History Auto racing 1894-1942

Duesenberg race cars after their prime. Can we get some info on them? Photos from Batavia, N.Y. track.

 

300hp FIAT:

(Bits from various www.)



Load another photo from here http://www.motoringpicturelibrary.com/preview_image.asp?lcID=543&page=8&fleID=8519 to read the notings.



Read a review that was written in "The Australian Motorist" - 2 December 1918:

http://www.members.dcsi.net.au/ies/FIAT01.jpg

 

Not sure if this will help or not;

http://www.diatto.com/IT/home.html

It's an Italian site. Open the link and look for "STAMPA" then select "INGLESE".

If you haven't been to the site before, it isn't the easiest to navigate, but persevere to get to all the sections. There is lots of great reading, photos and brochures.

 

iron blood & guts in those days

very cool thread

 

Racing is even more deadly today.

 

The Fiat mefistofele one of the races car that i like!!

The Fiat Mefistofele began life as a 1908 Fiat SB 4 chain-driven Grand Prix car. It initially had an 18 litre engine, consisting of two individual but linked cylinder blocks. John Duff raced it in this configuration in 1922. It was at Brooklands that Duff was involved in one of the more spectacular engine failures in motor sport history. One of the Fiat's cylinder blocks exploded, separated itself from the rest of the engine, and departed skywards, taking the bonnet and several other supplementary components with it. Duff rather lost interest in the car after that, and went off instead to help start Bentley's winning run at Le Mans.

Ernest Eldridge purchased the shattered remains of the Fiat. Eldridge acquired a 21.706 litre six-cylinder Fiat A.12 Bis airship engine. The Fiat A.12 engine was a six-cylinder liquid cooled in-line, single overhead camshaft, engine of 260 horsepower. It was used in such aircraft as the S.I.A. 7B1, Fiat R-2, and S.A.M.L. S-2 reconnaissance aircraft, and the Caproni Ca. 46 bomber. Eldridge was then obliged to lengthen Mephistopheles to accommodate it. The story goes that elements of a London bus chassis were used in the conversion.

The rebuilt car was given rather elegant new bodywork with a shapely tail, and it had the centre line of the front wheels farther ahead of the radiator than any other record car of its day. Eldridge had also modified the engine with four valves per cylinder, 24 spark plugs – all fired by Magneti Marelli magnetos, but with only two carburettors, now gave a full 320bhp at 1,800 rpm on a 5 to 1 compression ratio. Still chain-drive, no front brakes and two tons in racing trim.

The vehicle's 1923 debut at Brooklands saw Eldridge establish his first 1/2 mile record from a standing start. Soon afterwards, on 12th July 1924 at Arpajon in France, he broke the absolute speed record by achieving a top speed of 146.01 mph. Other records over distances of 5 km and 10 km would follow.

The Land Speed Record

On a Sunday morning on a narrow tree-lined public road at Arpajon, not far from Montlhéry, on 6 July 1924, two teams converged to do battle. A plucky, large, bespectacled Englishman, Ernest Eldridge, in the 21.7-litre Fiat Mephistopheles and a Frenchman, René Thomas in a V12 Delage La Torpille would fight for the title of the fastest man in the world.

Eldridge and his intrepid passenger John Ames dismissed fears of blown tyres or perilous obstacles such as farm workers who might stray onto their hazardous route, and simply got down to business. Eldridge loved trying new experiments to maximise power, and had fitted an oxygen cylinder on board to energise the WW1 aero engine. Poor Ames, as well as hanging on for dear life, was required to maintain fuel pressure via a hand pump and turn on the oxygen when his manic driver yelled instruction. The ex-airship engine delivered a fearsome 320bhp, while front brakes were regarded unnecessary for this heroic act. No crash hats, and only woolly jerseys for protection.

The sight of this black leviathan flashing between the trees, engine bay emitting smoke, and exhaust jettisoning occasional flame must have stunned locals as the ground shook from its guttural, rumbling power. On other occasions, high on the Brooklands banking, Mephistopheles was a devil to control. On the straight road at Arpajon, it was still a major handful. But Eldridge was up to the job. One journalist described the car as "a terrifying sight" as it hurtled past, needing all the driver's considerable strength to keep it under control, snaking from one side of the road to the other. Eldridge didn't lift, though, (he never lifted) and went faster than the existing Land Speed Record with a two-way average of 143.26mph.

Then the Delage team protested that the Fiat was unable to reverse. In fact, it didn't have the reverse gear insisted on by the regulations. The time set by Mephistopheles wasn't ratified. Eldridge took it away to a workshop in Paris, while Thomas, still at Arpajon, worked the V12 Delage up to 143.31 mph over the flying mile and snatched the official record. The Delage was then taken to the company's main Paris showroom in the Champs Elysées, and put on proud display.

Eldridge went back to Arpajon on July 12, with Mephistopheles having been given some arcane mechanism which would move it, however briefly and convulsively, backwards. With his passenger/mechanic John Ames - a man whose nerves must have been as steely as his own - pumping up the fuel pressure, Eldridge gave it the works. Mephistopheles was once again using the whole width of the road, verge to verge, but it was going faster than ever, and took the record from the Delage at 146.01 mph over the flying kilometre, vanquishing French rival Rene Thomas and his Delage V12 by just under 3mph. It was the last time a public road was used for a world record attempt.

The Rene Thomas' record had stood for just six days. Story has it Thomas’ car had sat proudly in the Delage showroom on the Champs-Élysées with a sign boasting the French success when the Fiat arrived and parked, in a pointed manner, across the road from the Delage showrooms.

