executives arrived at the proving grounds at Lommel in Belgium to try prototypes of new models in our pipeline. Lommel has a good mix of fast and twisty roads that serve to probe a chassis well.
During our drives we awarded numerical scores from 1 to 10 for all the key attributes of the cars we were driving. While we had lunch the scores were tallied so we could have a good discussion of the findings in the afternoon. These were the years when we were developing the front-drive Escort, the Sierra, the updated Fiesta and the Scorpio.
The drill was that two executives took turns driving each car, the passenger noting down the driver's grades. The only exceptions to this were the chairman, Bob Lutz at the time, and the chief engineer, first Charlie Knighton and later Ken Kohrs. They drove the full course with Ford engineers riding shotgun to note their comments and ratings.
On my last trip to Lommel we all moseyed out to our cars for the drive session when I discovered, to my surprise, that one of the engineers climbed in beside me, clipboard in hand. I acted as if this were an everyday occurrence as we set out on the designated test routes, wringing out Ford's latest. But when we ended our run I couldn't contain my curiosity.
"How come I'm on my own today?" I asked him.
"You get what you deserve" was his succinct reply. It was one of the high points of my Ford career.
It reminded me of a press trip to Sweden to drive the first Volvos with the new V6 engine shared with Peugeot and Renault. It was a damp day as a gaggle of American journalists herded their test Volvos along proving-ground tracks. Later we sat down with the engineers over a drink. One of them came over with a questioning look:
"Why are you so much faster than the others?"
I didn't have much of an answer to that, except that I've always enjoyed testing a car to its limits - or at least to my limits. Some of the best such episodes were at Detroit's car launches on their respective proving grounds. New-car introductions for GM's makes moved into high gear after the General paved a quarter-mile square of his Milford site, so big it was nicknamed "Black Lake". Each division laid out its own courses with traffic cones so we could flaunt our incompetence against the clock.
Of course things didn't always go to plan. At one Pontiac launch I overdid it with the result a (small) dent in the rear fender of a hand-built GTO prototype. Then at a Corvette launch Zora and his merry men brought out some heavyweight machinery with quasi-race underpinnings. Things got serious and I overdid it big time. I still have a vivid mental picture of the view through the 'Vette's rear window as the technicians scrambled for safety when I completely wiped out their timing apparatus in a desperate banzai slide. End of timed runs for the day.
Speaking of Corvettes, Corvette News invited me to write the launch article for the LT-1 version of the new 1970 model. They brought their one and only orange prototype up to Boyne City, Michigan's skiing center, in the dead of winter. The idea was to feature the snowy background of the ski resort in images by ace cameraman Don Sudnik.
To get some action shots on the snow-covered roads Don crouched in the open back of a Chevy station wagon while I piloted the Corvette in his wake. Proud of my tail-sliding skills, I decided to give Don's Hasselblad some fishtails to liven up his coverage. I swung the tail this way and that and then…much too far. Skidding at an angle the Corvette's nose caught the snowbank on the left and threw up a huge white spray as the mailboxes hurtled by.
With a decisive "whump" the priceless LT-1 prototype did a 180 and slammed right off the road into the snowbank and down the slope. Yours truly exited, abashed. Incredibly, miraculously, it was undamaged. We missed the mailboxes. Towed out, the Corvette was good as new. My stupid stunt's only legacy was a bit of snow left in the grille, visible in some of the Corvette News pictures.
Another memorable car launch was Triumph's Herald, introduced at Palm Springs. The trip west was my first flight on a jet airliner, Boeing's 707. We all had a great time bombing this British jitney around the California roads. Festivities wrapped up at a gala dinner. During it Triumph's p.r. man Dave Allen stepped to the rostrum:
"Though you didn't know it, we've been observing you out on the roads, watching your driving. And we've identified the person we think was doing the outstanding driving job. I'd like to ask [name forgotten] to step up to receive the Triumph Best Driver Award."
There was a smattering of applause as we looked at each other, wondering why that guy deserved the handsome silver cigarette box, carrying the Triumph crest and engraved with "Best Driver Award". But then Dave topped it:
"And you'll all leave here this evening with the same Best Driver Award."
It was one of the best p.r. stunts I can recall.
- Karl Ludvigsen
From Lebanon to Bad Tölz
Some interesting things were happening in the summer of '58. At the Radio Show the big news was a technique called "stereo" sound. It used two microphones for recording and two speakers for the playback to give a stereophonic listening experience. It was forecast to have a big future.
In May of 1958 Christopher Cockerell, a boatbuilder in Britain's Suffolk, revealed that he'd created a vehicle that rode on a cushion of air created by an on-board engine and fan. Calling it a "hovercraft", Cockerell said that it would give frictionless movement over both land and water. It too was seen as a highly promising development.
Under instead of over the water a maritime breakthrough was that summer's voyage beneath the North Pole's ice cap by the nuclear submarine Nautilus. Beginning in Pearl Harbor, its track led through the Bering Strait and under the Pole, to emerge in the North Atlantic and finish its historic voyage at Iceland.
Meanwhile, in a US Army base on the north side of Munich, Germany yours truly was several months into his duty as a second-echelon field-radio repairman for the Signal Corps. Under the genial supervision of Sergeant Bridges, a down-home character, a half-dozen of us fixed walkie-talkies and mobile radio sets while listening to Bob and Ray and the radio version of Gunsmoke starring William Conrad. Sick radios were brought in from various units including a mysterious Green Beret outfit at Bad Tölz south of Munich.
By midsummer I'd already been to the Grands Prix of Monaco and Belgium, seen the Brussels World Fair and attended the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Enough leave was available to allow me to see, at last, the racing cars I'd been writing about at Sports Cars Illustrated. But a cloud hovered over these cozy arrangements. I was reminded of it, and of those days, by Israel's ill-fated incursion into Lebanon in July of 2006 and the recent recriminations in Jerusalem about their army's poor performance.
Lebanon was under an international spotlight that summer of 1958. To the east in Iraq the regime of King Feisal was toppled by a coup led by young army officers. In deposing Iraq's pro-Western regime they were inspired by the success in Egypt of Arab nationalist Gamal Abdel Nasser. Next in the Muslim firing line, it seemed, were the West-leaning governments of Jordan and Lebanon.
In Beirut the Lebanese government had been led since 1952 by Camille Chamoun. He earned Arab enmity by failing to break relations with France and Britain when those nations sent their armies to attack Egypt's occupation of the Suez Canal in 1956. In that summer of 1958 Chamoun faced armed rebellion in Beirut. Meanwhile on the borders of Jordan the Syrian military was massing, evidently preparing to invade.
In Washington President Eisenhower and his military chiefs were kept up to date on these developments. While Ike had forestalled the 1956 attempt to take the Suez Canal back from Nasser, he wasn't about to stand by and see these friendly Near-East regimes toppled by the Muslim movement. Eisenhower initiated preparations by sending troops to await further orders in 44 warships afloat in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Units based in Augsburg, Germany were among those activated, including their Signal-Corps complements. When their bases emptied we moved west to Augsburg to take their places. We bedded down in their barracks and set up shop in a big well-equipped mobile repair vehicle, a special body on a truck chassis. It was a move that brought all of us, Sergeant Bridges included, that much closer to possible conflict in Lebanon.
Early in July the situation in Beirut worsened. On the 14th President Chamoun issued a call for western aid which, he said, was needed "very quickly". Taking him at his word, the next day the American Sixth Fleet landed 1,700 Marines on the shores of Lebanon. In what was called "the most unopposed landing in the history of amphibious warfare" the Leathernecks were welcomed by bikini-clad Beirut babes handing out ice cream.
The Marines' presence, plus a landing of British paratroops in Jordan two days later, helped calm the region's turmoil. Our forces returned to Augsburg and we went back to Munich to end the closest brush I had with active engagement during my two-year stint in the Army.
All this came back to me on Saturday, March 21, 1970 when I drove the 30 miles south from Munich, past the Special Forces base at Bad Tölz, to the Alpine village of Lenggries. There I met a former Green Beret, Francis McNamara, a mid-western American who'd set up shop in Germany in 1968 to build racing cars. Starting with Formula Vee, McNamara moved up the ranks so rapidly that only five days before my visit he'd air-freighted his first Ford-powered Indy car to America to be prepared by Vince Granatelli and raced by Mario Andretti.
Designed by Austrian Joe Karasek after he served a spell at Lola, the turbocharged and STP-sponsored McNamara-Ford turned out to be a fairly decent car. Soon after its completion it finished sixth at Indy. It scored its first - and only - win on the Championship Trail at Continental Divide on June 28, 1970. But by 1972 Mario Andretti left Andy Granatelli's embrace to drive for the Vel's Parnelli Jones Viceroy team. With them he would, frustratingly, be no more successful.
- Karl Ludvigsen
I Go Yugo
It all started innocently enough. When I set up a motor-industry consulting business in London in 1983 one of my first clients was International Automobile Importers, the company founded by Malcolm Bricklin to import the X1/9 and 2000 Spyder after Fiat decided it wouldn't make these sports cars any more. Bertone and Pininfarina carried on production under their own names and Bricklin's IAI took over their American importation.
Always the entrepreneur, Malcolm was soon on the lookout for additional brands to import. This was one of the areas where we helped by researching and qualifying possible candidates. Suddenly, however, a candidate dropped into Bricklin's lap.
International dealmaker Armand Hammer had been asked by the Yugoslavs to identify business areas in which they could generate imports to earn the hard currencies they desperately needed to bolster their economy. Hammer hit on the idea of exporting the small cars made in Serbian Kragujevac by Zavodi Crvena Zastava. For many years an armaments producer, with a magnificent museum to prove it, Zastava's fine socialist name meant "Red Flag".
In 1953, when Zastava celebrated its 100th anniversary, it started meeting the local market's transportation needs with vehicles made under license from Fiat, just across the Adriatic. Thirty years later it was still producing the perky rear-engined 600 and the 101, a bustle-backed version of Fiat's evergreen 128.
On its own initiative, in 1980 Zastava introduced its Jugo or Yugo model. Still using Fiat-type power train and underpinnings, it was an update of the Italian company's 127. It was very neatly done. Styled in Turin, the boxy two-door hatchback's lines were pleasantly reminiscent of the original VW Golf or Rabbit. Zastava was already exporting its new creation to other East European markets, installing the bigger 128 overhead-cam engine for a top speed of 90 mph.
Setting up Yugo America to import the car, Bricklin assigned Bill Prior to sort out the distribution and Tony Ciminera to sort out the Yugo. Ciminera, a car-mad former Fiat executive, descended on the Kragujevac factory with such vigor that they nicknamed him "Hurricane". Tony carried out a bumper-to-bumper audit that resulted in more than 500 changes to meet the needs of the American market, including the safety and emissions improvements that US laws demanded.
At an early stage I visited the factory with Ciminera. It was vast, patterned after the Fiat factories of the early 1950s, and poorly maintained with dirt and grease underfoot. Its 50,000 employees were internally divided among "85 basic associated labor organizations and 25 work committees", each of which had its own agenda. Nonetheless they appreciated the opportunity that America represented. They set up a separate assembly line, with handpicked elite staff earning extra pay, building Yugos destined for the New World.
I was introduced to a new working style during the visit. We started at something like 6:00 in the morning and with meetings, tours and discussions carried right through to 2:00 in the afternoon. Yours truly mused, "This is the first time I've worked an eight-hour day before breakfast!" There was method in their madness. To earn an adequate crust the Serbs had organized their days so they could hold down two jobs. After a brunch break they headed off to their other workplaces.
Head of Zastava's R&D Institute and thus effectively the company's chief engineer was Zdravko Menjak, a dynamo of improvisation. Having led the Yugo model's development, Menjak was now responding to the many changes needed to qualify the car for sale in the West. Bricklin had his own people at the plant to monitor the effort, constantly stressing the need for high quality.
Communicating the need for world-class quality wasn't easy. Zastava defended its efforts, saying, "We have the best quality of all Comecon cars!" Needless to say, this wasn't going to get the job done. We located a team of British quality experts who sent a cadre to Kragujevac to study the factory and recommend improvements. Their resulting report was scathing, so much so that the Zastava officials took offense and barred them from continuing to work at the factory!
When troubles began surfacing with Yugos in service in America, we discovered that Zastava had been badly let down by its licensor. Take the car's 128 engine. Over the years Fiat had made many changes and improvements but hadn't communicated them to Kragujevac! The Italians had long overcome the piston problems that started plaguing Yugos driven by lead-footed Americans.
In spite of their problems Yugo America and its plucky Serbian supplier were preparing a fightback in the late 1980s. They'd produced an ingenious Yugo cabriolet that was being tooled up for production. An automatic transmission was being sourced from Renault. A larger car, the Florida, had been styled by Giugiaro and was in the early manufacturing stages.
With communism's collapse, however, Yugoslavia began to unravel. After embargoes stifled production the coup de grace was NATO's bombing of the Kragujevac factory, rightly enough shown on its maps as a producer of military equipment. Their accuracy was impressive. Only in 2000 could production be restarted and not until 2003 was the Florida launched.
Not for a while, if ever, will we again see Yugos on sale in America. However, the 1980s effort was a brave one for all parties. A new car for $3,990! It was, as the ads said, "A new kind of sticker shock."
- Karl Ludvigsen
Porsche's Bad Idea
"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!" If you're a cinema fan you may remember this as the rallying cry of suicidal anchorman Howard Beale in the 1976 film Network. Well, I feel just like Howard.
Living in Britain I'm used to seeing every road test of a 911-series Porsche spend half its text moaning about its rear-mounted engine being an offense against God and man that has somehow been made to work by the Porsche people even though it defies all logic. Now, to my disappointment Road & Track has joined this benighted bandwagon.
As one of its 50 Things Enthusiasts Should Do, number 44 on the R&T list is "Celebrate a bad idea brought to brilliance." Yes, you guessed it. That refers to the Porsche 911, which it calls "a design that has confounded competing auto-makers for more than four decades" with its "less-than-ideal rear-engine layout." Though the magazine admits that "the Porsche 911 remains one of the world's greatest sports cars" in its latest Type 997 guise, it thinks that this has only been achieved by overcoming the appalling faults of a "bad idea"!
The decade in which the rear-engined Porsche concept was born, the 1930s, was rife with automotive novelty including the first extensive modern use of rear-mounted engines. A leader in this respect was Czech company Tatra, whose Erich Übelacker was keen on rear-engined aerodynamic cars. He used V8 engines behind the rear axle, first in his Type 77 of 1934 and from 1936 in the much-improved Type 87. With air cooling its engine was light enough to keep the Tatra's share of weight on the rear wheels from exceeding 62%.
