Deutsch Bonnet, DB and CD: The Path of Least Resistance

The firm Deutsch Bonnet was formed in 1938 by Charles Deutsch and René Bonnet to build race cars at the location occupied by the Deutsch family coachbuilding firm, which Bonnet had bought in 1932. The first cars were based on Citroen power plants, and had some racing success before war ended all that. After the war the partners built a few more Citroen-based cars, but limited availability of engines prompted them to switch to Panhard power trains.  Because this was the postwar Panhard Dyna X, front-wheel drive went along with it.  By 1950 the firm (now known simply as DB) exhibited  a handsome cabriolet at the Paris Show. The smooth forms by Carrosserie Antem cover a horizontally-opposed twin cylinder air-cooled engine with four-speed transaxle in a special backbone chassis.

By 1952 DB had won its class at the Mille Miglia, and celebrated by releasing a Mille Miles model, a steel-bodied coupe designed and built by Frua in Italy.  The race car above shares its grillle design with Panhard's production cars, while the version below features a simple air intake and functional porthole fender vents.

By the time DB introduced the HBR-5 coupe below in 1954, all their production car bodies were fiberglass and engine displacement was up to 850cc. This was their most popular model, with several hundred produced; total production of DB cars has been estimated at over 900.  Road & Track tested a similar car in 1957, heaping praise on the roomy, well-furnished interior, while pondering features like the transparent orange plastic sunroof (non-retractable), the inscrutable controls for heater, windshield washer and hood release, and the even stranger cable-operated lateral floor shift, in which first is back and to the left, 2nd is straight across to the right, 3rd back to neutral, forward and then left, and 4th straight across again to the right. This was changed to a more conventional pattern after 1957, and at some point the tidy little coupe traded its retractable headlights for the covered units shown below.

Road & Track recorded a zero to 60 time of 21.3 seconds while noting that a French journal managed it 3 seconds quicker with a slightly lighter DB.  While the car was not a rocket ship, R & T noted the DB might be fast enough to take home a Class H Production trophy, and do it in style. The price in San Francisco that year was $3,850.  For perspective, the Porsche 1600 coupe the magazine tested that same year had a list price of $3,790. 

The streamlined HBR-5 Le Mans barquette shown above was probably quicker and certainly faster; it resides today in the United States. The same pursuit of the Index of Performance at Le Mans that produced this streamlined open car in the late Fifties led aerodynamicist Charles Deutsch to seek the lowest possible drag coefficient in his designs: C.D. chasing a lower Cd, as it were...  

Seeking the path of least resistance was important because the firm limited itself to Panhard's twin-cylinder; in Class H this was 850cc. The slippery barquette design shown above appeared in 1959, and won the Index of Performance at Le Mans in 1960 and '61. The race organizers calculated the Index by comparing a car's average speed during the race with its engine capacity. The Index allowed French sports cars powered by tiny production-based engines—that is, all of them after the disappearance of Talbot-Lago* and Gordini*—to bask in their own winner's circle until the late Sixties when Alpine Renault and Matra would seek an overall win with V8s and V12s.  The blue spider in the foreground, like the black Lotus Eleven in the background, represented a kind of grand finale for the aerodynamics of front-engined road racers. To reduce their air resistance and frontal area further, and to improve their physics, the next step was the mid-engined car.  René Bonnet wanted to make that move; Charles Deutsch preferred to chase the ideal Cd by making low-drag closed coupes with front-mounted Panhard power trains. Note the metallic blue coupe above our DB spider, also numbered 46, and hold that thought for a moment... Deutsch and Bonnet dissolved their partnership in 1961, after Bonnet had signed a contract with Renault. Deutsch continued to coax maximum performance from Panhards, releasing the CD Dyna coupe, a version of which finished 16th at Le Mans in 1962 with a 702cc engine.  Following it in 17th place was a mid-engined René Bonnet Djet coupe like the metallic blue one above, with a Djet 2 spider in 18th. The mid-engined revolution was not complete, and hadn't yet convinced Charles Deutsch...

