Tag Archives: 3

Engine Failure – CD 3 #64/2

At the risk of appearing parochial today’s featured vehicle, the 1964 CD 3 was not by any stretch of the imagination a great success on the track but it did point the way to aerodynamic developments that took off spectacularly in 1977 with the Lotus 78 and is still in evidence in Formula One and other top motor sports categories today.

The CD 3 would prove to be the last design to use a Panhard motor at Le Mans or indeed any non historic race. Power came from a supercharged horizontally opposed two cylinder 848 cc / 51.7 cui motor that produced up to 70 hp that drove the front wheels.

Beneath the low drag body, which has a drag coefficient, measurement of aerodynamic drag resistance, of just 0.12 was a back bone chassis with inboard disc brakes at the front and drum brakes at the rear.

This photo does not show it but beneath the rear body work is a venturi tunnel which effectively managed airflow beneath the car in such away that it was sucked to the ground, which translated means the faster it went the better it’s road holding and grip.

Despite it’s futuristic shape and aerodynamic innovation even with a top speed of 140 mph the two CD 3’s only qualified for the last two places on the grid for the Le Mans 24 hours and both retired one with mechanical maladies. The chassis #64/2, seen at Goodwood Festival of Speed here, qualified 54th for the 1964 Le Mans 24 hours driven by André Guilhaudin and Alain Bertaut and retired after completing 77 laps due to engine failure. The 55th qualified sister car driven by Pierre Lelong and Guy Verrier made it to lap 124 before the gearbox had cried enough.

As Panhard was about to be wholly consumed by Citroën who planned to switch Panhard’s production capacity to Citroën models 1964 would be the last year the CD or Panhard names would appear at Le Mans.

Charles Deutsch, CD, who had been part of the Deutsch Bonet DB partnership went on to design the body work for the 1971 Porsche 917/20 Le Mans challenger which gained a certain notoriety after being dubbed “le Cochon Rose”

Thanks for joining me on this “Engine Failure” edition of “Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres”, I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !

Open Wheel Trainer – Lotus 31 Ford

Jaguar V12 E-Type Series 3 #IS 2857

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In the summer of 1980 I passed my college entrance exams, at my third attempt and before finally fleeing the family nest in Wembley to attend Trent Polytechnic, I got a summer job at a local Honda dealership to tide me over.

One of the dealership owners many cars, and even more motorcycles, was a black Jaguar E – Type Convertible like the one in these photographs one of the last fifty made, all available only in black, a fact that is noted on a brass plate mounted on the glove box cover.

In 1971 the Series 3 E-Types ushured Jaguars second ever completely new motor into production, an all aluminium 5.3 litre / 326 cui V12 with 2 valves per cylinder design that had it’s origins in a design intended for racing dating back to 1954. This motor would eventually be developed into a 7 litre / 427 quad cam that would be used to win at Le Mans twice, 1988 and 1990.

All Series 3 E-types were built around the longer 2+2 chassis pan, most with the V12 engine but a few Series 3 models were built with the older 4.2 litre / 256 cui 6 cylinder motor.

The brass plaque on the right of this photo gives the chassis number as IS 2857 which according to the only list of XKE chassis numbers I have seen suggests this car was originally supplied in Right Hand Drive form.

This particularly splendid example, seen here at the recent Silverstone Classic, has been restored and ‘sympathetically’ upgraded winning the Speis Hecker World Masterpiece competition for outstanding coachwork re-finishing.

My own 30 year old memories of the V12 E – Type were that it was certainly a buzz taking the car to the petrol pump down the road, it turned heads, the engine was silky smooth, the steering was light but it inspired little or no confidence, even on a roundabout at perfectly legal speeds, in it’s handling capabilities, it seemed to lean in the corners rather that hug the road as even my pedestrian FIAT 128 did, and parking a car with such a long nose was an absolute nightmare on a crowded parking lot.

Overall I was disappointed with how the car drove a bit like meeting a rock star whom one has held in high esteem only to find that he / she has all the usual human traits some of which are not so pleasant or different from our selves, or driving an air cooled Porsche for the first time to find that interior has the same smell of fumes as an air cooled VW Beetle, more boulevard cruiser than the track racer which I was expecting.

Thanks for joining me on this E-type edition of ‘Gettin’ a lil’ psycho on tyres’ I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !

Bi- Parting Tailgate – Volvo Amazon Estate / Station Wagon

Design Mash Up – Volvo 120 Amazon (131)

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Looking back it is a sobering thought that when my four grand parents were born at the turn of the 20th century the invention of motorcar was somewhere between 10 and 15 years old and of them neither of my grand mothers ever learned to drive and only one of my grandfathers ever owned a private car and that only for five years before he died aged 63.

Nearly 60 years later I on the other hand was lucky enough to be born into the age of mass consumption by the time I was just four my parents not only had their first new car but all of their friends had new cars too !

Of those friends my parents had I soon adopted two, Ted and Syd, as my Uncles, both drove brand new grey 2 door Volvo 120 Amazons which had a factory code 131 denoting 2 door single carb versions.

Volvo’s original intention was to call the model Amason, however manufacturers, of one of the most irritating sounding 2 strokes ever, Kreidler already had the Amason name registered and so the name Volvo Amason was restricted to Sweden by agreement.

In today’s parlance the Amazon design would probably known as a design mash up with the bonnet lines seemingly inspired by the 2nd generation Chrysler New Yorker, the grill design seemingly from the 1955 Chrysler C-300 though designer Jan Wilsgaard claims he was inspired by a Kaiser Manhattan he saw in the docks in Gothenburg. Interesting strap line for the linked Kaiser advertisement in the light of Volvo’s reputation from 1959 until the late 1990’s.

During a production run of over 600, 000 units produced in Sweden, Belgium, Canada, South Africa and Chile from 1956 to 1970, in 1959 the Amazon became the first car to be fitted with three point front seat belts as standard. The seat belts fitted in Uncle Ted & Syds cars encouraged my folks to get some after market seat belts for our more modest Austin A40 Countryman, an act that probably saved their lives a year or two later when we were involved in a 30 mph collision with the side of a truck.

After 3 years of abuse at BBQ’s on the beaches of Larnica, Cyprus most Sundays and nearly 25 years further good service the last time I saw Uncle Syds Amazon it was rapidly deteriorating into a rust bubble in the mid 1980’s despite the fact that the engine was other wise mechanically sound. The 1970 model shown here seems to have faired considerably better.

Thanks for joining me on this Amason edition of ‘Gettin a lil’ psycho on tyres’ I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !

Gettin' A Li'l Psycho On Tyres

Art Tidesco blogs on all things motoring