In those years some engineers were reluctant to recommend putting the engine behind the rear wheels. Among them was Dutch innovator John Tjaarda, creator of the rear-engined prototypes that evolved into the Lincoln Zephyr. His engines were above or ahead of the rear axle. In a letter to me Tjaarda noted that he had "never made one design with the engine behind the rear axle. It is, with the present type of engine, the wrong place. It offers no advantage; it multiplies the gimmicks required to make the car behave."
Nevertheless, waving aside the misgivings of some of its engineers Mercedes-Benz introduced its Type 130 in 1934 with a water-cooled side-valve 1.3-liter four extending behind its rear wheels, complete with radiator. This positioning put 65-66% of its weight on the rear wheels. Engineer Josef Ganz wrote in his Motor Kritik that this wasn't a pure rear engine but rather an "outboard-motor" that brought "undesirable tail-heaviness".
In the Mercedes the "outboard motor" wasn't a success. British engineer Maurice Olley, an expert on handling and suspensions, drove a Type 130 and said that "the oversteering on corners is the worst I have ever experienced." At London's motor show of 1934 he "appealed to" Ferdinand Porsche and asked him "to enlighten me on this matter." Just what were Germany's engineers up to?
"He agreed that a weight distribution of 33% front, 66% rear is unsatisfactory," Olley reported on his conversation with Porsche. "On the cars he is laying out for Auto Union he hopes to get 42% front, 58% rear and on his racing cars with engine ahead of rear axle he gets 45% front and 55% rear, which is as good as most normal cars. The Germans recognize the fact that a car carrying 2/3rds of its weight on the rear wheels is not in a favorable condition for safety in handling."
In fact the landmark rear-engined car that Porsche and his team designed in the 1930s, the Volkswagen, had 59% of its weight on the rear wheels. Contributing to this relatively modest proportion was the engine's short "boxer" format and the lightness of its air cooling. Significantly, during the war the Porsche office conducted tests with cast iron instead of scarce strategic aluminum for the VW engine's crankcase and gearbox casing. It rejected this expedient because the added weight at the rear disastrously impaired the vehicle's handling.
After the war an imprisoned Ferdinand Porsche was asked to comment on the design, virtually complete, of the rear-engined 4CV Renault. He had many criticisms of its layout, among which was certainly the 65% of its weight carried rearward. This was well in excess of the limit that Porsche thought desirable. Some 40 years later the same proportion applied to the Renault-engined DeLorean DMC-12. Thanks to modern tire technology its handling was the least of its problems.
When Porsche's son Ferry created his Type 356 Porsche, on the VW model, it had excellent weight distribution. Its rearward proportion ranged between 54.5% and 56.5%, with which the tires of the day could easily cope. A huge advantage of the layout was and is that weight transfer forward under braking makes full use of the stopping power of all four wheels.
With its boxer six instead of a four, the 911 inevitably shifted more weight rearward, starting typically at 59%. Some were as low as 58%, while in 1979 the 930 Turbo went to the other extreme at 63.8%. This was the exception, however. Today's 911s typically scale 60% on their driving wheels. This is a boon to their traction as the racing versions demonstrate every weekend.
All in all, pretty good going for such a bad idea!
- Karl Ludvigsen
Triumph Triumphs
My coccyx made me do it. I'd enjoyed driving my MG TC around New England and the Boston area when I was studying at MIT. Then in 1954 I switched to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn to become an industrial designer. I carried on for a while with the MG but New York's potholed streets started knocking heck out of the car and, dare I say it, the driver. I think it was the Kosciuszko Bridge that was the last straw, practically bouncing me out of the MG.
Thinking about alternatives, I hit on the TR2. I'd read a lot about Triumph's sports car, whose looks had a pleasingly functional honesty. It wasn't as pretty as an Austin-Healey but its drive train was much less tractor-like - even though its engine was in fact derived from one that also powered Ferguson tractors. It would still be stiff-riding but at least it had independent front suspension! This was of course a feature of the MG TD but I'd never felt that its looks measured up to its rakish predecessor.
Checking the New York Times classifieds, as usual, I found a little-used TR2 at a dealership on Long Island. Like so many of them it was white with a red interior. One of only 248 cars delivered in 1953 after production started that August, it was a "long-door" model whose doors extended right to the bottom of the bodywork. From 1954 the door would be shortened so that it could swing over curbs more easily.
Compared to the MG this was a serious car with its top speed of just over 100 mph. Ken Richardson, whose racing experience helped develop its chassis, drove a TR2 at a timed 124 mph in Belgium with an undershield and tonneau cover. Its acceleration was lively and its fuel economy remarkably good. It had snap fasteners galore for its top and side curtains, which stowed neatly away. Its dash was neatly designed with all necessary gauges and a proper glove box, which housed the T-handled key that opened hood, rear deck and compartment for the spare tire.
Graham Robson wrote that the TR2 "soon won itself a reputation for doubtful handling," which was no great surprise in view of its short wheelbase and the humble origins of its running gear, largely scavenged from Standard's parts bins. I don't recall it as being all that doubtful, although I like a car that breaks away at the rear in a controllable manner. It was very easy to catch when it did start tail-sliding.
The Triumph would have been well-suited to competition but I never had a chance to do any serious racing with it. I did take it on a loose oval track near my home in Kalamazoo and greatly enjoyed throwing it around. Even without pressing it too hard, however, I did manage to fail the TR2's rear axle. That was the only major problem I had with it.
This was of course my car for commuting back and forth between Pratt and Kalamazoo. On one such trip I kept track of my time and distance between landmarks, starting in the afternoon and driving through the night. The key landmarks along the way were Stroudsburg, Kingston, Williamsport, Du Bois, Sharon, Bowling Green and Angola. My average speed for the whole trip of 762 miles was 50.6 mph, which was pretty good over ordinary roads. My speeds went up in the early morning hours through Ohio and into Michigan, averaging 60 mph over the last two legs.
My speeds went up for another reason. Dawn was just beginning to break as I left the outskirts of Battle Creek at around 5:00 a.m. It wasn't far now to Gull Lake, where my family had a cottage. But behind me I saw, gaining, a patrol car. He wasn't happy with the speeds I'd been clocking through his town. But I hadn't come all that way just to get nabbed on the last lap of a long trip.
I put my foot down and the Triumph responded. I knew the roads, taking full advantage of that high top speed to lope off into the middle distance. Needless to say I kept moving until I was well out of the orbit of a Cereal City patrolman. By 5:30 I was home and happy sans citation, thanks to the TR2's punch and low-drag design.
In the 1970s it was a pleasure to renew my relationship with Triumph cars thanks to my friend John Dugdale, the urbane and talented British expatriate who was responsible for marketing at Jaguar and Triumph in New Jersey. Just around the corner from fellow columnist Mike Cook, John and I worked on the brochures for Triumphs for some years. He had a fine art director in Bill Freeman while I produced the texts, accentuating the positives of these British offerings.
This was around the time of the launch of Triumph's Stag. To position this unusual car in the marketplace I produced and copyrighted my Car/Parator to compare its specifications with those of the Alfa Romeo 1750 GTV, BMW 2800CS, Chevrolet Camaro Z-28, Jaguar XKE 2+2, Mercedes-Benz 280SL and Porsche 911T. I enjoyed writing the Spitfire brochures and did a few as well for Jaguar and Land Rover. The launch of the Triumph TR7 was on my watch as well. So you literature collectors will be holding some secret samples of the Ludvigsen prose!
- Karl Ludvigsen
Delightful Dauphine (January 2007)
We were bombing along the Autobahn at the highest feasible cruising speed of our Renault Dauphine, which I reckoned to be about 65 mph in a car whose top speed was 73. In the mirror I saw a Fiat 600 gaining on us. Finally he swept by. Not unaware of the relative performances of the cars and the pecking order on the Autobahn, my wife said, "How can he do that?"
"He can't," was my answer. "It's impossible."
Not many kilometers down the road we passed the Fiat 600, stationary and smoking at the roadside. We looked at each other and laughed. It was one of those moments that gave me confidence that as an expert on automobiles I was not entirely out of my depth.
This was 1958, and you may well ask why I was driving a French car in Germany where a Volkswagen was the obvious choice. I'd arrived in Deutschland that February to begin my service as a field-radio repairman for the U.S. Army. Assigned to a base in Munich, I needed wheels to commute from our two rented rooms in Schwabing to the military compound north of the city.
My wife and I required something that was cheap to buy and run yet roomy enough for the European travels we planned. Back in New York I'd been technical editor of Sports Cars Illustrated at a time when Renault was gaining ground in the American market hand over fist. Its feisty little 4CV was its pilot offering in the U.S., starting with 1,500 in 1955. At the end of that year the first Dauphines rolled off the line at Renault's new factory at Flins.
Charmingly named and attractively styled, the Dauphine was the last creation of Pierre Lefaucheux, who led Renault after its post-war nationalization and launched Project 109, to build a bigger and better 4CV, before his unfortunate death in a 1955 auto accident. It had been Lefaucheux's daring decision to sweep away the Louis Renault reliance on a huge range of models to concentrate on the 4CV as the right car for a post-war world. Now with Project 109 he commissioned a car to keep pace with Europe's growing prosperity. His legacy came to market in March of 1956 with simultaneous launches in Paris and Geneva.
Before I'd left for Germany in early 1958 the new Dauphine had been making a good impression in America. It was well priced at just under $1,500, economical and remarkably spacious for both people and luggage. Its four doors, a sine qua non of the French market, offered convenience while its water-cooled engine offered comfort in the form of a decent heater compared to the Bug's intermittent exhalations. These were among the considerations that found me at the Renault dealer in downtown Munich, taking delivery of my robin's-egg-blue Dauphine.
This amiable car took us all over Europe, from the world's fair at Brussels to the north of Germany and south to Monza for the Grand Prix and Turin for the auto show. I don't recall any special problems, though its three-speed gearbox was a handicap going up and down the Alpine passes. It's always fun to drive an underpowered car - 26.5 net bhp from 845 cc - because you're constantly challenged to maintain momentum, stay off the brakes and corner like crazy.
Underpowered or not, the Dauphine collected its fair share of speeding tickets. I already had one to my credit when the Army announced an Operation Crackdown on its military motorists in the Munich area. No sooner was this launched than I was ticketed for speeding a second time. This meant an intolerable suspension of my license for at least six months. Fortunately I had a friend at the company headquarters who agreed to make the citation "disappear" for a small consideration. There was a follow-up system, he said, but this was unlikely to catch up with me. It didn't.
In my spare time I was pounding away on my Olivetti Lettera 22 for Sports Cars Illustrated, saving my earnings with the objective of buying a Zagato-bodied Alfa Romeo Giulietta. This idea went by the boards, however, when I saw an ad for a Mercedes-Benz 300SL. It said that taking a car in trade would be acceptable; the owner was looking for a runabout for his wife. The Dauphine was just the thing, he agreed, so combined with my Alfa Romeo hoard I became the owner of a Gullwing.
For Renault the Dauphine saga didn't end so happily. Pressed by its owner, the government, to earn hard currency abroad, the Regie was emphasizing exports. When I came back to the States in 1959 the little car was flying high, leading Renault's sales of 102,000 in America. Unlike arch-rival Volkswagen, however, the Regie failed to provide service support. "Renault, in a hurry, entrusted its signs to anyone willing to sell its wares," wrote Edouard Seidler. "Overseas we seem to rush at the market like a bull at a gate," admitted Renault chief Pierre Dreyfus.
When America slipped into recession in 1960 Renault's house of cards began to collapse. Sales that year fell to 63,000 and in 1961 plummeted to 28,000. Clearing the unsold Stateside inventory became a task of Herculean proportions. The promise of the charming Dauphine, a car that if properly developed and marketed could indeed have challenged Volkswagen for import leadership, had been wasted.
- Karl Ludvigsen
A Count in the World of Cars
Opening my copy of the 1951 Enlarged Super Edition of Dan Post's Original Blue Book of Custom Restyling I find three photos of a rakish coupe based on the post-war Studebaker. It had a teeny-tiny cab and an ultra-low hood beneath which was one of the Granatelli brothers' hot-rodded Mercury V8s. Standing next to it in one photo is a tall fellow with swept-back hair wearing a tee-shirt, a moustache and a big smile. This was none other than Albrecht Graf von Schlitz gen. von Goertz und Freiherr von Wrisberg.
Inheriting titles that included both Count and Baron, Albrecht Goertz was born on January 12, 1914 into one of Germany's noble families. Their properties were in Lower Saxony between Hanover and Göttingen at the village of Brunkensen, set in an idyllic valley. The family's scions would be expected to maintain its traditions, but Albrecht was the second son with few prospects of inheriting its stewardship. In 1936 at the age of 22 Goertz decided to seek his fortune in America.
"I did all kinds of odd jobs," he said. "In 1939, the beginning of the hot-rod era, I rented a small body shop - a corrugated metal shack on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills - and modified Fords." One of his creations based on a 1940 Mercury was a low, handsome coupe with suicide doors, clearly influenced by Jean Bugatti's pre-war designs. Adopting this as his personal car, he named it the 'Paragon'.
Albrecht Goertz had little time to enjoy his creation before bring drafted into America's army. After V-J Day he was mustered out with little more to his name than the Paragon. Exemplifying the theme of his autobiography, You've Got to Be Lucky, Goertz was driving this spectacular machine in New York one day when he was spotted by Raymond Loewy. Sensing a diamond in the rough, the famed industrial designer sent Albrecht to Brooklyn's Pratt Institute to learn the rudiments of formal design before granting him an apprenticeship at the South Bend styling offices of Studebaker.
"This was possibly the best education into design that one could get," Goertz said later. After helping with Studebaker's spinner-nose facelift he left South Bend to set up his own industrial-design office in New York. There the tee-shirt-wearer took full advantage of his exposure to the stylish Loewy. He metamorphosed into a suave and affable European who lost no time in making contacts in New York's motoring circles. One of his calling cards was a series of sketches of car-design proposals for Motorsport magazine.
Another émigré who'd made a home in New York was BMW importer Max Hoffman. The two met at the city's automobile show in the spring of 1954. Hoffman had just returned from a visit to Munich where he'd been disappointed by design proposals for a sports car on the V8-powered Type 502 chassis. Showing photos of it to Goertz and explaining the situation, Hoffman said, "Why don't you make some sketches?"
Ten days or so after sending a portfolio of drawings to BMW Albrecht Goertz received a telegram asking whether he could come over to discuss the project. Flying to Munich, he reached agreement on a design project for two cars. In November of 1954 he started work on them both at BMW and in his New York studio. One, the 503, was a 2+2 model on an unaltered 502 chassis. The other, the 507, was a pure two-seater sports car on a new chassis shortened by 14 inches to a 97.6-inch wheelbase.
What Goertz called his "breakthrough" came at the Frankfurt Show in September of 1955 when the two new BMWs were shown. The 507 in particular has stood the test of time as one of the most stunningly beautiful cars ever created. In his eyes the design had a particular cachet, he said: "I think I was the only guy able to change the BMW front without anybody saying a word." He did change it but sympathetically, with the 'kidneys' split horizontally instead of vertically.
