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It’s The Real Thing – Ferrari 512BB

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In 1974 Niki Lauda tested a prototype Ferrari 312 PB in preparation for the 1974 World Sports Car Championship and when Enzo asked him what he thought Niki is alleged to have said something to the effect that if Mr Ferrari wanted to win the Grand Prix World Championship he ought to forget about the prototype 312PB. Enzo seems to have concurred with his new drivers opinion and his cars were never to contest the World Sports Car Championship during his lifetime again.

However many privateers never tired of entering Ferrari’s in the World Sports Car Championships lesser IMSA classes and today we will be looking at the fortunes of 3 privateer Ferrari 512 BBs that I was lucky enough to see in the early 80’s.

The Ferrari 512 BB was an update of the 365 GT4 BB we looked at last week. Introduced in 1976 the 512 featured an enlarged 360 hp 4942 cc / 301 cui 180 degree 12 cylinder engine with a 9.2:1 compression ratio and dry sump engine lubrication which is ideal for the higher cornering forces experienced in racing cars. 929 examples of the 512 BB were made before the 512i BB was introduced in 1981.

512 BB / LM #27577 1980 Silverstone 6 Hours, O’Rourke/Craft/Norman Q18 F 7th o/a 2nd IMSA, those with an interest in all things musical might recognise EMKA and Steve O’Rourke in connection with Pink Floyd whom Steve is credited as managing post Syd Barrat, Nick Mason was listed to drive the #11 but didn’t, after Steve died in 1994 Nick acquired this car to join his 250 GTO.

On the inside you can just make out the winning #8 De Cadenet – Ford driven by Alain De Cadenet (seen here) and Desiré Wilson who I believe a couple of weeks earlier became the first female to win a World Championship race of any kind in the same De Cadenet – Ford with the same co-driver at Monza.

512 BB / LM #35523 1981 Silverstone 6 Hours, Phillips/Salmaon/Earle Q25 DNF (Flat battery) A not untypical horribly wet and cold day at Silverstone the race was won by a Porsche 935 which will be the subject of a future blog.

512 BB / LM #31589 Andruet/Ballot-Léna 1981 Le Mans 24 hours, Q 37th, F 5th o/a 1st in IMSA GTX, my first holiday abroad alone was always going to be to go see the Le Mans 24 hours and I was not disappointed. Bell & Ickx won and there was an entertaining battle between 5 of these 512 BB’s for much of the race, though all but one other did not finish.

512 BB / LM #35523 1982 Silverstone 6 Hours, Phillips/Earle/Jones Q34, F 17th, regrettably this was the last time I saw the 512’s on the track, these fabulous sounding machines continued to be raced until 1985.

Hope you have enjoyed today’s ‘It’s The Real Thing’ edition of ‘Gettin’ a lil’ psycho on tyres’ and that you will join me again tomorrow for a look at some Porsches from Thompson CT in the first day of my first Porsche week. Don’t forget to come back now !

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” Il Mostro ” ahead of it’s time ? – Alfa Romeo SZ & RZ

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The Alfa Romeo SZ designed, in just 19 months, by Robert Opron, responsible for the equally alien Citroen SM, and Antonio Castellana with a little input from Zagato amongst others was dubbed The Monster when it was launched in 1990, one either loves or hates its ‘back street speed shop’ styling.

The Sprint Zagato was powered by a 210 hp 2,959 cc / 180 cui alloy V6, good for a 150 mph and matched to a superb chassis thanks to the work of Giorgio Pianta who fine tuned the Alfa Romeo 75 chassis inherited from the Group A / IMSA racing programme.

Unfortunately the SZ was launched in the middle of a world recession making it very difficult to sell the 998 Rosso Alfa coloured vehicles. It is believed that there were an additional 38 prototypes and pre production models, many of which are thought to have been scrapped.

Sales of the SZ were boosted by a ‘one model’ SZ Trophy racing series for which participants were offered a 25% discount on the purchase price of an SZ.

Despite the difficulty selling the SZ when production ceased in 1991 the roadster RZ version of the composite plastic bodied SZ was put into production and went on sale in 1992.

Like the SZ the RZ has a hydraulic lifting mechanism activated by a button which allows the ride height to be raised by 50 mm / 2 inches in order to negotiate bumps in the road surface.

The RZ proved even more difficult to sell than the SZ so production was abandoned after just 278 of the planned 350 were completed, in light of the success of the BMW Z series sports cars perhaps the SZ and RZ were just half a decade ahead of their time.

With thanks to E van der Beek and A.Ritzinger for additional information.

Hope you have enjoyed today’s back street racer edition of ‘Gettin’ a lil’ psycho on tyres’ and that you’ll join me again tomorrow on Ferrari Friday for a look at 3 flat 12 racers. Don’t forget to come back now !

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Purring Panther – Alfa Romeo Giulia Super

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The Alfa Romeo Giulia also known as the 105 series was in production from 1962 – 1978, I first heard the distinctive sound of the twin cam Super model in Cyprus in the mid 1960’s.