After running a DKW-engined car without success in 1963 (when a Bonnet Aerodjet finished 11th) Deutsch had one more try, building two supercharged, 850cc CD Panhard LM64 coupes. Chassis design was similar to the production CD coupes but with coil spring front suspension and 5-speed ZF transaxles. The long-tailed, flush-windowed body with its stabilizing fins offered lower air resistance than either the production coupe or the previous open racers, but both cars retired with mechanical maladies…

Remember that other #46 parked above DB's #46 racer?  René Bonnet designed his mid-engined Djet around Renault engines in 1962, and finally achieved his idea of a dual-purpose car for racing and touring by mating the 1,100cc motor with a transmission from the Renault Estafette, a front-wheel drive van.  The #46 coupe raced at the 1962 Le Mans and shown below, used a special engine with dual overhead cams on the Renault block. What Jean Redelé, who had just introduced the future rally champ Alpine Renault A110 the previous year, thought of Bonnet's competing agreement with Renault has not been recorded, at least not in English...        

The mid-engined Djet (Bonnet added the "D" so the French would pronounce "jet" the English way) never attained the rally and racing success of the rear-engined Alpine A110, but caught the eye of aerospace concern Matra, which partnered with René Bonnet's firm after he had sold almost 200 Djets between 1962 and '64. These Djets are sometimes considered the first mid-engined production cars, though 66 cars a year is pretty limited production.  Matra Djets sold better, with nearly 1,500 produced between 1965 and '68.  The cars never had the level of development Alpine gave the competing A110, which remained in production until 1977.  Instead, Matra sought a wider public and sold over six times as many of their M530, a 2 + 2 with mid-mounted Ford Taunus V4 power and avant-garde fiberglass bodywork. That car, however, was not a project involving René Bonnet, who left the car business and died in a road accident in 1983.

Charles Deutsch, finally convinced to take the mid-engined route, designed a sports prototype based upon the then-new single overhead cam Peugeot 204 engine for the 1966 Le Mans. The compact 1.1 liter inline four parked behind the smoothly rounded cabin necessitated a search for low drag, as had the tiny Panhards. The body design, by aerodynamicists Lucien Romano and Robert Choulet, must have pleased Deutsch because it brought the Cd down to an astonishing 0.13.  Three CD Peugeot SP66 coupes were built with adaptable short tails and elongated, finned tails (shown above and below), and these could be easily changed to adapt to track conditions. The cars dropped out from the '66 and '67 runnings of Le Mans with clutch and other maladies, but one SP66 took 2nd in class at the '66 Magny-Cours race, and 3rd in class at the '67 Reims 12 Hours.  Charles Deutsch left his role as car designer in 1967 to take a job as director of the Le Mans 24 Hours, and also served for a time as Minister of Transport.  Aerodynamicist Robert Choulet moved into the era of big-time French road racers with his design for the radically streamlined, similarly finned Matra MS640 coupe in 1969, but the saga of the big V12 Matras is best saved for telling another day...

*Footnote:  The history of the Gordini sports racers and GP cars is surveyed in our post from March 27, 2016, "The Etceterini Files Part 6----Gordini: French Connection, Chicago Subplot." 

*Postscript:  Talbot-Lago cars were finally given a retrospective, with a trove of previously unpublished photos, in "Talbot-Lago:  Darracq by Another Name", in these posts for May 22, 2020.  And we finally had a look at the Matra saga in "Forgotten Classic: Matra---Maybe It Was Rocket Science", posted on December 31, 2021.