In 1961 Albrecht Goertz became one of the first occidental designers to take up the challenge of Japan. After five visits Nissan assigned him a consulting contract. Working with their designers he created the handsome Sylvia coupe of 1965 and a fast-back sports car that failed to reach production. After no little controversy, Nissan later grudgingly granted that "the personnel who designed [the 240Z] were influenced by your fine work for Nissan and had the benefit of your designs."
In New York in the 1950s and 1960s I enjoyed my contacts with the well-informed Count. He was engagingly persistent in his attempts to arrange, through me, a design-consulting relationship with the people in our GM Overseas Operations who had product responsibilities, but that never came good. Meanwhile he was busy with his work for companies that eventually numbered 62, creating boats, cameras, furniture, jewelry, sportswear, pens, clocks, irons and lighters, to name only a few of the products of a versatile industrial designer.
In 1990, at the age of 76, Albrecht Goertz upped stakes and transplanted his design business to the family estate at Brunkesen. Rightly enough he continued to be feted throughout the world not only for his creativity but also for his effervescent personality. While at the resort city of Kitzbuehl on October 27, 2006 Goertz passed away. The world of cars lost one of its most engaging and colorful individuals.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Ferrari: Formula 1 Forever (November 2006)
My friend Jean Sage was prowling around the sports cars mustered for the acceptance ritual in Brescia's Piazza Vittoria before the start of the 1998 edition of the retrospective Mille Miglia. Jean knows his cars; he's a noted Ferrari collector and a former team manager for Renault in Grand Prix racing. His stooped figure came over to us, his head shaking: "Karl, there are a lot of very peculiar cars here."
It's no secret that at the stratospheric level of values among great collector cars, falsification is a temptation to which many are vulnerable. If the skills are there to repair a Ferrari, they're also there to create one from scratch, or at least to fashion a GTO or short-wheelbase 250 GT from the raw material of a lesser product of Maranello. The result can be a nice car - but a big risk for the unsuspecting purchaser who may be convinced, by omission if not commission, that it's the real article.
This has been no small issue for Ferrari itself. Its guardianship of an unparalleled legend depends in part on maintenance of the authenticity of its cars on the road, cars that of course have long since left its direct control. A few years ago Ferrari did bring legal action to terminate the activities of a blatant counterfeiter of its products. Now, with the opening of Ferrari Classiche, it's taking direct action to establish a means of verifying the authenticity of its cars and, where necessary, of bringing Ferraris up to a standard that's consistent with they way they were made in the first place.
Headed by Robert Vaglietti, formerly chief of Ferrari's service activities, Ferrari Classiche represents the company's first effort to get a grip on the cars that constitute its heritage. Its offices and a well-equipped workshop of more than 10,000 square feet nestle into the historic buildings at the center of the company's Maranello complex. Ferraris more than 20 years old - and single-seater Ferraris of any age - are eligible to be worked on by ten well-trained mechanics. They can refer to original factory drawings to achieve authenticity.
In addition Vaglietti is investing in a massive program of remanufacturing critical Ferrari components, especially for engines. This includes blocks, heads, crankshafts, pistons, connecting rods and cylinder liners for key V12 and flat-12 models. Some parts are made internally while others come from the original suppliers.
Crucial to the success of Ferrari Classiche is the new operation's program for certifying the authenticity of early cars. Rolled out in a Beta version in 2004, the certification process was streamlined for its full launch in 2006. It places an initial burden on the car's owner to provide detailed information on his Ferrari, according to a factory questionnaire, and to dispense a certification fee of $3,000 for cars made before 1980 or $1,500 for younger Ferraris up to 20 years old.
Inspection of the submission by a panel of experts will result either in the issuing of an impressive certification brochure or the provision of recommendations for bringing the car up to snuff. The adjudicating experts aren't just dragged in off the street. Among them are Enzo's son Piero, keenly interested in historic aspects of the company in which he still holds a 10 percent share, and Angelo Bellei, who headed the engineering of production Ferraris well into the 1960s.
On July 25, 2006, when Ferrari Classiche was officially launched, it had 250 applications for certification in hand and had approved 190. One motivation for going through the process is that only certified cars will be eligible to take part in official Ferrari events. Other advantages include inalienable proof of provenance and authenticity when selling a Ferrari.
Visibly installed as it is in the core of Ferrari's Maranello factory, the Classiche operation is another enhancement of the spirit of heritage that infuses all aspects of the company and its activities. Everywhere throughout the facilities you see evidence of the racing, the engines and the hero drivers of the past and present. In the racing department the meeting rooms are named after Ferrari's world champions. In a network of tubing in the factory's main square a modern Formula 1 Ferrari is enmeshed like a butterfly in a net.
Most importantly, Ferrari's people are proudly kitted out in red and beige outfits with Shell and Ferrari patches that communicate the emotion of the race track. The weekly workforce bulletins feature the previous week's achievements on one side and the coming week's activities on the other with red and yellow colors that are pure Ferrari. A competition for higher manufacturing quality is the "Quality Grand Prix" with a checkered flag for the winner. Teamwork on manufacturing-systems improvement is graphically portrayed in the style of a race track.
In other words, Ferrari has so thoroughly integrated racing with its road-car activities that the two are inseparable. This was made official by the promotion of Jean Todt, formerly in charge of the racing team, to the post of general manager of all of Ferrari. So in case you're wondering how committed Ferrari is to Formula 1 racing, you need wonder no longer. For Ferrari in the 21st Century Grand Prix racing, at the very apogee of world-wide competition, is as irrevocably an integral part of the company's activities as the beating heart of a racing driver.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Cariocan Cars (October 2006)
From 1964 to 1967 I was in New York, working for GM's Overseas Operations Division. Looking after the overseas press, I had the pleasure of a visit from an ebullient character, Leszek Bilyk. Les, who had flown for the Polish Air Force and the RAF during the war, was editor of Brazil's leading car monthly, Quatro Rodas. We got along well and when I left GM in 1967 to make a career as a free-lance writer Les named me North American correspondent for Quatro Rodas.
In 1969 Alcantara Machado, the organizers of Brazil's automobile show, had the happy idea of inviting some journalists and others from abroad to Sao Paulo to see what was happening there and to promote their show, Brazil and its car industry abroad. Thanks to Les Bilyk's recommendation I was invited, together with veteran Gordon Wilkins from Britain and retired racing icon Stirling Moss. Like the rest of us Stirling was taken with the exotic beauty of the Brazilian ladies but frustrated at the same time: "How can you chat them up if you don't know the lingo?" was Stirling's despairing plaint.
Les Bilyk met our plane and drove us directly to the show at Ibirapuera Park where, on entering, we immediately shook hands with Brazil's president Costa e Silva. This was a coup of which Les was justifiably proud.
Among the others to whom Les Bilyk introduced me were local racing stars the Fittipaldi brothers, Wilson and his younger brother Emerson. The latter was just back from his first season of racing in Europe. In 1970 he'd be promoted by Lotus to Formula 1, which saw him the surprise winner of the Grand Prix at Watkins Glen. With everyone else saying, "Emerson who?" I was among the handful at the Glen who had any inkling of the credentials of this brilliant young Brazilian. On his way home it was my pleasure and honor to introduce him to René Dreyfus at Le Chanteclair in New York.
Brazil's big players in 1969 were Volkswagen, dominating the market with its Beetle, locally the Fusca, Chrysler with its Simca-derived models, GM with the Opala, an Opel Rekord with Chevy engines, and Ford, which was just introducing its Corcel, a new front-drive model with a drive train based on the Renault 12.
Interesting anomalies abounded. In cooperation with Karmann's Brazilian operation VW's Rudolf Leiding developed a sports coupe unique to Brazil, the handsome SP2. With the Brazilian industry and market a demanding training ground for executives, Leiding went on to head Audi and then Volkswagen, where he created the Golf and Scirocco.
My major discovery in 1969 was Puma. This little company had the genial idea of building a sports car on the VW Fusca chassis. Though far from a novel concept, it was executed brilliantly by Puma in the form of a great-looking coupe. Looking after the technical side was experienced engineer Jorge Lettry, who'd been involved in DKW's racing activities in Brazil. Executed in glass-fiber in Puma's own facilities, the result was an attractive sports car that stole the hearts of Paulistas and Cariocans.
Among the stories I wrote after that '69 visit for many magazines around the world was one on the Puma. This aroused tremendous enthusiasm and interest. My friends at Puma said that after these articles appeared they received letters expressing interest in the car from all parts of the globe. Exports of Pumas began, especially to Switzerland and the Low Countries.
The Puma story deserves - and will get - separate treatment in Sports & Exotic Cars. Suffice it to say here that they later introduced a convertible version, after which they took on the ambitious challenge of building their own chassis for a Chevrolet-powered car to get away from their dependency on VW. This failed to produce a car with the undeniable appeal of the original rear-engined Puma.
I was back in 1970 for the next show, the first in completely new facilities in Anhembi Park with more than twice the space. My last two auto-show visits were in 1972 and '74. These saw some notable product launches. Fiat opened its factory at Belo Horizonte, producing a local version of its 127. Ford introduced its Maverick to Brazil, with both sixes and V8s. GM gave Sao Paulo an important role in its T-Car project which saw similar cars introduced as the Kadett in Germany and as the Chevette in America and Brazil.
One constant through these years was the Brazilians' fantastic enthusiasm for cars. They were passionate about new models, eager to see what was being launched both at home and abroad. This made Brazil a lodestone that attracted engineers and designers like GM's talented Dick Finegan, who made a career commitment to Sao Paulo. I carried on contributing to Quatro Rodas until I went back into the auto industry in 1978.
I can say that I fell in love with Brazil and its people, so much so that when I married in 1987 I arranged to honeymoon in Brazil. Later when I was a management consultant I was invited to speak to a group in Porto Alegre about new developments in the motor industry. I still keep a weather eye on Brazil, which has often been hailed as the country of the future. It always will be!
- Karl Ludvigsen
The Tragedy of the Corvair (September 2006)
The first time I properly met Zora Arkus-Duntov was at a drinks party at Harder Hall before the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1960. His first question to me was straightforward enough: "Why did you write what you did about the Corvair?"
In the autumn of 1959 my first big project for Sports Cars Illustrated after returning from the Army was to cover Chevrolet's all-new Corvair. I went out to Milford to drive this most radical of new American cars. In my report in the November 1959 issue of SCI I said that "the Corvair is fundamentally a profound oversteerer."
This was what Zora wanted to ask me about. How had I reached this conclusion? I explained that I'd taken the car to the Truck Loop where there was a huge turning circle that could be used as a skid pad. Turning laps there I explored the limits of the Corvair's handling envelope. I wrote that it was "possible to hustle hard into tight corners and bring the tail around with just a twitch of the wheel, counter-steering until the slide stops and the time for acceleration arrives." Duntov acknowledged that under skid-pad conditions the car did indeed behave just that way.
I was tough on the Corvair in several respects. One was Chevrolet's recommendation of "normal inflation in the rear tires and a reduced pressure in the front tires", which amounted to 26 and 15 psi respectively when cold. Saying that "such a difference reflects poorly on the basic chassis design," I warned that "it's unlikely that most Corvair owners will ever maintain the pressures recommended."
I was even more amazed than I let on in the article that Chevrolet hadn't done more to mitigate the effects in handling of a weight distribution that was 62 percent rearward. A front anti-roll bar would have helped, but it was eliminated at the last minute by the bean counters. I urged that it be restored.
The architect of the Corvair's suspension was Robert Schilling, an experienced chassis engineer from GM's Research Staff. I knew that Schilling had introduced an ingenious means of decoupling the two single-leaf springs that carried the de Dion tube at the rear of GM's turbine-powered Firebird I of 1953. He joined their rear ends by a pivoted balance beam which, Schilling said, reduced "the rear roll rate to less than 50 percent of its original value".
Something like this was what the Corvair needed. Its rear springs, I pointed out in SCI, were twice as stiff as those of a full-size Chevy sedan. A system like the one Mercedes-Benz used on its 300SL Roadster, with a coil spring compressed between the swing axles to accept vertical loads and allow the individual wheel springs to be softer, was too cumbersome for the Corvair. But in 1959 Porsche introduce a simple pivoted transverse leaf spring that performed the same function. "For all its novelty," I finger-wagged about the lack of such a solution, "the Corvair is surprisingly naïve in this major respect."
These were pretty tough criticisms of the chassis of a car that soon began to earn a reputation for going out of control without warning. Counter-steering to correct tail slides on dry roads wasn't part of the repertoire of most drivers, and with good reason. To boot, Chevrolet had deliberately given the Corvair relatively slow steering on the grounds that its drivers would thus be less likely to initiate the steering inputs that could cause them to lose control!
Late in 1961 I left magazine editing to go to work for General Motors in public relations. As news of the Corvair's cranky road behavior began to flow in, especially to the Corporation's Legal Staff, an awareness gradually grew that someone now working for GM was among those journalists who had been critical of the car's design. I recall being interviewed by someone from Legal, who advised me to keep a low profile.
Fortunately I wasn't among those quoted in the first chapter of Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed, dedicated as it was to the Corvair. One of my senior p.r. colleagues did his best to alert top GM management to the threat that Nader's book and actions represented, counseling a more proactive approach, but his initiative was waved off.
For the 1964 model Chevrolet finally fitted the front anti-roll bar that had been optional and provided a transverse-leaf spring at the rear that allowed the wheel rates to be reduced. It is a matter of history that it took far too long to make these essential improvements. The 1965 model had a much more sophisticated rear suspension on the lines of the Corvette Stingray's.
Meanwhile, GM geared up to fight the legal challenges to the early Corvair. The former industrial-design offices of Ford & Earl Associates, on the south-east corner of Mound and 12 Mile Roads, were converted into a factory for the Corvair's defense with shelf after shelf of films and documents.
Out at Milford a huge area was paved to create "Black Lake", a vast smooth surface on which handling experiments could be conducted without limits. Black Lake became an outstanding research tool that later contributed to the racing expertise of the Penske and Chaparral teams. This at least was a positive outcome from what can only be described as the Tragedy of the Corvair.
- Karl Ludvigsen
NSU Spider (September 2006)
FIRST HEARD about the Wankel engine in 1959 from some friends who were consultants in Neckarsulm, hometown of NSU. The friends sketched my first glimpse of the now famous triangular rotor and hourglass housing. When I first saw an engine at a Curtiss-Wright's press conference in November, 1959, 1 was impressed by its sophistication and simplicity. This, I thought, was tomorrow's power.
While NSU was talking publicly about how far in the future automotive Wankel applications would be, back at the laboratory their Research Director, Dr. Walter Froede, was busy fitting engines into two NSU Prinzes for road tests. Successful demonstrations of these cars were instrumental in convincing the NSU board that Felix Wankel's wild invention was worthy of pursuit.