This 1971 vehicle is powered by a 97 hp twin carburettor 1,570cc / 95 cui engine that gave the car sports car performance in a saloon car shell. In 1965 the Giulia Super received much of the technology from the 1963 Giulia Ti Super racing programme.

This crest featuring a serpent eating or regurgitating a human known as a Biscione has been an emblem of the Visconti family for a thousand years and used in the crest belonging to the ruling Sforza family of Milan for over 600 years. It’s exact origins are unknown but thought to be either from the legends of Theoderic the Great or alternatively from the biblical story of the Leviathan and Jonah.

Film buffs will remember that a number of Italian Police Giulia’s, known as Panthers, were out run in the original version of ‘The Italian Job’.

Hope you have enjoyed today’s Biscione edition of ‘Gettin’ a lil’ psycho on tyres’ and that you will join me tomorrow for a look at two Alfa Romeo’s with bodywork that exudes all the hallmarks and subtlety of a back street speed shop. Don’t forget to come back now !

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Patina with well travelled history – Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 Super Sport, #0312961

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My thanks to every one at the Alfabb forum who made today’s post on this 1929 Alfa Romeo possible.

The 6C 1750 was in production from 1929 to 1933 with 369 examples built. The Super Sport came in normally aspirated 64 hp or supercharged 85 hp variants.

The 1929 chassis number #0312961 seen here was originally supplied as a double overhead cam normally aspirated model, after it was successfully used in competition it was returned to the Alfa Romeo factory in 1932 and upgraded with a supercharger and replacement crank case.

The body is unusual for the type having an ash frame with steel panels rather than the steel frame with aluminium panels preferred by Zagato.

After it’s initial foray in competition this vehicles adventures continued with a fire department in Ivera, Aosta near Turin. Somewhere around 1939 the vehicle turned up in Eritrea, then an Italian colony where many other vintage Alfa Romeo’s including this one are known to have been used for racing, there is a possibility that during one race #0312961 may have been in collision with a donkey while leading a handicap race in Asmara, Eritrea in 1943.

In 1947 the car was acquired by a British Captain serving with the victorious occupying forces in the former Italian African colony and he imported it to the UK in 1950.

After several more changes of ownership being painted blue, then red again and an engine rebuild the car was sold to an American in Zurich in 1959 who returned with #03122961 to Ohio in 1962. The car was sold to it’s present owner Nick Benwell in 2009 who then set about completing a rebuild that had started in Ohio in the 1960’s.

Nick is a great fan of original patina and as can be seen he has left the bodywork more or less as he found it. With the restoration complete Nick took his car on a 2,100 mile round trip to the Alfa Centenary celebrations last year where the car was waved past 400 other Alfa’s and honoured with being the first to pass through the Arese Factory gates as the oldest vehicle present.

My thanks to everyone at Alfabb.com ‘Help Identifying Vintage Alfa’s at Prescott ?’ thread who provided clues as to which car KYR 564 is including, Odin, Orouge and Duncan Macnab who kindly showed me a copy of Simon Moore’s excellent 2 part feature on this vehicle which appeared in ‘The Automobile‘ August 2010.

Hope you have enjoyed today’s journey across 5 countries on three continents and that you will join me for a look at an Alfa Romeo Giulia Super. Don’t forget to come back now !

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Rise and Fall – Euclid R210

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It’s always a thrill to bring you something remarkable here on Gettin’ a lil’ psycho on tyres and today’s humungous story comes courtesy of Gray Chandler with whom I became acquainted on The Nostalgia Forum a couple of weeks ago.

Gray from Adelaide, Australia, spent 14 years working as a heavy equipment fitter looking after 60 plus Euclid R105 mining trucks, each with a 100 ton carrying capacity, on the open cast copper mines on the then troubled tropical Bougainville Island between Papua New Guinea and the Soloman Islands north east of Australia on the South Western Pacific rim.

Gray informs me that it was possible to execute a 360 degree spin in an R105… if it was empty !

One day in the early 1970’s a new $500,000 piece of kit arrived for testing and evaluation the Euclid R210.

It was carefully assembled with a crane to lift the heavier parts into place…

… the biggest crane on the Island was on the back of this 4 axle chassis. Euclid the Greek mathematician would have surely been impressed with the geometry.

The completed Euclid R210, which dwarfed the hitherto ubiquitous R105, had an empty weight of 250,000 lbs. Power came courtesy of a 1,850 hp Avco-Lycoming gas turbine engine, running on jet fuel which was used to drive a Euclid AC generator and AC/DC transformer which provided power for the DC wheel motors, the turbine and generator weighed ‘only’ 6000 lbs.

The R210 was soon put to work carrying 210 tons of material or 140 cubic yards at a 2:1 heap SAE.