Photo Credits:
Top: classiccarcatalogue.com
2nd: panhard-racing-team.fr

3rd & 4th:  bonhams.com

5th thru 8th:  wikimedia.org 
9th & 10th:  en.wheelsage.org 
11th:  petites-observations-automobiles.com 
12th:  wikimedia.org
Bottom:  FIVA (Fédération Internationale des Véhicules Anciens)

1953-54 Ferrari 500 Mondial: Named After a World-Beater

For those whose exposure to Ferraris has mostly been to the supercars of, say, the last quarter century, it may come as a surprise that when Enzo Ferrari opened his now-legendary factory in 1947, all its products were powered by engines that were small by American standards, and modest even by the austere standards of shell-shocked, postwar Europe. Especially considering that all the first Ferraris were twelve-cylinder cars with eye-watering prices, it's instructive to reflect upon the fact that those Type 125S sports cars and the early supercharged GP cars were just under 1.5 liters in displacement...about 90 cubic inches.  The Colombo-designed V12 was soon enlarged for the model 159 (1.9 liters) and the famous Touring-bodied Type 166 barchetta, in which Luigi Chinetti* won Le Mans in 1949. The 166 was a 2 liter V12; by 1951 the Colombo engines had been enlarged to 2.5 liters and that 212 series was joined by a Lampredi-designed 340, another V12 of 4.1 liters.  Needless to say, it was even more expensive than the cars with the smaller Colombo engines.  

Soon enough, however, Ferrari had revisited his interest in smaller-engined sports racers,  partly because the Grand Prix raciing series was being run with Formula 2 cars limited to 2 liters.  This development had happened after Alfa Romeo dropped out of Formula 1, and the vaunted BRMs had failed to provide any competition to Ferrari's V12s. Alberto Ascari won the Driver's Championship in 1952 and 1953 with a Ferrari 500 single seater, powered by a 4-cylinder engine designed by Lampredi.  The lighweight engine had potential for endurance racing, so Ferrari released the 500 Mondial sports racer shown above, powered by the Lampredi four.  Note that the red car's form is closely related to the larger 340 roadsters also designed by Pinin Farina.  Soon afterward, there were a couple of 500 Mondial berlinettas, which followed the lines of PF's larger Ferrari competition coupes... 

Unlike the twin-cam fours from Alfa Romeo and OSCA, the new Ferrari design featured the head in unit with the block. It was a reliable and powerful enough engine that in the 500 Mondial's first race at the 12 Hours of Casablanca in December 1953, Ascari and Villoresi took 1st in class and 2nd overall, behind a  Ferrari 375 with over twice the power.  You may have figured out by now that Ferrari designated these early cars after the displacements of their individual cylinders.  You had to know a 500 was a 4 cylinder to realize it was less than half the displacement of a 375, which was a V12.  Or look under the hood...

Ferrari tried all kinds of engine configurations in the Fifties; so many in fact that it seemed he must be paying no attention to tooling costs.  In addition to the 2 liter Mondial four, he revived the trusty 2 liter V12 the same year in the 166MM53.  The 166 coupe below shows how closely Pinin Farina followed the design themes he established in his bigger coupes. There were also 750 Monza 3 liter fours, and by 1955 there were inline sixes raced at Le Mans which were based on the inline fours. Some have suggested the Ferrari fours were inspired by the Offenhousers the Ferrari team had seen during some runs at Indianapolis.  At Le Mans, there had been the success of the Jaguar inline sixes for Ferrari to ponder. 

In addition to the PF-bodied Mondial coupes, there was also a 625 Targa Florio coupe bodied by Vignale*. This was a 2.5 liter inline four, and a one-off, though it followed the designer Michelotti's formula of alloy panels tightly wrapped around the chassis and wheels, with short overhangs front and rear. That car is shown below. Along with the two PF Mondial coupes and a 750 Monza rebodied for Monteverdi, it's part of a tiny handful of four-cylinder Ferraris with berlinetta bodywork.  Early in the Sixties, there would be the ASA* coupe with 4 cylinder engine based on the Colombo V12, but neither the chassis nor the enigne for that car was built by Ferrari...