On a visit to NSU in August, 1961, I was given a ride in a Sport Prinz powered by a more advanced Wankel engine. It was noisy and not without smoke, but its smoothness, power and durability were impressive. By the end of 1962. NSU decided to use a 500-cc Wankel engine in a sports car. Early the following year design work was started for the production Spider. The first car, plus a display engine, was ready for unveiling at the Frankfurt Show, September. 1963. As an avowed Wankel fanatic I decided I must have one, and so advised the appropriate importer in New York City. I was assigned a "preference number" and settled down to await my Spider.
Production of Spiders was initiated Sept. 20, 1964. During that year some 300 cars were made, but the outlook for 1965 was said to be 5000 units, an estimate that dropped to 3000 in May. Actual 1965 production was 930 Spiders. Production rose to more than 1000 cars in 1966. NSU's maximum rate for Wankel Spider production now is 15 cars per day or approximately four times greater than last year.
Not until the first Spiders were proved in Europe were the trim little convertibles brought into the U.S. Mine was in the first batch of 15 cars to arrive. I had a distinct impression that the 14 others were destined for Dearborn, Pontiac, Highland Park and Chelsea. My car was the 455th to be built, fitted with engine number 350. It drove out the importer's door at $3046, a price I still think is amazingly low for an automobile with an experimental engine built with racing powerplant techniques.
Fine handling of the Spider frankly surprised me, because I was mainly interested in the engine and hadn't thought much about the remainder of the car. Near-neutral handling tended toward understeer, especially on wet pavement. Its quick rack-and-pinion steering offered good road feel and could be faulted only in the amount of attention it required on a straight road.
Lockable front and rear trunk compartments provided useful volume. Neither became too hot to be practical. Forward volume was limited by the wide radiator, behind which was an electric fan turned on by a thermostatic switch in the cooling system. This fan came on only in heavy traffic in summer. When it switched on, it sounded much louder and rougher than the engine, so much so that the first time it functioned, I thought my Wankel power unit was about to expire.
To start the Spider one uses a hand choke lever on the center tunnel. A dashboard light shows when the choke is in use and the owner's manual urges its activation as seldom as possible. Fortunately the engine runs smoothly without choke after very little warmup. The Wankel does not fire immediately, but it does so unfailingly after a few cranks of the starter, then settles down to an idle at about 900 rpm.
The complete engine/ transmission assembly is very softly suspended, together with the elaborate muffler system, allowing easy oscillation at idle. To bystanders, the exhaust pipe seems to be moving excessively, but on the Wankel this is normal. Just above idle, at 1500 rpm, there's a marked vibration period, at which the engine's balancing masses cause it to shake heavily on its mounts. Another resonance period occurs in the exhaust system at 2400 rpm.
To the first-time driver, the Wankel's response to its throttle seems slower than that of a piston engine. It is as if rotating masses were somehow heavier, which in fact they are not. This impression was given by the extremely long travel of the throttle pedal. required to provide progressive opening to the 2-barrel carburetor. Rapid opening to full throttle would give very quick response. On deceleration, the Wankel engine's low inertia gives it less engine braking effect than is provided by the majority of reciprocating engines.
With an explosion in a 500-cc working chamber for each revolution of the output shaft, the Spider's Wankel engine is the equivalent of a 61-cid 2cyl., 4-cycle reciprocating engine. It's tuned for performance. and not until the tachometer needle moves past 3000 rpm does it start to come to life. From there upward the power curve rises steeply and the engine pulls with progressive strength.
Quite often writers have likened the Spider's engine to a 2-stroke in feel, but I can't support this analogy. There's absolutely no "popcorn-popping" or missing at idle or on the overrun, and the only time it smokes is very slightly just after the engine is started.
How fast will the engine turn? There are many answers to this question. Quite a few of the early Spiders had a 6000-rpm tachometer, which also is shown in the owner's manual. My car, however, had an 8000-rpm tack, which reflected improvements made in spark plug life and oil sealing, two factors that Dr. Froede savs limit the peak usable speed. I followed the guidance given in the owner's manual, which, like all NSU manuals, is refreshingly written in a frank and amusing style. It says 6000 rpm should not be exceeded, but, "you may, however, if the occasion should arise, overrev in the lower gears above the 6000 mark, to get out of a difficult situation such as a passing maneuver. We ask you only on behalf of your engine's durability: Don't make it a habit." The standard Spider engine pulls beautifully to 7000 rpm and only at 7500 does it start to become short of wind. It will turn higher, however, and I took mine to 8000 more than once. Journalists who tested the early cars took them to 10,000 rpm and, in one case, even 11,000 in first gear. In this way they were able to record 0-60 times of approximately 14.2 sec. Normal time to 60, using a 6000 rpm limit, was nearer 16 sec. The Spider covered the standing quarter in 20.5 sec. and reached top speeds of 92-98 mph.
As stated earlier, oil sealing affected useful peak speed of early Spider engines. The seals involved were those at the sides of the rotor, and over 6000 rpm they allowed oil to pass much more rapidly into the combustion chambers. In addition. oil from the sump is metered into the intake port by a small pump which is responsive to both engine speed and throttle position. The driver is encouraged to check engine oil level frequently, at every fuel stop, to maintain it within the 2quart margin between the bayonet gauge marks. Carrying out this check is seldom convenient if luggage is being stowed in the rear compartment.
As with any sporting car, the Spider's fuel consumption was very sensitive to the way it was driven. My overall fuel consumption was 26.4 mpg, but on a trip from New York to Detroit the figure rose to 28.6 mpg. Road testers thrashing the car showed poorer figures, ranging from a low of 21.8 to a high of 25.9 mpg. My view was that mileage was not notably good, but was satisfactory in view of the very good performance delivered. Quite consistently, my Spider required 1 qt. of oil every 260 miles.
Generally, the engine showed few operating faults. If I failed to downshift while slowing the car, when it reached 2500 rpm or so it would start to buck, the result of an imperfect fuel/air mixture on part throttle. So good was the all-synchromesh gearbox, however, there was little excuse for shiftlessness. After some 1600 miles the box became very noisy in reverse and first became difficult to engage. A new transmission was installed by my dealer at no cost.
In August, 1965, NSU's managing director, Dr. G. S. yon Hcydekampf, reported that on the basis of field experience gained with the first 1000 Spiders, "We now believe that the Wankel is practically proven as a passenger car unit." Dr. von Heydekampf referred to problems met and solved in oil sealing, cooling, carburetion, gearbox and porous main-block castings.
This verdict of success for the Spider marked the end of an arduous development trail for the first Wankel engine to be used in an automobile. Some of the early automotive trials were unpredictable. At one time it was common for the test drivers to take along a spare engine.
Designated the KKM 502 by NSU, the Spider's engine had completed the design phase by the time of its unveiling at Frankfurt late in 1963, but little development work had been done then. It's not well known that development in the year following brought about an almost complete redesign of the engine before the start of production.
Among the many changes made was enlargement of the water picketing all around the main aluminum housing for better cooling. The oil filler cap was relocated, the oil metering pump added, the ignition system mounting bracket redesigned, the oil pump pickup moved, and the generator replaced by an alternator and interchanged with the water pump. which was placed low instead of high.
Major changes were made in the Spider's unusual carburetion system. The original KKM 502 had a single, simple inlet port. and though its power curve was strong from 3000 to 5000 rpm, it fell away too rapidly below 2000 rpm. To help solve this problem, Solex developed a special 2-stage carburetor with an 18-mm throat, for starting and low speed operation, and a 32-mm secondary throat, opened progressively by the throttle, for full power. The throttle valve of the secondary was placed as close as possible to the block to reduce the amount of exhaust gas that could be carried over by the rotor and lodged in the inlet port, fouling the incoming fresh mixture.
These two carburetor throats were aligned with individual ports that opened separately into the engine's interior. Because location of the port on the housing wall of a Wankel engine determines opening and closing timing of that port, NSU placed the smaller low-speed port where its timing would be less radical. When the larger port is opened, by opening its throttle valve, it has the effect of advancing the engine's inlet timing. The timing of this larger port was advanced somewhat from that used in the original KKM 502 design, which accounts for the later engine's ability to turn more freely above 5500 rpm.
Improvements were made in the oil sealing arrangements for the sides of the rotor as stated earlier. The KKM 502 uses metal-impregnated carbon seals for the all-important sealing strips at the three rotor tips. which separate the combustion spaces. These must be 5 mm wide, as compared with the 1.6mm width required for the metal seals used previously. The carbon seals were first tried in July, 1962, but not until three years later were they regarded as fully satisfactory, with a consistent lifespan in excess of 2000 hours.
To some owners of the NSU Spider, long life is less important than high performance. The little car has shown itself an able competitor in rallies. In 1966, Spidermen Karl Heinz Panowitz and Rainer Strunz won the German Rally Championship for GT cars of all engine sizes. On the Panowitz car, regulations have allowed the carburetor to be "tuned" and the two separate inlet ports to be joined in a single oval passage. This extends the useful rpm range to 9000, compared with 7500 for the standard engine, and increases net power output to 65 bhp. Using similar techniques, NSU now markets, in Europe only, a 70-bhp rally version of the Spider.
Much more radical is the hillclimb Spider built by tuner Siegfried Spiess. The Spiess Wankel engine's inlet port was opened to 44 mm and a Solex carburetor of matching diameter fitted. This, plus a straight-pipe exhaust of tuned length, is about all that's needed to raise the KKM 502's output to 92 bhp. The power range is from 6000 to 1 1.000 rpm. and the tech needle must be at 7000 to make a smooth getaway from rest. With this technique and the Spiess car's special close-ratio gearbox 60 mph is reached in 10.1 sec. Maximum speed is raised to 110 mph with sprint gearing.
Siegfried Spiess tunes 10 Spiders for high performance in the time it takes to rework the NSU 4-cvl. engine. The Spiess car is known on the European hillclimb courses by its frequent class wins, the puffs of smoke it trails as it rockets upward and by its exhaust note, shattering and penetrating beyond belief. It is said that if an entire field of Grand Prix cars is revving its engines on the starting grid, waiting for the flag, all the spectators will turn their heads to see what's going on if Spiess fires up his Spider in the paddock.
During 1966, a KKM 502 engine was installed in a Cooper chassis. The Wankel was fitted with a straight pipe and a 2-throat Weber carburetor to feed a downdraft Y-type intake pipe. In international Formula III racing, for which it qualifies admirably, the car has enjoyed local success.
Its design has benefited greatly from the research work carried out by initial owners. The major elements of the Spider's engine also will be used in the twin-rotor power unit that NSU has developed for its new sedan, the Ro 80, recently unveiled at Frankfurt. It probably will also be given the Ro 80's dual ignition system, with two plugs per chamber. Some of its basic parts also are likely to be used in the single-rotor engine that NSU will build for a new Citroen model in the near future.
In all respects the Spider has filled its role as advance agent for tomorrow's power. It was an exciting and satisfying car to own.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Two Horsepower (August 2006)
That was its rating according to the French car-taxation system, deux chevaux, two horses, based on its cylinder dimensions. This was the 2CV Citroën, revealed to a shocked motoring world at the 1949 Paris Salon. Ten years later I decided that a 2CV was just the car I needed in New York.
In the summer of 1959 I'd returned from my Army service in Germany with a Mercedes-Benz 300SL. Living in the borough of Queens, it soon dawned on me that a Gullwing wasn't exactly the handiest vehicle for getting around the patched-up streets of Manhattan. What did the newly minted editor of Sports Cars Illustrated choose for his second car? A Citroën 2CV of course. I could then have one car for all missions up to 50 mph and another to suit everything from 50 to 150!
The 2CV was not so much a car as a brilliant transportation device. It broke new ground in its proportion of size to power. Though my AZ model had only 425 cc (25.9 cubic inches) and 11.8 bhp at 3,500 rpm, it wasn't a minicar. In fact it had a large and roomy body with plenty of space for four and their luggage and weighed only 1,080 pounds empty. It was a masterpiece of ingenious engineering.
Though the power unit of a car intended for farmers, its air-cooled engine had vee-inclined overhead valves. With one-piece big ends, the connecting rods were mated with the crankshaft at the factory and replaced as an assembly if required. The coil sparked both cylinders at the same time, only firing the one with a compressed mixture.
Output was through a normal clutch combined with a centrifugal clutch. The latter meant that the engine couldn't be stalled and served for easy starting and stopping in traffic. Shifting was by a large push-pull knob on the dash. When my wife took her driving test in the 2CV she had to ask the examiner to stop propping his clip board on the knob because she needed it to shift!
With front-wheel drive, the 2CV had large inboard drum brakes alongside its transaxle. Suspension was by long curved arms from transverse pivots, stretching out to front and rear like the legs of a relaxed cat. Inside a cylindrical casing at each wheel was a mass damper just like the ones that have been inside the noses of the fastest Formula 1 cars since 2005.
Below the pivot of each suspension arm a tension rod reached into a common cylinder below the 2CV's sill. Inside the cylinder, which was free to float forward or backward, two separate coil springs were compressed, against its ends, by the tension rods. Like that of the original Mini and Packard's Torsion-Level system, this front-rear interconnection of the suspensions greatly reduced pitching and delivered an astonishingly smooth ride over the roughest surfaces.
The 2CV's interior was reduced to the max. A flap under the windshield opened for ventilation. At the left was the speedometer, whose cable drive also operated the windshield wipers. Warm air wafting from the engine into the interior through ducts was a token gesture; heavy fur-lined boots were best for winter driving. Seats were canvas over rubber strips on a tubular frame. They could be whipped out with ease, the rubber matting removed and the 2CV's interior hosed out from front to rear. Holding only 5.3 gallons, the fuel tank had a fiber dip stick inside its filler cap. This was the sole means of checking its contents.
As for performance, acceleration from rest to 40 mph took half a minute. The 2CV driver could relax completely, confident in the knowledge that he was going as fast as he could most of the time. There was no point whatsoever in trying to rush ahead; he'd arrive when he'd arrive, not before. The Citroën inculcated a completely stress-free attitude toward driving that was a revelation.
In short, this blue-gray machine with its corrugated hood was a device of tremendous character. Its life changed drastically in 1961 when I moved from Car and Driver to the GM Public Relations Staff in Detroit to look after Bill Mitchell and his Styling Staff. First there was the matter of getting there from New York in a car whose maximum speed was 52.2 mph. Taking the Interstates I became adept at quickly swinging in behind big semis to pick up a draft, keeping the Citroën in the suction of their wake as long as possible.
Of course I used the 2CV when I was escorting members of the press or managers from other companies visiting Styling. On one occasion I picked up two senior body-engineering executives from Daimler-Benz for a downtown dinner. They were laughing fit to bust, unable to get over the idea that they were riding around the Motor Capital of the World in a humble 2CV.
