This is a racing car named Old Faithful. She logged over 20,000 racing miles from 1962, when she helped Graham Hill win the Formula 1 World Championship, through 1965, when she finished her career with a team of Italian privateers. That's a long life for any racer, especially one with a highly-tuned 4-cam V8 engine designed to run routinely at 10,000 rpm. Her record of running, winning and generally not falling apart makes her the Volvo station wagon of Formula 1 cars...
Surprisingly, Old Faithful is a BRM (British Racing Motors) product, a P578 designed for the 1.5 liter Formula 1 and racing a first full season in 1962. The choice of a V8 for a normally-aspirated engine of only around 90 cubic inches displacement looked a bit risky at the time; Ferrari had won the Championship the previous year with a V6. The Lucas fuel injected engine was good for 11,000 rpm and sent its 193 hp through a 6-speed Colotti transaxle, eventually replaced with a more reliable BRM-designed 5 speed.
In fact, the hallmark of the P578 was reliability. During the 1962 racing season, Graham Hill's BRM dueled with Jim Clark's fast but relatively fragile Lotus. His BRM finished every race, and won 3 out of the last 4. The result was Hill's first Championship of two, and the only Constructor's Championship for BRM. Racing fans and journalists amazed themselves by using the words "reliable" and "BRM" in the same sentence, because the BRM had been born under a different sign...
...when driver Raymond Mays, who had built the ERA (English Racing Automobile) road racers based on Riley engines before the war, teamed with Peter Berthon to dream up a GP car. Inspired by the prewar Mercedes (gearbox, rear suspension) and Auto Union (front suspension) racers, they apparently decided that if some complexity was good, more was better. For the new postwar GP formula, limiting normally-aspirated engines to 4.5 liters and supercharged ones to 1.5, they decided on a supercharged, 4-cam,1.5 liter V16 which was built like tandem V8s with the cam drives in the middle...
Design started in 1947 and production of parts was outsourced to different firms, with Rolls Royce famously handling the superchargers. This method of production led to breaks in the supply chain, and the stunning complexity of the engine in an era long before electronic engine controls led to broken pistons and connecting rods. When running, the engine could produce up to 600 hp at 12,000 rpm, but its torque band was so narrow and high in the rev range that drivers broke axles, universal joints and transmissions. These issues were never sorted out in the car's Formula 1 career, and it rarely finished any GP races, winning none. BRM's withdrawal in the early part of the 1952 season left Ferrari unopposed with its big, reliable 4.5 liter V12s, and race organizers ran the rest of that season's Grand Prix events, and also the 1953 season, to Formula 2 rules.
When a new Formula 1 was announced for 1954, limiting unsupercharged engines to 2.5 liters, BRM engineers prioritized simplicity over complexity. They weren't alone. In fact, while Mercedes-Benz developed a desmodromic-valve straight 8 and Lancia* a V8, BRM, their English competitor Connaught* and even Ferrari pursued the classic engine architecture of an inline 4 cylinder with twin overhead cams. BRM, however, took this newfound urge to simplify to an extreme, by giving their new P25 only 3 disc brakes. The third brake was mounted at the rear of the new car's rear-mounted transmission, and drivers, who were suspicious of a racing car with only 3 brakes, called it the "ham slicer." The single rear brake reduced unsprung weight, but gave mixed results at stopping the car. Despite this, Jo Bonnier won the Dutch Grand Prix in 1959, a first for BRM.
By 1960, Cooper had shown the future belonged to mid-engined cars by winning the 1959 Championship with their 4 cylinder Climax-powered car for Jack Brabham. BRM followed suit by placing their engine between the driver's seat and the transaxle on their new P48. Drivers liked the handling, but were disappointed to see the 'ham slicer" on the back of the transmission. Eventually, the Series 2 P48 would revert to 4 wheel brakes...but only after Dan Gurney broke his arm when the brakes failed on his BRM at Spa in Belgium.*
The year after the P48, Formula 1 changed to a 1.5 liter limit, and BRM went back to the drawing board, hitting the sweet spot with the 1,200 pound P57 which made do with a Climax 4 while the new V8 was being readied which would turn it into the Old Faithful P578. But the world of Grand Prix racing is a world of "never leave well enough alone", and after Old Faithful's final year at the races in 1965, the FIA issued a new Formula One with a 3 liter limit for 1966.
Complexity came back. Ferrari readied V12s, Jack Brabham an adaptation of the aluminum GM V8 with which he won the first year's title, and Ford financed Cosworth's long-running DFV. Tony Rudd at BRM decided that 16 cylinders was not such a bad idea after all, and came up with the H-16, which was two flat-8s stacked with crankshafts geared together. BRM management had wanted a simpler, V12 design... Power was good but the engine was heavy, so by 1968 a 64-valve version used magnesium castings.
Was it the most complex racing engine ever? With its 2 crankshafts, 8 camshafts, 16 cylinders and 64 valves, it's got to be a contender. It scored one F1 victory, but mounted in the engine bay of a Lotus. BRM management eventually got their V12, and it inspired the engine that powered the French Matra sports racers. The V12 may have been the greatest-sounding engine ever, but that's a story for another day...
Photo Credits:
Top and 3rd from top: Ian Avery-DeWitt
2nd from top: the author
4th: wikimedia
5th: thedrive.com
6th & 7th: wikimedia
8th: hallandhall.com
9th & 10th: wikimedia
*Footnotes:
The Connaught saga is recounted in "Celtic Rainmaker" from 7/24/16, while the Lancia D50 is depicted in "Prancing Elephants", our post for 10-8-16. Finally, Dan Gurney's career, and the effect of that accident in Belgium, is reviewed on 6-20-18 in "Graceful Winners." Many thanks to the Revs Institute in Naples, Florida for letting us have a look at Old Faithful.
*Footnotes:
The Connaught saga is recounted in "Celtic Rainmaker" from 7/24/16, while the Lancia D50 is depicted in "Prancing Elephants", our post for 10-8-16. Finally, Dan Gurney's career, and the effect of that accident in Belgium, is reviewed on 6-20-18 in "Graceful Winners." Many thanks to the Revs Institute in Naples, Florida for letting us have a look at Old Faithful.
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