The R210 met a premature end when the turbine ‘flamed out’ (self destructed) which immediately caused the generator to stop and thus the braking AND steering system to fail. The operator who gallantly stayed with his vehicle, I am not sure I would have jumped 12 feet to the ground either, became a passenger as 250,000 lbs of rolling steel brushed a puny Euclid R105 aside like a match stick, after crushing first a 3 axle CAT 14e road grader and then a 3 axle Isuzu cherry picker the R210’s wheels were sufficiently fouled for it to come to rest.

Amazingly everyone involved managed to get out of the way and no one was hurt.

The mining company tried to hush the story up, but our man Gray seen here in front of the Euclid R210 managed to get some photo’s anyway.

Despite it’s tropical paradise location Borurganville Islanders were fighting for their independence from Papua New Guinea at the time something that was not achieved until 1997. Anyone like me interested in mining communities in the 1970’s will be interested to follow this link to a website which gives a fascinating insight to life in the Bougainville Copper Mining community.

I am sure you will all join me in thanking Gray Chandler for today’s outsize story and photo’s along with Dave Webster who took the three photo’s of the Euclid R210’s construction.

Hope you have enjoyed today’s trip to a tropical paradise and that you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !

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Holy Terraplanes ! – Triumph Dolomite 14/65

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After Donald Healey was invalided out of the Royal Flying Corps at 18 he took a correspondence course in automobile engineering and then opened a garage in his home town Perranporth, Cornwall, upon the cessation of hostilities at the end of WW1.

In the early thirties his reputation as a consultant engineer and designer led to an appointment at the Triumph Motor Company where he was responsible for Triumphs new vehicles including the Dolomite launched in 1936.

The design of the radiator grill of the Dolomite 14/65 appears to have been influenced by the contemporary US gangsters automobile of choice the Hudson Terraplane, as was, to a lesser extent, the grill on Healey’s post WW2 Healey Elliot and to a lesser extent still the grills on early four cylinder Austin Healey 100’s.

It is believed that 33 Dolomite 14/65 roadsters with a twin carburettor 13 hp 4 cylinder motor were built and this 1938 example driven by Derry Aust is one of 13 known to have survived.

Hope you have enjoyed today’s waterfall grill edition of ‘Gettin a lil’ psycho on tyres’, and I hope that you’ll join me tomorrow on a tropical island paradise in the Pacific to see what happens when the brakes fail on an 1850 hp jet powered vehicle weighing 250,000 lbs (two hundred and fifty thousand pounds). Don’t forget to come back now !

PS I’d like to thank Tim Fulcher who got back to me about the identity of the driver of last weeks Jaguar XK 140 in Northern Rhodesia, turns out the name of the gentleman driving the car is Ken Livingstone. Thanks again Tim 🙂

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Sister doing it for her self – OSCA Tipo S-187

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Today we return to Lime Rock in 1959 courtesy of Ed Arnaudin for a look at this OSCA Tipo S-187 belonging to Briggs Cunningham.

Officine Specializzate Costruzioni Automobili – Fratelli Maserati SpA was set up by the three racing mad Maserati brothers Ernesto, Ettore and Bindo after their involvement with the company bearing their own name had concluded with it’s sale to Adolfo Orsi in 1937 and the expiry of their subsequent 10 year consulting contracts in 1947.

The brothers focused on building extremely successful sports cars primarily with engines of 750 cc / 45 cui to 1500 cc / 91.5 cui. Cunningham’s car seen here appears to be one of 17 Tipo S-187’s built from 1956 – 1960 with a 70 hp 749 cc / 45 cui twin cam engine with a, for the time, high 9:1 compression ratio.

The real story behind the #23 OSCA on this day in 1959 however is the driver who took the car to victory lane, one D McCluggage from Kansas, who is well known for breaking down discriminating and prejudicial barriers in journalism and at the race track, simply D stands for Denise.

As well as regularly whooping all the boys on the race track she is a seasoned motor sports journalist who was famously sent to Indianapolis by The Herald Tribune only to find she was barred from the press box, pit lane AND garage area, unperturbed she got her story from elsewhere round the track and published anyway.

Phil Hill later described the prevailing attitude at the time “It’s a bit embarrassing to me, given today’s enlightened attitudes, to admit that in the late 50s I was a bit disturbed by the idea of this woman driver. It wasn’t a matter of feeling threatened, but like many men in that period, I had trouble understanding what kind of statement Denise might be making with her driving efforts. The fact is, gender stereotypes aside, she was holding her own on the track.”

All Denise wanted to do was win and she did often, after her career as a professional driver was over she became a founding light at AutoWeek where her accomplishments are still scene as an example for others to follow.

Denise recently became the only Journalist to ever be inducted into the Automotive Hall of fame and at over 70 she still writes her ‘Drive, She Said’ column syndicated in over 90 newspapers across the US and Canada.

Hat’s off to Denise gentleman, for waking us up to our equals !

Thanks to Steve and Ed Arnaudin for the photograph, and to Terry O’Neil for the race day information.

Hope you have enjoyed today’s prejudice free edition of ‘Gettin’ a lil’ psycho on tyres’ and that you’ll join me tomorrow for a look at a splendid vintage Triumph Dolomite. Don’t forget to come back now !

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