While in Detroit I succumbed to the appeal of Chevrolet's new Nova SS, exploiting my Styling connections to get a non-standard combination of black interior with metallic green exterior. I found a willing buyer for the 2CV in Styling's Tony Ingolia, who already had flat-twin air-cooled French machinery in the shape of several Panhards. I'm told that the Citroën was a frequent sight around Warren and Detroit thereafter. Well it should have been, for no more loyal or agreeable motoring companion could be imagined.
- Karl Ludvigsen
My Escorted Life (July 2006)
Ford's Escort Mark III had a lot to do with my decision to join Ford of Europe. Not long before my meeting with Bob Lutz to discuss the job I'd seen a spy shot of the new model. A four-door hatchback pictured from the side, it showed an airy six-window greenhouse with a rear window that sloped down to a tiny tail bustle - altogether a very stylish design that stated clearly that Ford was planning to do new things in the 1980s.
This was the new front-drive Escort that was launched in September 1980 on both sides of the pond. Much was made at the time of its "World Car" creation; the American versions had little strips of flags of many nations on their flanks to assert their global credentials.
The European and American Escorts did indeed share common design roots. Their engines came from America, where Ford's researchers carried out extensive tests of cylinder-head designs in search of an optimum for both performance and emissions. Their recommendation was a two-valve hemispherical head with two vee-inclined valves, cleverly twisted in plan view to allow them to be operated by a single overhead cam and rocker arms. Called the CVH for Compound-Valve-Hemi, it was adopted on both sides of the Atlantic.
The rest of the Escort was designed in Europe as a replacement for the popular previous models, which had been rear-wheel-drive. Partly tongue-in-cheek - but only partly - Ford's European chief engineer told me that he was grateful to Fiat for the progress they were making in front-wheel drive. He'd cribbed the Fiesta's front-strut design from an earlier Fiat, but they'd introduced a much-improved design he could use for the Escort!
I soon learned that while the NIH syndrome - aversion to anything Not Invented Here - applied to innovations conceived outside Ford, NIH was also alive and well inside the company. Deeply offended by the idea that these highfalutin' Europeans were designing a car to be built in America, Ford's Dearborn engineers spent some $300 million making the US version of the car different - but not necessarily better. In the end the only part that was common between the two versions of the Escort was the stud that held the half-ball on which the engine's rocker arms pivoted.
Arriving as I did at Ford of Europe almost a year before the new Escort's launch, I needed something else to drive in the meantime. My motor-sports operation was producing the RS2000 version of the Mark II Escort, the road equivalent to our successful rally cars, so this was an obvious choice. But when I asked about it among my mainstream-model colleagues they said, "Oh, I don't know. The back end isn't all that good."
In spite of this I chose an RS2000 as my company car and just loved it. Sure, the tail did come out on turns but in a wonderfully controllable way that I hugely enjoyed. I looked forward to the many traffic circles on British roads as the ideal places to enjoy the tail-happy cornering of this agile Escort. Its performance was excellent as well. I don't know why I don't have one today.
In the meantime my motor-sports group in Germany was hard at work on a fuel-injected version of the CVH four. They'd wangled a contract from Ford's mainstream engineering to carry out the engine's adaptation to Bosch K-Jetronic injection. The work was directed by Otto Stulle, a savvy ex-BMW engine man. Their target was 115 bhp from the 1.6-liter engine and they reached it, though with one or two tricks that were hard to reproduce in production. The series-built XR3i version of the CVH was scaled back to 105 bhp.
For test purposes we had an XR3 Escort in Britain equipped with the injection engine. To get real-world experience they loaned it to me. I readily admit that it was quite a kick to be driving the first fuel-injected Escort to be on the road in the UK. This had its disadvantages, however. It stranded me twice with various problems. Once it stopped near our headquarters but another failure was far to the north. Fortunately a dealer was able to get me going again. But these were all in a day's work for the test driver of a new Ford model.
My motor-sports group evolved its own version of the injected Escort, the RS1600, and put it into production. Rated at 115 bhp, it had a novel electronic ignition and a reinforced front end with a beautiful cast-aluminum subframe for the front suspension. For once with the RS1600 Ford beat Volkswagen to the punch; it was faster on the Autobahns than the current GTi. I was proud to have had some involvement with the creation of a car that made Ford of Europe's offering decisively the best in its class. That didn't happen often!
Believe it or not, this classy offering came under attack inside the Ford organization. The executive handling our European sales outside Britain and Germany said that reports from the field were critical of its high-speed stability. He threatened to stop selling it. It did wander a bit at speeds that no other Escort had yet reached; we found some fixes in its rear-suspension alignment that warded off the threat of execution. The RS1600's recognition in France as Motorsport Car of the Year was sufficient answer to its critics.
- Karl Ludvigsen
The Dreaded Rattle (June 2006)
Though it started badly the trip was going well. The bad start was my fault. Chris Whitehead completed a lot of good work on our 1937 Cord 812 Beverly and we were off to France to join members of the Vintage Sports-Car Club for a tour of the Burgundy region. We'd planned to cross the Channel by Eurotrain but by the time we got through all the checks and customs controls, stopping and starting, the battery cried "enough!" And they won't let your car on the train unless they're sure it will start - which I wasn't and they weren't.
So there was nothing for it but to truck the Cord back the 143 miles to Suffolk and set out again the next morning in our 1952 Riley "RMS" sports car. We drove straight though to Beaune, skirting Paris, and enjoyed a great week touring the vineyards and testing the wines and restaurants in the company of an Invicta, Sunbeam, Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin, Bugatti, Alvis, Bentley and Lagonda and their enthusiastic and knowledgeable owners.
Our Riley's trunk isn't all that big so to make room for the wine we'd been given I poured the last of my spare engine oil into the sump before departing for home. Having survived monsoon wind and rain we were half-way to our planned overnight stop when I spotted suspiciously low oil pressure. A sump check showed precious little oil, vanished somehow and somewhere from an engine that didn't usually use much oil.
I headed for the nearest small town in search of oil but hadn't found any when, to my dismay, I head the Dreaded Rattle. Our trip was over. I parked next to the town hall and got on the phone to the AA. They came quickly, which was just as well as the town hall's parking lot was filling up with guests for a wedding that was just about to start! The photographer had already set up his portable grandstand and the bridal party was marshaling down the road when we were towed away. We were spared the embarrassment of sitting in the middle of a marriage celebration in our broken-down Riley.
I haven't heard the Dreaded Rattle all that often. The Cord once expired in a spectacular plume of steam thanks to a warped head/block joint. Two new heads and a new block later she's good as new. Many early problems with hot starting and front-end shimmy - typical Cord maladies - have been fixed. And she shifts like a dream.
When I was editor of Car and Driver I borrowed a Lotus Elite from the Detroit distributor. I was humming along in this buzzbox to the GM Proving Grounds when its Coventry Climax engine let go in a big way. Only later did I learn that Lucas considered the Climax-powered Elite to be the most demanding vibration tester for its equipment. That brief trip proved costly because the distributor demanded compensation from my publisher, who was not thrilled, to say the least.
Hitherto I've thought of myself as hard on drive lines. The rear axle of my Triumph TR2 was one victim. So was the transmission of my 1951 Porsche 1300, which failed with a grinding growl when I was visiting my friend Axel Rosenblad in New Jersey. In Trenton I swapped its original early-VW crash box for a later synchronized transaxle.
The grinding growl was heard again in 1959 when I was driving in Michigan in my Mercedes 300SL gullwing. Its gearbox threw in the towel, which wasn't surprising as the car had been raced in a previous life, including the Mille Miglia.
Otherwise I don't recall any major blowups. The Lancia Stratos was always exciting, with wiring that was apt to start smoldering without provocation. At least the smoke helped identify the source of the problem. Its ignition box failed when my son Miles and I were visiting the Fittipaldis in Switzerland, but we got a fair substitute from the local Fiat dealer, the box they used on the Type 130 V6.
My 1933 Aston Martin Le Mans was also prone to the occasional electrical failure, but it was so simple that these were easy to fix. I did have an engine stoppage with the Aston when the scavenge pump of its dry-sump system failed. Luckily no major damage resulted. The Aston's main continuing problem was one shared with many early cars: keeping its magneto sparking adequately. When it works it's fine but when it doesn't you're comprehensively stuck.
Of course problems aren't limited to exotic cars. I went to start my 1993 Mazda Xedos 6 the other day - my personal daily driver - only to find that the alarm system had decided to immobilize it! I had an appointment to visit Colin Chapman's son Clive at Classic Team Lotus near Norwich, so I hopped in the Cord and drove up there. The battery seems to be coping but I had a spare with me and a new one on order. Clive was intrigued by the Cord and I enjoyed seeing Formula 1 Lotus of various vintages in his racing shop.
Meanwhile the Riley is with Chris Whitehead and I'm awaiting his verdict. If it's the while-metal rod bearings - as I suspect - Chris has all the equipment needed to renew them. It's reassuring to have that kind of capability in your neighborhood if you insist on running these oddball cars.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Driving Lessons (May 2006)
The other day in London a huge split-level tourist coach made an awkward turning in front of our car, lurching from one side of the street to the other. My wife pointed to it and said, "Watch out! It's from Belgium!" Sure enough, it had the dreaded red "B" badge of a Belgian-registered vehicle. We've come to fear the Belgians as the most undisciplined and unruly drivers on the roads of Europe, uniquely marrying ambition with ineptitude.
I have to admit that we see the Belgians as the European counterparts of the drivers of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, whom I came to know well during two years at MIT. I've encountered them on many other roads as well throughout the United States. I'll never forget the time we struggled in a lengthy column of steaming cars twisting and turning sluggishly through Yellowstone Park. When we finally got to the front of the queue there he was: a driver from Massachusetts.
These are a couple of the lessons I've learned in a driving lifetime. A relatively new one is that in Britain a driver is free to stop his car at any time or place. The circumstances don't matter; if someone wants to stop to look at a map or relight a pipe, they stop. As a fellow road user it's advisable to keep that in mind.
My wife had to explain an important driving distinction to our German au pair. In Germany, of course, they flash their headlamps to clear the road ahead. A flash of the lights means, "Get your slowcoach out of the way, I'm coming through." In Britain, however, a flash of the headlamps means, "I'm stopping to give you the right of way. The road is yours." What a difference! It's a difference that could be - and probably has been - fatal.
I learned a harsh driving lesson on my second day as an executive of Ford of Europe. Before I picked out my own car they loaned me a big, magnificent Ford Granada sedan. When I arrived at the executive garage for my second day at work I apologized profusely to the fellow in charge.
"What's the problem, Mr. Ludvigsen?" he asked. "It doesn't look too bad."
"You should see the other side!"
On the very last turning before arriving at work I'd seen a "Yield" sign out of the corner of my eye when I arrived too fast at an intersection, right in front of a hapless local chap in his Ford Escort. He had no option but to smash into my left front fender. He was all right, fortunately, but I just hated the feeling of being branded as a stereotypical American who couldn't cope with the British road system. Happily I haven't had a proper crash since - not one that was my fault anyway.
To get my British driving license I engaged the services of a professional trainer who took me through the required routine, which includes putting the handbrake on when you come to a stop - the idea being to keep you from hurtling out into an intersection when someone rams you from behind. I got through the test all right on my first try, unlike our American engineering vice president, who got so frustrated by his failures that he quit trying and never did get a license.
A good feature of the British test is its mantra of "Mirror-Signal-Maneuver". They want to see you looking in your mirror first to check the situation, then signaling and only thereafter executing your maneuver. After passing the test, of course, most drivers forget about the signaling part.
A few other thoughts about driving come to mind:
Unlike my friend David E. Davis, Jr. I'm not a big long-distance driver. I prefer spending the time in an airplane to catch up on my reading. But give me a road through the Italian hills, shaped for smooth passage over generations by drivers and road menders, and watch me go!
- Karl Ludvigsen
Fiat Follies (April 2006)
Recent columns and comments about Fiat in these pages reminded me of my two years with the American arm of Italy's auto-making champion. After 11 years as a freelance writer I was stunned to discover that there were such things as paid holidays and vacations when I checked into the lavish headquarters of Fiat Motors of North America along Importer Row in Montvale, New Jersey. My boss was Claudio Ferrari (no relation to the car maker), who saw it as his mission to restore the American unit's credibility with his Turin masters after successive boom and bust years of Fiat and Lancia imports.
What attracted me to the job was the wide portfolio I'd have as an executive vice president in charge of dealer relations, legal affairs, customer relations and governmental and public affairs. I put together a great team with Bill Baker in charge of public relations and Tony Ciminera heading dealer and customer relations. I'll always treasure a remark by a member of our dealer council after one of our early meetings with them. "This is the first time," he said, "that I've left one of these meetings feeling better than I did before."
In customer relations the buck stopped with me. It was my job to take the tough ones that had been referred to Claudio and also the callers who'd been referred up the line from the people in our office. It was a demanding but vital task, especially when it came to the Lancias. We were selling the Betas, which were wonderful cars when they were running but diabolical when they went wrong.
I was staggered by the warranty costs we were incurring with Lancias, on average in excess of $500 per car. The worst thing was that we were fixing cars with parts that we knew would fail. The exhaust manifold was the main offender, eventually cracking under the strain of US-market emissions equipment. We were replacing them with new manifolds of the same design, equally likely to crack.
The Lancia people meant well, but they couldn't build quality cars. Claudio Ferrari tried hard. He sought to negotiate an agreement with Lancia that they wouldn't ship us any cars that they knew were faulty. Obvious though this seems as a method of satisfying overseas markets, they demurred. In self-defense our embattled service manager Frans Donck sent one of his best people to the port at Genoa to set up an inspection procedure to check the Lancias before they were shipped. It helped, but too many hidden flaws were built into those Betas.
It was a shame because the Beta - Fiat's first attempt at a new model after taking over Lancia - was an attractive automobile. I had an HPE as one of my company cars and enjoyed it very much. I launched an effort to get closer to the Lancia Club, which was a good morale builder for them and for us. To counterbalance our many complainers I had "I Love my Lancia" bumper stickers made up to be flaunted by those who were having positive experiences.
The public relations chief of Fiat in the UK, Richard Seth-Smith, gave me good counsel. "I don't start any activity with the press," he said, "until the cars arrive at the docks." I ignored his advice when I launched new Beta models in Italy with a wonderful evocation of Lancia's win in the Mille Miglia 25 years earlier. We got great writeups in the press, but excruciatingly long months passed before the cars actually arrived.
One of the new models was a Beta with a detachable Targa-type roof. When I learned that these bodies were contracted out to Zagato in Milan for the necessary rework I suggested that we call this the "Zagato" version of the Beta. Sales chief Dick Recchia bought the idea and the name became accepted for this attractive version of the Beta.
