I just finished reading an old MotorTrend article that explored the design of modern race cars. More specifically, they were trying to pick the most beautiful shapes created in the past ten years (I believe the article was published in 1994). Most of... <BR><BR>To read the rest of this blog entry from The Jalopy Journal, click here.
Ryan, Agreed that the Railton is one of the most gorgeous shapes for a competition vehicle ever. As you described the criteria, would it have been left out due to age? Not to nudge the topic, but I'm curious what was on the list?
The list was made up mostly of 60's era GP cars, 80's CANAM cars, etc... It did, however, include one of my favorites: Stutz-Lockhart Special
Don't know if that was the first "pumpkin seed" car but if so it paved the way for a lot of others in all the streamliner classes.
What an awesome vehicle! Powered by a pretty amazing engine with a long proud history powering aircraft and racing cars. The Supermarine S.5 was powered by a Napier Lion, and is as stunning an aircraft as the Railton Special is a car! Thanks for some more great history, Ryan!
Great read! I can only imagine the people watching him run at that speed at the time, hell I'd love to see it now!! What a cool engineered vehicle.
WOW! Amazing that this is a little known vehicle. Very advanced, IMO, for the era. Out of curiosity, what diameter are those wheels?!
They really didn't give a shit about driver safety back then, did they? Right at the front, no hint of a roll cage or any kind of collision protection. Imagine the uproar today! Is there any link to this Railton bloke and a Railton car I saw at the Blackhawk Museum outside of SF. From memory it was FWD and had odd looking headlights, c.1929 or thereabouts.
The thing that gets me is that the gentleman racer was sitting out in front on a lawn chair, with no structure at all. Hurts to think about it.
There are more photos from the Brooklands Society page. Near the bottom. I picked it out from the Wikipedia page Ryan linked to. Just do not click on the logo or the mail title, it will take you to a 'site sitter' a page that holds the link and starts a bunch of pop-ups. If you want to see more, and there are a bunch 5000 or so, use the Archive Index Page link I really should not have found this at work over lunch hour... I may not get much done the rest of the day. Jay
There was something magic about the days when designers thought making a car a beautiful shape also made it fast. Until Jim Hall came along and screwed it all up... Haha.
I had to get a better look at a Napier Lion W12 engine. I'm not sure of the year or version this one is, but it gives you an idea of what they look like. 3 tons indeed!
That is one funky looking engine. It looks like it has 3 banks of cylinders. How odd. Several things leap out to me when I look at that photo. First, yeah, the thing is FRICKIN' HUGE! Second, it appears to have independent front suspension with double A arms, and am I right that it's also 4 wheel drive with one engine driving each of the axles? If that's what I am seeing, then I can see how the driver wound up shoved way out in front of the rest of the car. There was just no room for him in the middle with those mechanical monsters and the huge tanks (Didja see that frickin' tank back over his left shoulder?!) taking up all the space. I wonder what that thing sounded like blowing past you at full speed. Hell, I wonder what it sounded like inside the cockpit at any speed! One last observation. Isn't it interesting that he's wearing a dress shirt and a tie? And are those pin stripes on his trousers?
I think this has been discussed before on the HAMB but there was also the Napier-Railton racer from the '30s... Shown airborne at Brooklands. Same driver, John Cobb.
How much room do you think you would need to turn that thing around? Maybe a County? I'd like to see the trailer for it. Lost_N_Austin
The late Jocko Johnson was also very impressed with this car, and he did several editions in model form, including hand carved billet ones. This fiberglass version is the third one in, situated on the ill fated 555 streamliner, or at least the buck for it...
What else would you expect? It IS an airplane engine ! LOL Awesome cars and drivers to match. Failure wasn't in their vocabulary...so who needs safety? You didn't get in the car expecting to crash.... Unreal.
And there's another "frickin' huge" tank behind the right side engine. Are those fuel tanks? One for each engine? A closer look at this pic, you can see that the left side engine is angled towards the right front of the car and the right engine is angled to the left rear. I'll probably never get over to England to see this car, but it would be interesting to get a close up look at how it all went together to work like it did. Thanks visualj for the link to the Brooklands site. Awesome pics there.
Shirt sleeves rolled up, and from the side shot it appears he couldn't afford full lenght pants....or socks for that matter Class, the whole lot of it, and despite the enormity of the project, they still added the 'lightening holes in the chassis and wherever possible..... AWESOME....that is hot rodding with a very big hammer, shirts, ties, balls and all. Cheers, Drewfus
I found some great color footage of this car on Youtube. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=382723 The link above has the video as well as some other good info and links other people posted.
The car was in a LSR feature in Ray Kuns Auitomobile Racing the fifth edition 1939. One of the tanks held 75 gallons of ice water, used to cool the brakes that were on the two prop shafts (drive shafts). Fuel tank held 18 gallons, oil tank held 15 gallons. I'll post a photo of a MILLER W connecting rod tomorrow if someone doesn't post one of these engineering masterpieces before me.
If you want to see one of these creations doing the business at full song on sand , PLUS ! 2x 360 degree spins with oil leaks and flames , watch an old movie with James Mason , called "THE FLYING DUTCHMAN " .
This is the connecting rod assembly for the Napier Lion engine.Pretty much standard radial engine design Here's a link to one of these engines being restored,lots of photos. http://www.enginehistory.org/restorations.htm#NapierLion