The road used for the Arpajon speed trials is now buried under an autoroute, but both the Fiat and Delage rivals survive in museums.

Then 2 1/2 months later, on September 25, 1924 at Pendine Sands in Wales, Englishman Malcolm Campbell, driving a 350hp Sunbeam Blue Bird, broke the record at 146.16 mph over the flying mile. Just .15 mph quicker than Eldridge.

 

Thanks MrFire.

A gentleman from the UK is currently recreating this car.

Lot's of Aussie banter in this discussion.
http://forums.autosport.com/lofiversion/index.php/t94880-0.html

 

There was a large Fiat racer in the high desert I kept chasing it kept hiding

I did find some wonderful stuff while looking

 

An eery shot of Arthur Duray during the record attempt in Ostende.

 

Ohhh Richard!!

 

Kurtis that is one great picture. What is the occasion?Jim

 

All i know is that it's somewhere in the UK.
I put Vitesse on the spot again. Hopefully he or someone else can identify the venue and meeting.

 

I can't remember if i've posted this photo before.

 

Thank you, MrFire;
lots of interesting material there, Think I'm going to need a fast Italian-English dictionary, and a couple of hours to surf it.

 

No idea! But some thoughts. From the look of the clothes I'd say it's perhaps just pre-Great War but probably very early 1920s, certainly not later than 1925. The surroundings would suggest somewhere coastal, so either a beach race or a seafront sprint - probably the latter, looking at those spindly wheels on that fabric-bodied boat-tail job. In which case it could be any one of a dozen or more venues - Rhyl, Blackpool, Lytham, Southport ... I'd suggest some more, but my copy of Nicholson's "Sprint" seems to be hiding!

 

Halford Shock Absorbers, Halford Special:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halford_Special

 

Nice photo! I believe that is an English bodied 1912 Model T, an early one with the 1911 style body. The "Fordoors" are taller than the ones on bodies made in the USA,1912 was the first year for forward doors on Fords

 

and some here too:

http://cosmozol.livejournal.com/224370.html

 

I'm not really a model car guy but these are very old and one-off. Part of a set of the top ten, I think, finishers race for death

I know where the Mercedes is ....... just sold for a ton-0-money

Here are our two

 

Bluto-

What is the length of the scale, so that we can get a size reference?

Any idea how long ago they were done?

Herb Kephart

 

"By 1926 Fiat had returned to racing and on September 4, 1927, determined to show the world that they were still the greatest race car designers and builders in the world, Fiat entered a car for one last race in the Grand Prix di Milano at Monza.

The car was the worlds first single seater Grand Prix car, the stunning 12 cylinder supercharged 806 Corsa. The driver was Bordino. The race started in atrocious conditions with standing water on the track and the spray thrown up by the cars, reducing visibility. Driving with all his legendary greatness and fire, holding slides on the rain soaked track with classic disdain and putting up one astounding lap at 155.446 kmh, he easily beat the greatest drivers of his day.
After winning its first and only race, the 806 was withdrawn by Fiat and destroyed. Fiat never raced again."








Monza Race Track - 1922/28.





Bordino - 1927.

http://www.bigscalemodels.com/cars/fiat806_bordino/fiat806_bordino.html

 

Herb, if you click on the lower left pic, I think that's a 12 inch scale laying in front of the car.

 

Right you are! I can just make out the 12 in a couple of the views. Kind of Bluto to not use some hokey metric measuring stick--

Herb

 

1914 Mercedes team after the French GP:



Here's a link: http://www.mercia.biz/gallery/displayimage.php?album=6&pos=0

 

1926 Alfa Romeo team at italian GP:

 

Voisin (Andre Lefebre) at 1923 Italian GP:

 

Bugatti Type 57 "tank" at French GP - 1936:

 

1935 Trossi Monaco with 8 cylinder radial motor was constructed and tested. It was intended that it would be raced, but never did:

 

Mr Fire et al
That 1927 fiat is amazing - I see similarities with the Delage chassis design. What happened at Monza - did Delage not Turn up or did they get thrashed ? No doubt this is common knowledge but my library doesn't extend to this detail.
Kume

 

It was more a question of Fiat getting cold feet. There had been development problems with the 806, which suffered from steering vibration in early testing. Despite that, Bordino knocked over four seconds off Pete Kreis' 1925 Monza lap record, set in a 2 litre Duesenberg. In addition, the engine was overstressed: it produced 187bhp at 8500rpm(!) and broke, so a second was prepared with lower boost, producing 160bhp at 8000rpm. Although this was slightly lower than the Delage and Talbot, the Fiat was over two hundredweight lighter.

Agnelli wasn't keen on risking Fiat's reputation on an unproven design, so the 806 was entered in the supporting two-heat Monza GP rather than the main race. It again performed well in practice, driven by Bordino, only to blow up once more. The car was returned to Turin, but the experimental department were working on the engine for the Schneider Trophy seaplane: somehow they found the time to build a third engine and it was completed on the morning of the race, which Bordino duly won, taking both 50km heats against negligible opposition. The 806's competition career therefore amounted to just 100km and - although demonstrably faster than even the Delage - it was never seen again.

Benoist won the main 500km race easily in the Delage, again against negligible opposition. Proponents of the Fiat point to its superior race speed at this meeting, but Benoist was never really stretched, winning by about six laps from Morandi's OM: it should also be borne in mind that the Delage had to stop for fuel and tyres - the Fiat ran its two short sprints non-stop, presumably on a light fuel load. The 1.5 litre formula effectively died at the end of that race, the Delages were sold and the Fiat was scrapped. Sic transit gloria mundi ...