On the Fiat side my biggest bugbear was rust, or rugine as the Italians call it. This affected many of our products but none more than the Bertone-bodied 850 Spider. When this attractive little car was built Bertone's rustproofing methods were remote from industry standard. Though most of these roadsters were approaching a decade in age, we were under pressure from NHTSA in Washington to declare a recall to cope with severe rusting of their underbodies that had some drivers falling right through the floor onto the road.
We argued that it made no sense to recall such aging cars, in which rust was only to be expected. We came up with the idea that we'd offer to spend several million dollars to fund an information campaign about car corrosion that would help motorists take better care of their cars. Going to Washington and presenting this proposal, sitting across the table from NHTSA officials who struggled to mask their amazement and disbelief, ranks as the most difficult meeting of my life. No presentation to any industry body at any level fazed me after that.
We ended up recalling the Spiders and the 850 Coupes. We worked out a procedure of tapping their undersides with ball-peen hammers to find out which ones needed to have corroded panels cut away and new ones welded in. It was a challenging job which our dealers addressed manfully. By then our problems with the Fiat Strada were mounting - but that's another story.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Bugatti and Auto Age (March 2006)
In front of me I have the typescript of the first article that I wrote for commercial publication. Titled "Bugatti and the Future", it speculated about the design of the new Grand Prix car that Bugatti was building for the 1955 season. This is pretty abstruse stuff. What put this exotic bee in my bonnet?
It was the autumn of 1954 and I'd just arrived in Brooklyn to start my studies in industrial design at Pratt Institute. All the wonders of New York City lay before me, just a subway ride away. This included tiny mid-town bookshop R. Gordon, specialists in automotive books and magazines. Needless to say I soon became a good customer.
Among my early purchases at Gordon's was a copy of Bugantics, yellow-jacketed organ of the Bugatti Owners Club. Its editor reported on a journalistic coup, a visit to the Bugatti factory at Molsheim during which he was allowed to photograph components of the new GP racer's engine. He also published specifications of the coming Type 251, though they were noncommittal about the car's layout.
Intrigued by design features of the engine parts he depicted, I set about the first of my many photo-interpretation efforts. It was clear from the design of its crankcase that power would be taken from the center of the crankshaft of the Bugatti's straight-eight engine instead of from the end as usual. I commented on this in my article, noting a similarity with the straight-eight engine of the Mercedes-Benz W196. In the French car's case I speculated that the engine would be rear-mounted, probably longitudinally.
I indulged in further speculation about the potential of Bugatti's design. "It would now be possible to derive real benefit from a transverse rather than a longitudinal orientation of the crankshaft," I pontificated. I stopped short of suggesting that this was the actual design of the Type 251, but readied some sketches of what I thought such a transverse-engined Grand Prix car could look like. I laid its engine flat, its cylinder heads facing forward.
Here was a pretty esoteric eight-page article, written in my garret room at 220A Willoughby Avenue. What was I going to do with it? It would make sense, I thought, to contact a car magazine based in New York. At the time there was only one of consequence, Auto Age. I sent off the story and my proposed illustrations and awaited developments.
Some days later I was called to the phone by my landlord. On the line was Harvey Janes, one of the editors of Auto Age. The Bugatti story wasn't up their street, he said, but they might be interested in other articles by someone who seemed to have a grasp of car technology. Could we meet? Could we! I arranged to see him at his Manhattan office.
At the controls of Auto Age I found two editors. One was the bespectacled Janes, an affable character with a nice line in irony. The other was a glamorous brunette, Diana Bartley, entirely at home in the world of cars. Between them they assembled the eclectic content of this wide-ranging monthly. Grand Prix Bugattis weren't in their line, they explained, but they were looking for someone to write technical stories for them. They were willing to take a chance on this 20-year-old industrial-design student.
We talked about topics and settled on - of all things - an article about rear axles for my debut. I was interested in another theme, I told them. That summer I'd visited Ford as a guest of a Blue Oval executive, Fred Goodell, a friend of my father. He gave me a tour of the proving grounds in Dearborn, the compact site that once was Ford's airport. Driving around, we saw a prototype that was unmistakably the coming Lincoln Continental. The subject of great speculation, this ultra-luxury model wasn't expected on the market until 1956.
From my recollection of the car I thought I could produce some reasonable drawings of the Continental-to-come. The Janes-Bartley team thought this would be a great idea. They cautioned, however, that I might not want my name linked with the story as it would be obvious that Mr. Goodell was responsible for the leak. I know now that such an indiscretion would have had little impact, but back then such scoops were rare and thought to have heavy consequences in Detroit's executive suites.
Enter Eric Nielssen. He married my middle name with my grandmother's maiden name plus the insertion of an extra "s". He had a byline on the axle story while the Continental sneak peek appeared anonymously. Before I knew it Eric was on the masthead of Auto Age as technical editor and busy writing articles for the magazine as the alter ego of a student at Pratt hip-deep in his design projects.
Meanwhile Bugatti pressed on with its Grand Prix car. Unveiled at Entzheim Aerodrome on November 21, 1955, it did indeed have its engine in the rear and positioned transversely as well. Its cylinders were vertical instead of horizontal but otherwise the Type 251 was surprisingly close to my anticipation of it a year earlier. The GP car wasn't a success, but I'll always have a soft spot for this Bugatti model as the one that got me started on a career of writing about interesting cars, companies and people.
- Karl Ludvigsen
The Duckworth Way (February 2006)
My first personal exposure to the genius of Keith Duckworth was during a visit to Cosworth Engineering in Northampton in 1968. Keith showed me around the workshops, letting me photograph the parts of his race-winning 3-liter Formula 1 Ford V8. Then we went for lunch at a nearby pub during which Keith expanded on his approach to engineering in general and racing-engine design in particular.
Keith had nothing but contempt for the way "engineering" was practiced in Britain. He viewed the respected British art of "development" as a substitute for designing the job properly from scratch. "Development is only necessary to rectify the ignorance of designers," he said. "Some firms don't even have designers, just 'engineering' and development to try to fix what should have been designed right in the first place." Duckworth took a degree in engineering at London's Imperial College, writing his thesis as a criticism of the course!
I wondered to what extent Keith paid attention to the work of other engine designers. "I never look at what others have done," was his flat reply. "You have to think out everything yourself right from the start, facing every problem, reaching your own conclusions. Then you can compare what you've done to others and understand what they've done and why."
Fourteen years after my edifying visit to Northampton, as the person presiding over Ford's European motor sports it was my honor and pleasure to celebrate the 150th victory by the Cosworth Ford DFV engine in Grand Prix racing and to congratulate the teams that contributed to such success. At the time the nearest rival was Ferrari with a mere 84 victories. The astonishing DFV had also recorded 142 seconds, 146 thirds, 130 pole positions and 136 fastest laps.
As a celebration of this achievement I thought we at Ford should try to get the license plate "DFV 150" and present it to Keith. Harry Calton in public affairs was successful and we duly arranged for its delivery to Cosworth. Typically, Duckworth spurned our offering. It's probably still being used on a Cosworth Transit van.
We were struggling in our relationship with Cosworth at the time. Nineteen eighty-two was the first year of the new Group C rules, which controlled endurance racing with a fuel-consumption limit. We backed Cosworth's construction of a 3.9-liter version of the DFV which we called DFL with "L" for long-distance and large (and Ludvigsen). Unfortunately it wasn't long-distance because it shook Fords, Lolas, Mirages and Rondeaus to pieces.
Keith was dismissive of their struggles with vibration. The Grand Prix cars had had the same problem with the DFV, he said, but soon mastered it. His implication was that we needed better designers for our cars. Later he realized that the long-stroke DFL was indeed a vicious shaker. For 1983 we were planning to turbocharge it - so we could burn all our fuel allocation - and fit external balancing masses to counter the vibration. We were still at the stage where the dynamic balancers were tearing themselves out of the crankcase when the program was canceled.
At Ford we also strongly supported Duckworth's suggestion of a future Grand Prix formula that would equalize performance by restricting the flow of fuel to the engine. As usual Keith had thought this through in detail with answers to all objections. It would have been a good idea - we loaned him one of our engineers to support him in crucial presentations - but it was an innovation too far for Formula 1's regulators.
Thinking it through was characteristic of Keith Duckworth. "I have to admit I don't find thinking to be an unpleasurable exercise," he told me in his nasal drawl. "I put a lot of thought into my work. For example I probably spend a full hour each week just thinking about connecting rods, about all the different possible ways to make them. I try to anticipate every point that could cause problems. Then when the first things go wrong with a new engine I really feel each one. When other problems come up later, ones I couldn't have anticipated, I'm absolutely up the flue! I haven't the vaguest idea where to start to fix them!"
This reminds me of another Duckworthism: "Anybody who's sure he has the answer to a problem probably doesn't even know what the problem is." Others that guide his friends, colleagues and customers are:
"It is better to be uninformed than ill-informed."
"In engineering there is an answer to everything. It's just that we're too ignorant or too dim to see it."
"Very few straight answers are even possible; the decisive man is a simple-minded man."
"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove it."
Keith Duckworth was supported in his engineering career by colleagues who appreciated and indeed absorbed his demanding philosophy. His main partner was fellow engineer Mike Costin, the "Cos" in Cosworth. "Mike and I knock the bull out of each other's ideas," Keith said. "Eventually we hope we catch everything." Others of his close and supportive team were Bill Brown and Benny Rood.
After retiring from Cosworth in 1988 at the age of 55 Keith Duckworth maintained his interest in machinery of all kinds including aviation and motorcycling. He's now practicing his unique and uncompromising philosophy in Another Place. Keith left us on December 18, 2005.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Daytona Dramas (January 2006)
Have I told you the one about being named to drive a Ford GT40 at Daytona? It all started when I met William Wonder. Bill was a wiry, wry flight engineer with American Airlines and a passionate enthusiast of cars and racing. His job with American allowed him to test-hop the planet in search of cars and know-how. It also gave him time off to prepare cars for competition - at which he was extremely capable - and race them.
In 1956 Bill was stepping up his racing. Having acquired a 200S Maserati he needed to sell his Bristol-powered Frazer Nash Mille Miglia. This was a car I'd long admired, so we arranged to swap it for my Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spyder - a car that Bill could much more easily sell. We kept in touch, and by the early 1960s Bill was working on other people's cars in addition to his own on the floor above Del Mentnich's body shop at Locust Valley on New York's Long Island.
In the meantime Bill Wonder raised his racing game. He acquired a Huffaker-built Genie with Ford power for the SCCA's Group 7 racing and the jewel of his stable, an early Ford GT40, the Shelby-entered car that was driven to victory in the 1965 2,000 Kilometers of Daytona by Ken Miles and Lloyd Ruby. Both were immaculately maintained and liveried in his trademark deep maroon. I acted as team manager for Bill's effort in the first-ever 24 Hours of Daytona in 1966, when he was partnered by Herb Wetanson. A wheel problem sidelined our effort during an extremely cold night in Florida.
In 1966 Bill and his sidekick Don Lefferts maintained my Maserati A6GCS for racing in the VSCCA's events at tracks like Lime Rock and Bridgehampton. The Maser and I made a quick pairing, pretty much the fastest in the Club at that time. Bill Wonder must have taken note, because one day late that year he raised the idea of my co-driving with him at Daytona in 1967. This was a sensational idea. Racing a GT40! I accepted with a frisson of dread and delight.
There was only one problem: though I'd been to the odd SCCA driver's school, I possessed nothing resembling a current international competition license. My best shot at one was a driver's school at Marlboro, Maryland in November of 1966. A good result there might suffice to get my ticket. For this I needed a current-model racing car - something else I conspicuously lacked.
The solution came from Hank Rudkin of the Pepperidge Farm Rudkins. Tall, sandy-haired Hank was the backer of an effort in Seymour, Connecticut to build a Saab-powered single-seater called the Quantum Formula S. This was a successor to an earlier sports-model Quantum Saab that I'd tested at Lime Rock, a car that John Fitch and I judged only marginally controllable.
The Formula S was a big step in the right direction, a trim little racer with a twin-tube frame that served as its fuel tank and a ring-a-ding Saab two-stroke in the back giving 85 horses. Saab components were ingeniously adapted to its parallel-wishbone suspension, rack-and-pinion steering, drum brakes, wheels and four-speed transaxle. With a car buildable from a base kit priced at a mere $1,347 FOB Seymour, the ultimate aim was to establish Formula S as a one-make SCCA category.
With Rudkin's manager/racer Bill Kerrigan I arranged to borrow his demonstrator Formula S complete with trailer and tow car. I dragooned fellow General Motors wage slave Matthias Klinke into accompanying me to Marlboro for the school. We wheeled the red racer through tech inspection but then had the damnedest time getting it to run. The solution lay in isolating an ignition wire that was shorting out against the frame. With that sorted the super-tuned Saab burst into raucous life.
All went well at the school. I had a blast driving the Quantum at Marlboro, where a small oval combined with a tight road circuit to create a demanding track. We walked the track, did our usual solo bits and then had a race at the end in which I didn't embarrass myself or the Saab.
Was this enough to get the license I needed to race at Daytona? Well, no. Displaying a high degree of common sense, the authorities decided that I'd actually have to drive in some races before they'd punch my ticket. With no races available over the winter, I was stymied.
Bill offered the drive to Ray Caldwell, the New England driver-engineer than making his name with his Autodynamics Formula Vees. Wonder and Caldwell made a good pair. They upped their qualifying pace at Daytona and completed the 1967 24 Hours in eighth place and second in class - an excellent result. They teamed up again for Sebring but retired with engine trouble.
As for me, I had a great Daytona in 1967. I was close to the Ferrari people in those days, including drivers Lorenzo Bandini and Chris Amon, engineer Mauro Forghieri and team manager Eugenio Dragoni. I was in their garages as the dedicated Maranello mechanics meticulously prepared their two 330P4 Ferraris for the race. I was trackside when they rolled in tandem across the finish line after vanquishing the might of the Ford Motor Company. And I joined their dinner when they celebrated a memorable victory over the Blue Oval. Driving would have been good, but this wasn't bad at all.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Steve Wilder (July 2005)
I guess you could say I had a love/hate relationship with Steve Wilder. I don't think he ever had a harsh thought about me, although I fired him from a job he enjoyed. But afterward Wilder was the quintessence of consideration. When I bought a Moretti, Steve popped up with a bottle of Moretti beer. Knowing I was nuts about the Lancia D50, he gave me a kit to build one. And when he saw an article he thought would interest me, as he did earlier this year, Steve let me know.
I shared an MIT engineering education with Stephen F. Wilder, although unlike me he graduated, indeed with honors. Steve served with the US Army in Europe in the early 1950s. He stayed on for a while in Britain, getting involved with the Porsches that were then exciting fellow enthusiasts like photographer Jesse Alexander and journalist Denis Jenkinson.