After the success of the original PF-bodied Mondials, Ferrari released a lower and sleeker Scaglietti-bodied version in 1955.  This second series car featured covered headlights and about 10 more horsepower than the Series 1. The blue example below was owned for decades by a Navy officer who found it at the back of an American Motors dealer and lovingly restored it himself. Back in the late 50s and early 60s, old race cars didn't seem especially saleable, especially oddball Ferraris that had 4 cylinders instead of the famed V12.

This car was recently sold, and taken for a joy ride by its new owners.  It's one of less than  three dozen of the four-cylinder Mondial Ferraris, and a reminder of a fertile period in race car design.

*Footnote:  Luigi Chinetti's Manhattan Ferrari dealership, and the very first Ferrari sold in the United States, are depicted in "Lost Roadside Attraction: Luigi Chinetti Motors" in these post archives for May 6, 2018. The history of the ASA is told in "The Etceterini Files Part 3: ASA, the Ferrarina" from Feb. 2, 2016, and a Vignale-bodied Corvette along with Vignale-bodied Ferrari 212 were shown in "The Italian Jobs Part 2" from Feb. 27,2016.

Photo Credits:

Top & bottom:  wikimedia

2nd & 3rd:  the author

4th thru 6th:   en.wheelsage.org

7th:  youtube.com

The French Line Part 3: Henri Chapron——Standing Time's Tests

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The Etceterini Files Part 22: De Sanctis---Powered by Fiat, Lancia or Ford

Many vintage racing fans (or racing fans of a certain vintage) might have glanced at the car pictured in black and white below and assumed it was a Dino 206 SP.  This would not have been a bad guess, as the car was bodied by Piero Drogo's Carrozzeria Sports Cars not long after they bodied a small series of the road racing Dino 206 SP for Ferrari.  It is in fact a De Sanctis Sport 1000 Prototype, and unfortunately the only one with this sleek berlinetta shell because it was a rebody of an SP1000 spider which had been crashed.  But what, exactly, is a De Sanctis?

                                             

Gino De Sanctis was one of many mechanics and would-be engineers who migrated to Italy's big cities from small towns to be part of the automotive revolution in the first decades of the century. Instead of going to Turin or Milan, however, he walked to Rome from the Abruzzo region, got a job in a garage, and was soon racing his own Fiat Balilla during that car's heyday in the years between the big wars.  In the years after WWII he was running a Fiat dealership with his son Lucio, an engineer, and making enough of a success of it that father and son were able to get involved with racing cars again.  The De Sanctis racers may have been late to the postwar etceterini party, but over a decade of racing on Europe's road courses they achieved success by combining clever engineering with meticulous preparation. Their cars first appeared in 1958, as Formula Junior, an idea for a low-cost racing series hatched by Count Johnny Lurani, had a successful launch. Formula Junior required the use of production road car engines with modifications strictly limited, and a minimum car weight of 400 kg for 1,100 cc engines and 360 kg for 1,000 cc.  Naturally enough, most of the successful early Formula Junior racers were front-engined and based on Fiat 1,100 inline fours, like the Stanguellini.* This wasn't, however, the format that appealed to engineer Lucio De Sanctis...

First of all, De Sanctis placed the engine directly behind the driver and in front of the transmission, while the radiator was at the front…a format similar to the Coopers which had scored some wins in Formula 2 and even Formula 1. The chassis was a tubular space frame, with independent control-arm front suspension by coil springs, and swing axles with a transverse leaf spring at the rear. Engines were initially Fiat 1100 units, and transaxles  were VW units modified by Colotti.  

Later in the same year De Sanctis had lowered the profile of the car in search of better aerodynamics; an example of this design is shown below. De Sanctis cars achieved early success in Formula Junior, and to stay competitive the father and son team soon enough went to fully independent rear suspension and 1,100 cc versions of the English Ford 105E.

During the early 1960s De Sanctis also produced the mid-engined 2-seater Sport 1000 in a small series. These also used Ford power under sleek aerodymanic shells.  The three examples shown below, all built in 1964, show the detail differences common on hand-built road racers... 

