Friday's visit to the first day of competition at the Monterey Historic Races yielded some close encounters with old race cars. The silver Lola GT featured above and below was a hit at the London Race Car Show in 1963, but it was a surprise here. It would be a surprise anywhere, as only 3 of the lightweight (under 1,500 lb.) cars were built.
Because the mid-engined Lola GT was powered by Ford's then-new thin-wall V8, it attracted the attention of Ford and also of Shelby American, which started building Cobra roadsters powered by the same engine in 1962, the year the car appeared. Note the large round tail lights; they're from an English Ford Cortina. This particular GT was purchased from Lola by a Shelby staffer over 50 years ago, and he still owned the car when Jay Leno interviewed him last year…
The red car below is a Ford GT40* roadster, one of only 6 roadsters out of the 105 GT40s built betwixt 1964 and 1967. This roadster is also the only GT40 with aluminum panels, rather than steel, in the stressed skin of the chassis. The overall design of the GT40 was inspired by the Lola GT, and Lola designer Eric Broadley went to work on the GT40 program early in the car's development.
Eric Broadley went back to the drawing board after his experience with Ford, and came up with the Lola T-70. The black car below is one of four T70 Mark IIIB cars built for the Canadian American Series for 1967. It was Dan Gurney's car for that series, and was also Ford-powered, in contrast to most T70s, which employed Chevrolet power.
Broadley also developed a coupe version of the T70 to compete in long-distance endurance races like Le Mans. In the US, however, the T70 is mostly remembered for running in the early Can Am races, and represents perhaps the last of the lyrical, intuitively aerodynamic race car forms before the wedge shape took over. Even though the early wedges weren't computer-designed, they looked like they were…
This McLaren Mk 6A, also from 1967, shows the trend to less romantic shapes dictated by concerns for air penetration and downforce. In terms of competition on the track, anyway, Bruce McLaren's baby was clearly not what Lola wanted…
On the endurance racing front, Porsche introduced its 3 liter, flat-eight powered 908 in 1968, the year Ford's GT40 captured the FIA World Championship for Makes. Porsche captured the title with the 908 a year later. Which car was more efficient, the 3 liter 908 or the 5 liter GT40? Well, Porsche used 42 dedicated race cars to clinch the title, using most of the cars only once before rebuilding and / or selling them. Ford had an engine 40% bigger, but used less than 10% as many cars…
Discussions of efficiency seem beside the point when faced with the sheer exuberance of form on Lancia's D24 endurance racer from the 1953-'54 period. On closer examination, though, you realize you're looking at the product of a company run by engineers. There's the fact that the brakes seem invisible at first glance. That's because all four finned drums are inboard-mounted to reduce unsprung weight. The rear drums (discs on the later D25) flanked Lancia's transaxle, a feature adapted from the Aurelia production car.
The various scoops deployed to admit cooling air to the radiator, Weber carburetors, brakes and cockpit are like the rivets in the magnesium alloy body (by Pinin Farina) in that they substitute for surface decoration. The engine was a 3.3 liter, 60 degree aluminum V6 with 4 overhead cams. Power was sufficient to seize 1st, 2nd and 4th place in the Carrera Panamericana against competition from Ferrari, Jaguar and others, and win both the Mille Migila and Targa Florio in 1954.
What it wasn't able to do was avoid red ink on Lancia's ledger. The endurance racing program, along with Lancia's D50 V8 GP racer*, bankrupted the company. Only two original D24s are known to survive; at least one additional car has been built up from scarce drivetrain parts. Drivers in the D24 hall of fame included Juan Manuel Fangio, Alberto Ascari, and Piero Taruffi…
A visit to the pits wouldn't be complete without a Ferrari; this one is a 250GT SWB (short wheelbase) from 1960 to '61 (the '59 had different side windows). The "short" designation tells us the wheelbase is 10 inches less than the previous Tour de France coupe. It's also about an inch shorter than the competing Aston Martin DB4 GT, and 4 inches shorter than the E-type Jaguar that was just around the corner. Chassis engineering was conservative compared with the Lancia, with a live rear axle.
Engineering was fairly conservative on Aston Martin's DB3S, built from 1953 to 1956. Engines were based on the W.O. Bentley-designed Lagonda twin-cam six that powered the DB2, but punched out to 3 liters, at first with 6 spark plugs and later with 12. There were 11 factory-sponsored racers and 20 customer cars, a flotilla compared with Lancia. There were successes in racing on the home front, but success at Le Mans eluded them in the years when Jaguar dominated that race. Pretty, though…
This Delage* GP car would have been a Formula One star in its day (1927) if that line of racing had been called F1 back then. The jewel-like straight 8, dual overhead cam power plant was only 1.5 liters in capacity, but managed up to 170 supercharged horsepower. This car was beautiful in places nobody could see; those cams, the connecting rods and the crankshaft did their work with the help of over 200 roller and ball bearings. The Delage team won the driver's championship and also the manufacturer's title in 1927, using 6 cars. It's always been a rarity but is nearly extinct today, with survivors about as scarce as the Lancia D24.
*Footnote: The Ford GT40s are featured in our posting for Dec. 31, 2017, a visit to the Ford GT collection at the Shelby American Museum in Boulder, CO. For further reading on the Lancia D Series racers, see this blog's archives for "Prancing Elephants" from October 8, 2016. The Delage GP racers, along with the road cars, are featured in "A Car for the Ages" from May 20, 2018.
Photo Credits: All photos are by the author.
Errata: Owing to the presence of the idiotic Autospell feature on this Mac, my note about the Lagonda twin-cam six in the Aston in the first version of this essay was changed without my noticing to "Laguna", which is proof that artificial intelligence may still be a long way off. Apologies…
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