Jenkinson in particular enjoyed hanging out with Wilder because, as Jenks put it, he was "a good practical fellow who could whip a Porsche engine out by the roadside and fix it if need be." That this was no idle claim was proven in the Nürburgring paddock, after Jenkinson's 356A broke its transaxle mounting. There "we dropped the engine and gearbox out and renewed the rubber mounting, and for that sort of job 'in the field' Steve was an ace."
Wilder spared the horses on neither road nor track. Before going into the Army he raced in California with a Porsche-powered VW Beetle. He pedaled his black 1500 Super coupe in British races in 1955 and '56, taking pleasure in beating the 2-liter Triumphs with half a liter less. He also upended his Porsche on the road, Jenkinson related. Steve mentioned an English hilltop where a sign said, "Accident Black Spot - 27 accidents have taken place here." "Gee," the sandy-haired Wilder told Jenks with his wide grin, "I guess the council guy is changing it to 28 right now!"
After returning to the States, Steve bought one of Colin Chapman's first single-seater Lotuses, a Climax-powered Mark 12. To enter it he set up the 5th Avenue Racing Team, the acronym of which amused him. Wilder was in fact an entrant for the first modern United States Grand Prix at Sebring in 1959, but his car didn't arrive in time.
Steve was testing his Lotus at Lime Rock Park when he had a heavy crash that he was lucky to survive. This marked the end of his competitive ambitions. "You know how when you're driving very fast," he told me, "a little warning sign comes up that you're about to overdo it? That you should back off the throttle? Well, I don't seem to have that." Some drivers don't, and like Wilder they're wise to retire from racing before they're crippled or worse.
Steve and I hooked up when I left my job as technical editor of Sports Cars Illustrated to go into the Army in 1957. Editor John Christy had seen some pieces Steve had written for Road & Track that qualified him for the job. The problems arose when I came back from my stint in the Signal Corps to take over from Christy as Wilder's boss. This didn't sit very well with the several-years-older man.
From my time working with Steve I formulated one of my axioms, which is that the person living closest to any destination always gets there last. Wilder lived close to One Park Avenue but was invariably late. It was also like pulling teeth to extract copy from him. Thus when I discovered Jan Norbye I hired him to take Steve's place. The incumbent fought back, saying, "Why won't you judge me by what I'm saying, not by what I'm doing?" I'd have preferred it the other way around.
After Car and Driver Steve developed fascinating parallel careers. He became a technical advisor to the New York City Taxi Commission. He also set up Suspensions International Inc. to work as a consultant. The latter was the vehicle for his most spectacular venture, his takeover of the foundering Griffith GT sports-car project and its rebirth in 1966 as the Omega. On this he spent what David E. Davis, Jr. called "quite a lot of nice old New England money", hiring Charlotte's Holman-Moody to build and rectify some three dozen cars that were in the pipeline.
"Our man Wilder got serious about the GT car business," added Davis. "He spent more money than he'd ever dreamed he could. He worked hard. He hassled and negotiated." He saw great potential in the Ford-powered sports coupe, built in Italy by Intermeccanica to a design by Bob Cumberford productionized by Franco Scaglione. Wilder is credited by experts with the output of 33 Omegas. That's 33 more cars than most of us will ever have a chance to manufacture.
With as Davis wrote "a personality that is charming to a fare-thee-well," Steve Wilder was also preternaturally bright. Speakers at meetings of the International Motor Press Association could count on being skewered by a Wilder comment or question. He was a shining ornament to our amazing world of the automobile. And if I write about Steve in the past tense, it's because prostate cancer finally caught up with him in November of 2005. That was one challenger he couldn't outrace.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Leo Goossen (June 2005)
I'm not sure when I first walked up the wooden stairs to the floor above the machine shop at 2001 West Gage Avenue in Los Angeles. It couldn't have been later than November of 1960, when I was at Riverside for the US Grand Prix. On the spacious board floor of the upper story of the Meyer & Drake Engineering Corp. a bespectacled man sat on a tall stool in front of a huge drafting table, well-lit by the California sunshine. This was Leo William Goossen.
Thanks to Griff Borgeson's pioneering research into the origins of the American racing engine the world knew who Leo Goossen was. In an October 1956 cover story in Sports Cars Illustrated Griff traced the bloodlines of America's racing engines. By 1920, he said, the 27-year-old Goossen had joined the design staff of Harry Miller, who was on the brink of dominance of American racing with his superb twin-cam straight eights.
For the subsequent 40 years before our meeting, Leo Goossen had been the engineer behind America's most successful and spectacular racing engines, from the Offys and Meyer-Drakes to the Novi V8 and Sparks sixes. Slender with thinning hair, Leo had slim fingers, a gentle handshake and a quiet voice with traces of his Midwestern origins. To my astonishment I learned that we were both natives of Kalamazoo, Michigan, where his Dutch parents had settled. They later moved to Flint, where Leo joined the engineering staff of industry leader Buick.
Keen and willing to learn, Goossen came under the wing of Buick chief engineer Walter Marr. As described in my new book, The V12 Engine, in 1915-16 he helped Marr design an overhead-valve V12 for Buick and a V6 version as well. When a spot on Leo's lung was diagnosed he was advised to head for warmer climes, which found him at Los Angeles in 1919. His knowledge of Motor City engineering, plus a laudatory letter from Buick's Walter Chrysler, landed Goossen a design post with Miller.
A huge multi-drawer cabinet next to Leo's board held the fruits of his subsequent labors. Drawing after drawing showed cars and engines he'd designed for Harry Miller, Fred Offenhauser, Art Sparks, Bud Winfield, Lou Meyer and Dale Drake, to name only his main employers and customers. Goossen gave me blueprints of the V8 he designed for Howard Keck, his front-drive Novi car and engine and an air-cooled flat six he engineered for owner-driver Joel Thorne.
In return I sent Leo information that came my way from engineering sources in Europe. But when we corresponded in 1962 the Meyer-Drake Offy was still the engine to beat at Indy. "It does look as though the engine conceived way back in 1931 is still a competitor," he said; "how much longer no one knows." "When we are beaten," he wrote me in 1963, "we can always say it took a long time to do it." I'll say!
When I mentioned the trend in Europe back to four-valve cylinder heads, an Offy feature since 1931, Goossen was ahead of me. "We have made dyno tests using the 255 with four- and two-valve cylinder blocks," he reported, "The four-valve job produced the greater power." In fact this test was made in 1946, Leo told me, comparing a 255-cubic-inch Offy four with a two-valve block he'd designed in 1933 for Art Sparks, featuring very large valves at a 90-degree included angle.
Ford built the V8 engine that broke the Offy's stranglehold on the Indy 500. It paid Meyer-Drake the compliment of buying one of its engines in 1962 to find out what they had to beat. "Extensive dyno tests were made," Leo told me, "the results, however, being somewhat classified. We do know for sure that they obtained 411 honest horsepower. Also, 'The volumetric efficiency was 98%'." The four-valve cylinder heads of Ford's four-cam V8 for 1964 were patterned after his Offy design.
When Lou Meyer left the company to look after Ford's engines Dale Drake took over, ably supported by his son John. Doing business as the Drake Engineering and Sales Corp, in 1970 they moved to bright new premises in Santa Ana. Goossen, now 78 and upgraded from "design engineer" to "chief design engineer", moved along with them. At the beginning of 1972 Leo wrote to me that he expected "to retire this year". He showed no signs of slowing down.
Indy in 1972 brought success for the Drake Offy at Indy with a win for Mark Donohue's McLaren. Incredibly the turbo-Offy completed its sensational comeback by winning all the races through 1976, when only three of the 33 starters had any other kind of engine. Dale Drake saw the beginning of this gratifying boom before his death in the autumn of 1972. In November of 1974, at 82, Leo Goossen was hospitalized with a stroke. He died on December 4th.
Yours truly had some hope of acquiring Leo's archives. In 1972 he wrote that "you are my number one choice to have them". But the distance from New York to Los Angeles was too great to allow me to stake my claim. Fortunately many of Leo's drawings are in the archive catalogued and tended by leading historian of American racing Gordon Eliot White. You can have a look at http://www.crosslink.net/~gewhite. I recommend it most heartily as an insight into the life and work of a most remarkable man.
- Karl Ludvigsen
The Name Game (May 2005)
Naming new cars is hugely difficult because it's one of those things that a company's top executives - and their wives - consider themselves qualified to assess. No matter how much information is gathered, how many surveys are run and evaluated, the final decision usually comes down to a personal opinion. Not surprisingly that opinion carries more weight if it's held by one of the more senior executives.
My first big-time brush with car naming came when I was an executive vice-president of Fiat Motors of North America at the end of the 1970s. My Fiat colleagues had already tasted success in their renaming of the Fiat 131 for the US market. Stateside it was the Brava, a nice name, and in an upmarket version the Superbrava.
Now we were gearing up to import a new Golf-sized car that Fiat had named the Ritmo. Expected to sell in volume, this was the car we were counting on to wean our dealers away from sole dependence on our sports cars - good though they were - and stake out new careers as sedan sellers. But "Ritmo"! We thought it evoked Rit, a laundry product, and - based on its Italian meaning - the rhythm method for contraception. Neither struck us as compelling support for an important new car in a key market.
There was only one problem. The demanding chief of Fiat Auto, Nicola Tuffarelli, had decreed that there'd be no tinkering with the Ritmo name. In its rhythmic way it was to be used throughout the world on the new model - and no argument. We'd been in touch with our colleagues in Britain, who were equally unenthused but felt that they lacked the clout to take on Tuffarelli. So it was up to us.
Aware as I was of this situation when I joined Fiat, I put forward my own cheeky idea for a name. Triggered by circular motifs in the Ritmo's design, I suggested that we call it the "Berry". We could have a fun time, I thought, calling it Berry Economical, Berry Roomy and Berry Durable. A used one, of course, would be an Elderberry. For some reason this idea didn't gain traction.
After conducting the usual surveys we came up with the name "Strada" for the new model, euphonious and Italian, a neat pairing with Brava. Now we had to get it adopted. We prepared a presentation with our arguments and delivered it to the top Fiat Auto cadre, led by Tuffarelli. Guess who got to make the presentation? Yours truly drew the short straw. We got the name we wanted and the Brits adopted it as well.
Then when I joined Ford of Europe in 1980 I found names on the agenda again. We had some interesting new cars to launch. One was the new Mark III Escort, which was developed under the code name "Erika". Though this was the first Ford car in its class with front-wheel drive, we deliberately kept the Escort name to encourage the British to buy it in spite of their reservations about this radical new feature. The same name was used in North America to support the new Escort's credentials as a "world car".
We took a different tack with our replacement for the evergreen Cortina, for which "Toni" had been the project name. Our decision in this instance was to change the name to underline Toni's newness. We felt that in Germany, a crucial market for the model, the Cortina name had come to stand irrevocably for outdated technology. After much cogitation "Sierra" was the choice, and not a bad one, although we discovered that kit-car maker Tom Dutton had registered it and our lawyers had no easy time acquiring the rights.
We took two other new Fords to market with their project names. One was the Orion, the three-box version of the Escort, and the other was the Scorpio, our replacement for the Granada developed as a stretched Sierra. Here again we wanted a new name to appeal to the Germans.
Another naming issue came up when we started exporting the Sierra and Scorpio to North America. We wanted an unique brand name for the New World. I said that I had the answer. Ford owned an excellent brand with an upscale sheen: "Ghia". Instead, in its wisdom Ford came up with "Merkur", which the ads had to explain was pronounced "Mare-Koor". I hardly need add that I felt this was a pretty poor effort, even though it was German for "Mercury".
Car naming was part of my portfolio when I set up an automotive management-consulting company in London in 1983. We brought together a panel of experts to brainstorm possible future names for Bentley and Rolls-Royce models. For Renault we studied the options for naming cars built by the Romanian company it acquired, Dacia. To their surprise, I think, we concluded that Dacia was a perfectly good name with which they should carry on. That's just what they've done in many markets with the new low-cost car being made by Dacia, the Logan.
One of my last naming projects addressed the big luxury car being launched by Volkswagen. In some panic we were asked for our thoughts on possible names. Two that I recall with particular affection were "Oberon" and "Condor". Whether "Phaeton" is a better name for this top-of-the-range VW I'll leave you to decide.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Porsche Pushing (April 2005)
As the author of the definitive history of Porsche and its cars I'm often asked what kind of Porsche I drive. I'm obliged to answer that I've only ever owned one Porsche - a 1951 Type 356 with a 1300 engine. I was an industrial-design student at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York at the time, making some money on the side as a contributor to Speed Age, Auto Age and Sports Cars Illustrated. In the autumn of 1954 I'd upgraded from my first car, an MG TC, to a Triumph TR2. Around a year later I got the itch for a Porsche.
I spotted this particular car in an ad placed by Hartford, Connecticut motor maestro Russ Sceli. I knew Russ by reputation, for he was a seminal figure in the growth of interest of sports cars in New England after the war. A notable discoverer and dealer in Bugattis, Sceli was active in the founding of the Sports Car Club of America and a major carrier of the sports-car bacillus that began infecting many Americans.
With my friend and fellow Pratt student Don Typond I drove the TR2 up to Hartford in the autumn of 1955 to have a look at the Porsche Sceli advertised. It was a sinister-looking black coupe with the split windshield that was typical of the first Porsches. Sceli said it had the Type 506 engine of 1,286 cc that was introduced by Porsche at Frankfurt in April of 1951. Russ and I engineered a swap which, if I recall correctly, didn't involve much money. The Triumph was newer and easier to sell than a primordial Porsche, which had to be driven by someone who knew how to cope with its early-VW crash gearbox.
The Porsche had many endearing features. Walnut cappings along the door sills proffered an intimation of luxury. You wound its clock by pulling out a knob at its base which, attached to a cord, in successive tugs tightened the mainspring. You nestled snugly in its sumptuous seats behind its spring-spoked steering wheel and rumbled along at impressive speed, its flat four chortling away.
Less impressive was its braking. In those early days Porsche were stopped by the hydraulic brakes that VW had adopted in 1950 for its export models, replacing a cable-brake system that Ferry Porsche admitted was a weak point of the original Beetle design. They were short on retardation for this much faster car, however. Porsche's approach to heat dissipation was to shrink finned aluminum muffs onto the outer peripheries of the iron VW drums. With aluminum expanding more than iron when hot, these weren't terrifically effective.
The Porsche's brakes and handling got a workout on the wonderful loop road inside Brooklyn's Prospect Park, the official test circuit for students at Pratt Institute. Virtually without traffic lights and providing an excellent mixture of turns, Prospect Park was and is a great track that severely tests a car.
After two British front-engined sports cars the Porsche's handling presented some new challenges. I loved the eager way it tackled corners, a Porsche trait that today's Type 997 still manifests. My main aim was to keep the front wheels in front where they belonged. Once on a narrow and twisty tree-lined road in Michigan the coupe spun out with shocking speed, happily staying on the black stuff. It turned out that a rear tire had lost air, so the Porsche wasn't to blame.