The red car above, for example, has a larger air intake and covered headlights, while the one below has a smaller intake mirroring Lotus practice, and hidden headlights. By this time De Sanctis chassis design had moved closer to British designs which were then ascendant in Formula Junior and sports cars, especially those of Brabham.

According to the late Jonathan Williams, who raced Formula 2 and 3 cars as well as sports racers for De Sanctis and later raced for Ferrari and Serenissima*, these sports cars were less hardy and trouble-free than the single-seaters. The yellow car below certainly looks effective, though, recalling the Lotus 23 in its spare, pared-down aerodynamic shell.  It's still in use as a vintage racer...

Meanwhile, Formula Junior was evolving along with Formula 1. During the early years of the 1.5 liter Formula 1, Formula Junior effectively replaced Formula 2. In 1964 though, the race organizers split Formula Junior into a new Formula 3 based on production engines of no more than 1,000 cc, and a revived Formula 2 which allowed limited-production racing engines also limited to 1,000 cc. The Formula Junior De Sanctis won the Italian championship in 1963 in the hands of Giacomo Russo, using Ford power. In 1964 the improved design above appeared, and the next year a similarly sleek, minamalist design was tried with Lancia power.  Russo's drives attracted the attention of Jonathan Williams, and by 1966 he was driving for De Sanctis, in chassis like the one below.  Note the tight space for the pilot ahead of the canted engine...

In his entertaining memoir about racing during this period, Williams reports that the Cosworth engines delivered for use in his F2 cars were stripped down by the De Sanctis crew before being run, rebuilt and re-balanced with attention to reducing friction and improving oil flow to the bearings, with a resulting power increase of nearly 10 percent. Williams won seven F2 races with De Sanctis in 1966, including Monza, Imola, Mugello, and his favorite race at Lake Garda as well as a 2nd place at Villa Real. The aluminum bodies for the cars were built by the Filaccione brothers.  Williams reports this was a happy time not only for the De Sanctis team, but for living and working in Italy, commenting that he could walk to work and see nothing but beautiful townscape in the years before spray-painted graffiti, and when Italian-style long lunches and late dinners were more a requirement than an optional extra...

In the years since the De Sanctis team reached its peak performance, other etceterini, mostly ones with more exotic engines and special bodywork by the likes of Zagato, or Frua, have pushed their cars out of the spotlight in the eyes of collectors.  This phenomenon, however, may have the advantage of making the cars a bit more accessible to vintage racers who can find them.  In March 2016 a 1959 De Sanctis Formula Junior, the third chassis built*, sold at auction for just over $43,000.  A month earlier, Sotheby's had estimated the value of their 1959 Stanguellini Junior at $90,000 to $120,000.  It was, perhaps, a case of fame being valued over engineering...

*Footnote:  The Serenissima, a car even rarer than the undeservedly obscure De Sanctis, was profiled in these posts on March 20, 2019, in "Forgotten Classic: Serenissima —The Winged Lion is the Rarest Beast of All."  Stanguellini was featured in "Chasing a Mirage:  The Last Stanguellini", posted three years earlier on March 21, 2016.

*Postscript + Errata:  That 1959 car may have been the 3rd chassis built that year, but not the 3rd chassis overall.  Recently a front-engined De Sanctis from 1958 showed up for sale, and was claimed to be the 5th chassis built.  So there could be several front-engined De Sanctii out there, from the short period before mid-engine location became the rule at the firm.

Photo Credits:

Top:                  targapedia.com, sourced from the Antonio Garufi Archives

2nd:                  pinterest.dk

3rd:                   altroquotidiano.it

4th:                   i.wheelsage.org

5th:                   woiweb.com (WOI Encyclopedia Italiana)

6th:                   ritzsite.nl

7th:                   woiweb.com (WOI Encyclopedia Italiana)

8th:                   pinterest.com

9th:                   youtube.com

10th thru 12th:  www.f3history.co.uk