Driving the coupe through a New York winter was a hoot. Other cars created tracks in the snow; when the Porsche came along its ultra-low nose and bumper just scooped into the snow and shoved it up and over the top of the car!
Among the visits I made in the Porsche was a trip to Carteret, New Jersey to the transmitter of station WOR, where from 1:00 to 4:30 in the morning raconteur Jean Shepherd wove wonderful tales of life in the Midwest. All of us at Pratt were avid fans of Shepherd, who kept us company while we worked into the night on our projects. A Midwesterner myself, I identified with Shepherd's soothing off-the-cuff sagas of life in and around Chicagoland. My stock at Pratt went up big time when I managed a phone conversation with Shepherd during his show and subsequently sat across from the Great Man as he conjured up his verbal short stories - the Garrison Keillor of his day. You can find out more about him at www.flicklives.com.
Around this time I was falling big time for the attractions of Alfa Romeo's new Giulietta Spyder. Griff Borgeson's test of it in the May 1956 issue of Sports Cars Illustrated had me salivating for what he called "a champagne car at a beer price". I got talking to Jean Shepherd about the Porsche, with the upshot the he agreed to buy it. As so often happens it suffered some minor front-end damage in Manhattan traffic before Jean took delivery, but the transaction still went through.
Shepherd enjoyed the Porsche and drove it as it was meant to be driven. Early one morning he was bombing along the New Jersey back roads on his way to the Carteret transmitter. He rounded the last turn to roar through the chain-link gates - only to find them shut. Shepherd was okay but I think that was the end of my one and only Porsche.
- Karl Ludvigsen
The 200 mph Road Car (March 2005)
In 1966 I was a General Motors p.r. man in New York when I wrote a "think piece" for Automobile Quarterly. I speculated on the likelihood of a future 200 mph road car. My hook for the story was the 1965 declaration by Aston Martin's executive director, Steve Heggie, that by 1970 his company would be offering a road car capable of 200 mph. Britain's adoption of a 70 mph Motorway limit around that time wouldn't deter Aston, Heggie stressed. There were still plenty of roads on the Continent where such speeds could be used, he said.
What was the state of the art in the mid-1960s? Top speeds of Aston Martin's cars were in the 145-150 mph bracket. Only a few ultra-rare cars were faster. One was Maserati's V8-powered 5000GT, for which the factory claimed 170 mph, and the other was Ferrari's 500 Superfast, powered by a 5-liter V12 giving 400 bhp. It lived up to its name with a maximum speed in the range of 175 to 180 mph. These were the ultra-pricey sports-tourers that Aston Martin was planning to challenge with its future model. They were approaching the 300 km/h figure - 186 mph - that was talismanic for Continental sports-car makers.
The out-and-out sports-racing cars of that era weren't all that much faster. In 1965, for example, no car was timed at more than 200 mph at Le Mans. Knocking on the door was one of the Mark II Ford GT40s with an official timing of 199 mph. Most of them, and the Ferraris, reached 175-185 mph. With its lazy output of 450-plus horsepower from 7 liters, the Ford's V8 struck me in 1966 as a pretty good power unit for a 200 mph car. In fact I thought the Mark II GT40 represented an effective way of delivering 200 mph performance in a usable road car. It was geared for 205 mph in top and reportedly reached 216 mph in tests.
To reach 200 mph in a fully equipped road car I thought a minimum of 500 bhp would be needed, preferably 600 horsepower. For a transmission I proposed an automatic box with a dual-range feature - one range for ordinary speeds and a higher range for storming the Autobahns. I suggested variable-height suspension so the car could hunker down to reduce drag and improve stability at high speed. I also felt that such a vehicle could hardly avoid using an air brake to supplement its wheel brakes. An area of six square feet, I calculated, would add a valuable 0.3 g of deceleration that would be available no matter how bad the road conditions were.
Now, of course, the 200 mph road car is very much with us. Independent tuners like Germany's Alois Ruf produced one-off versions of the Porsche Turbo that could attain the magic figure. However, the first series-production car to lay claim to a 200 mph top speed was the Ferrari F40 in 1987. Any and all arguments about the fastest road car were silenced on March 31, 1998 when a standard production McLaren F1 was timed at a two-way average of 240.1 mph at Volkswagen's test track in Germany.
On February 28, 2005 the McLaren's speed was just pipped at 241.0 mph by a Swedish supercar, the Koenigsegg CCR, at Italy's banked Nardo circular track. The McLaren's best speed there had been 231 mph. With its supercharged V8 engine the CCR develops 806 bhp at 6,900 rpm. Founder Christian von Koenigsegg expects it eventually to attain the magic 400 km/h, just a tick short of 250 mph. Quite an achievement for a car that's entirely suitable for the road!
My forecast of a 600-horsepower requirement for 200 mph is holding up pretty well. With 571 bhp a Lamborghini Murcielago will reach 206 mph and with 660 bhp at Ferrari Enzo will hit 220 mph. The Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren attains 208 mph with 626 bhp and its automatic rear spoiler does raise up to perform an air-brake function. So aerodynamic is Ferrari's 575M Maranello that it will just top 200 mph with its 515 bhp. And that of course has been the big breakthrough since I made my forecast back in the 1960s: the Energy Crises led to intensified wind-tunnel research that greatly reduced the drag coefficients of all cars, from family runabouts to exotic sports cars such as the Pagani Zonda, which needs only 550 bhp to reach 220 mph.
Most amazing perhaps is the top-speed capability of Bentley's new 553-horsepower Flying Spur four-door sedan. A team from Britain's Autocar took one to Nardo. With all four seats occupied the 5,500-pound Bentley lapped easily at 196 mph and hit a stunning 208 mph before the engine's rev limiter stopped play. The air conditioning was on and the seat coolers were operative. That was only possible with quite exceptional aerodynamic refinement by the owners of Bentley, Volkswagen.
What happed to Aston Martin? Did they make good on Heggie's commitment? Well, not at the time. In what they called their "170 mph" project the Aston engineers did build two Touring-bodied two-seaters, but their attention was diverted from ultimate speed toward other more realistic requirements. Only in 2005, with its Vanquish S powered by a 520 bhp V12, did Aston introduce a road car that could break the 200 barrier. The goal was reached, albeit 35 years late.
- Karl Ludvigsen
Tomorrow Came on November 23, 1959 (February 2005)
My first overseas trip as the fledgling editor of Sports Cars Illustrated was to Sweden, by courtesy of Saab. While overnighting in Gothenburg, I got in touch with an industrial design classmate at Pratt Institute, Pelle Petterson. Pelle came to meet me with his father, Helmer, in the bar of the Park Hotel. The duo were doing some design consulting for NSU, a small German maker of cars and motorcycles, and they couldn't wait to tell me about the new engine that NSU was developing at its base at Neckarsulm.
I still have the notebook in which the Pettersons tried to sketch for me the novel engine's configuration, a baffling combination of a triangular rotor in a figure-eight housing that somehow managed to carry out a complete four-stroke combustion process without valves of any kind. It was revving as high as 20,000 rpm, they told me, and producing 42 horsepower from a 250 cc unit weighing only 30 pounds. Volkswagen was said to be very interested in the engine, which could be ready for passenger-car use in five years.
NSU had already found a licensee for the engine, the Pettersons revealed. This was the Wright Aeronautical Division of New Jersey's Curtiss-Wright Corporation. Led by colorful engineer Roy T. Hurley, Curtiss-Wright was dabbling in the automotive world with hovercraft and alliances with Daimler-Benz. Hurley was said to be paying $400,000 per year to NSU for the right to exploit this remarkable new source of power.
Armed with this astonishing inside information, on my return to New York I called Fred Oppenheimer, energetic importer of NSU cars. "Something's definitely cooking," Fred told me, "though I can't give you the details. But Curtiss-Wright will be announcing something soon. Keep in touch with them to be certain you're invited." Sure enough, Curtiss-Wright announced a press conference for Monday, November 23rd, 1959 in a Manhattan hotel. There was only one snag: cameras were strictly prohibited.
Resourcefulness was called for. Technical editor Steve Wilder and I attended the conference, which included the first-ever unveiling of the Curtiss-Wright Rotating Combustion engine, complete with films of the units in operation, one powering a portable fire pump. We brought along photographer Tom Burnside, who slung his camera on a strap over one shoulder, underneath his sports jacket. After the dog-and-pony show we gathered around the exhibits. Steve and I flanked Tom as he snapped pictures of the radical engine's components. We had our story, including the identity of the engine's inventor, Germany's Felix Wankel.
From my good contacts in Germany I quickly sourced background information on Wankel and the engine's origins. But how was I to explain the way this engine worked to the readers of SCI? Its motions were so sophisticated that they were very hard to understand, even with an engine right in front of you. When Popular Science featured it on the cover of a major anniversary issue, it got the gearing wrong, proudly displaying a rotary engine that couldn't rotate!
I finally decided to fall back on an introduction of the Wankel engine that required our readers to cut out my drawing of the rotor and spin it around the stationary timing gear, inside a drawing of the housing. Only in this way, I concluded, could its amazing operation be demonstrated. I launched the engine in the February 1960 issue of SCI, praising the NSU-Wankel's ingenuity and saying, "The rotating combustion engine seems to start where the reciprocating version stops."
My theme for the discovery was "Tomorrow is Here", which I repeated in our March 1960 profile of Felix Wankel and his engine. We followed up with a color photo of the original all-rotating Wankel unit in our May issue and had the first driving impressions of a Wankel-powered car in July. Our championing of the engine put us at the polar opposite of our arch-rivals Road & Track. In his March 1960 issue R&T's respected publisher, John Bond, briefly mentioned "a sensational new engine" and added, "Our opinion of the Curtiss-Wright NSU engine? It will never be heard from again." I had a lot of smoothing to do on furrowed brows in the executive suites of SCI's publishers.
That summer of 1960 a letter and photos arrived at 1 Park Avenue of the sort that brings joy to an editor's heart. It related that a Daytona Beach father-and-son team had built a running Wankel engine, based solely on our introductory story back in February! We bought Steve Wilder a ticket to Florida and he returned with the story of the William Thomases, senior and junior, experienced model-builders who'd been so intrigued with the new engine that they'd built their own, much the same size as the unit we'd shown in SCI.
Our report on this achievement, complete with hints to home handymen, appeared in the August 1960 SCI. A father and son had completed the story that had germinated in Sweden, with another father and son, almost a year earlier.
- Karl Ludvigsen
MG: Gone for Good This Time? (January 2005)
Yes, I was lucky. My first car was an MG TC that my dad bought for me as a high-school graduation present. So I've long had a weakness for the MG brand. Another MG fan is Bob Lutz, for whom I worked at Ford of Europe in the 1980s. Early in that decade Bob and I visited the top management of BL, Britain's government-owned car maker. We wanted to ensure that if their thoughts ever turned to offloading some of their properties, we at Ford would be interested. We expressed particular interest in the MG marque, which had just wound down its sports-car production.
In those days, however, Americans weren't wanted. On January 9, 1986 Margaret Thatcher's defense secretary resigned from her cabinet in a huff when it seemed her government would favor an American offer for Westland Helicopters instead of the European consortium he preferred. Anti-US passions were still raging when news broke of takeover talks between BL and Ford. The Dearborn company was angrily shouldered aside as a possible owner of BL and its products.
Meanwhile Rover (as the company and all its products were renamed) continued the unflashy but effective and productive partnership with Honda that Michael Edwardes and his team had engineered in 1979. Their relationship was a win-win arrangement. Rover got new models it desperately needed and invaluable insights into the methods of a successful car company. Honda got a important customer for its power trains and indirect access to European markets at a time when its exports were constrained by mutual understandings.
When news broke in March 1988 that British Aerospace - of all people - was contemplating a Rover takeover, the Honda connection was deemed important enough for leading lights from Rover and BAe to fly to Japan for talks with Honda's president. Tadashi Kume "made clear that he would be very concerned if the bidder had been another car manufacturer." That the government held a golden share in BAe, the Honda president was assured, would make the aerospace company a reliable owner of Rover.
"Shock and amazement" described the reaction to the Rover purchase by BAe in July 1988. Much was made of the "synergies" between the two companies but analysts were hard-pressed to find any. However, under BAe the co-operation with Honda flourished. In April 1990 the two companies agreed to a share exchange that gave Honda a 20% shake in Rover's car-making operations and Rover a similar investment in Honda's new Swindon factory.
When it came to sell Rover in 1993, BAe made the decision that effectively sealed Rover's fate. On the table was an exceptional offer from Honda, exceptional in the sense that the Japanese car maker, known for its independence of thought and action, had never before sought deep involvement with another company. Valuing Rover at $970 million, it would pay $250 million to bring its shareholding up to 47.5%. Provided that Rover met certain profit and cash-flow criteria, Honda promised to take the company public by 1998. "Our philosophy was to maintain Rover as an independent British company," said Honda Motor Europe president Shojiro Miyake.
Here was a serious offer from an auto company that had real synergies with Rover and a product range that could support and underpin its future. However George Simpson, Rover's chairman, was against the Honda deal. He and BAe's Dick Evans felt the offer didn't reflect Rover's book value of $1.9 billion. Nor was BAe's ultimate exit route guaranteed. So they shouldered the Japanese aside and accepted a deal from BMW which, including assumptions of debt and other obligations, was worth an astounding $2.5 billion.
To its credit, BMW allowed the revival of the MG brand to go forward in the shape of the MGF, launched in 1995. Lacking Honda's vital help, however, and failing adequately to get to grips with Rover's fundamentals, BMW bowed out of Rover in 2000, selling the company for a pittance to four entrepreneurs. Realizing the value of MG, the buyers rebranded the company as MG Rover and brought out MG versions of all their sedans. But neither these nor the aging Rovers sold well enough to earn the profits that would allow new models to be developed.
To be fair, the new Rover owners had bad luck. They had a joint-venture partner for the MGF in body-maker Mayflower; Mayflower went bust, leaving MG Rover holding the bag. They contracted a new-model-development project to TWR Engineering; TWR went bust. Now it's been the turn of MG Rover, which has collapsed into the hands of the lawyers and accountants.
Rover seems to be defunct as a brand. The bankrupt company's only car-making asset is likely to be the MG TF, as it's now named, and its production line. This might be the basis on which MG could be kept alive. Though the little mid-engined roadster is now a decade old it's well-accepted and a sound basis for further development. It enjoys a good slot in the market as an MX-5 alternative that would surely catch on in America. Maybe it's time to ask Ford again if it might be interested!
- Karl Ludvigsen
Karl Ludvigsen with his 1953 Riley 2.5L that was specially modified as a
two-seater sports car in Scotland by Dennis Ramsay
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