Ferrari and Turbocharging.........

Very stubborn.

Ferrari were definitely not the first with V12's, Enzo got the inspiration from Packard.

Was that really anything to do with Ferrari or just the coachbuilders he used?

No, Alfa Romeo with the 8c2900B did this 20 years before Ferrari even made their first car, as did many others I'm sure.

Wrong, yes he was. His cars were one of the last front engined dinosaurs on the race track. Enzo famously said cars should be pulled by engines not pushed ... or something loosely along those lines.

Agree, but in some cases reluctantly.

Ferrari tried a wave supercharger or something (I've forgotten the actual term) before finally switching to turbos with their F1 cars ... wasted research, but might have come off. So I guess sometimes they do think outside the square but definitely little of it in the earlier days.

We must be careful and not align early (if not all) Ferraris with cutting edge technology, that is most definitely not correct. More correctly would be to align Ferraris with technology that had a good chance of winning on the race track.

Take a close look at the mighty 62 250GTO, nothing at all advanced about it. What made it work was that the combination of components made a very balanced car that worked.

Another comparison, compare Jim's GT40 with his Ferrari prototypes, the Ferraris look ten years earlier in technology. It's amazing that they were competitive at all.

I don't like Italian cars for cutting edge technology, I like them for their connection to my love of car racing ... if I was into technology I'd be a British car nut (think Lotus, McLaren [yep even their earlier Can Am and F1 cars, etc. are far more advanced than the equivalent Ferrari], Cosworth, etc).
Pete

 

Porsche were going into uncharted territory with exhaust-driven turbocharging when they created the (1972?) 917/10. This, combined with the fact that Ferrari has always been reactionary with regard to innovation might explain their moves.

 

"No one has ever heard of the horses pushing the carriage" (or something like that)

 

I have heard of this too, and also "If the carburettor had been invented AFTER fuel injection, we would all be marveling at its lightness and simplicity"...but in regard to push & pull...

Was this in terms of the racing cars, or rather something said about the road cars in response to the Lambo Miura?

Or just a little slap-down of Dr. Ing. Ferdinand Porsche, perhaps?
____

Also, PSk makes many fine points - but my counterpoint remains that Ferrari had far more advanced road and racing cars than we may be willing to give him much credit for today. For example -

What year was the shark-nose F1 car that Phil Hill drove? I would have said circa 1962 and not really put it all that late in the general scheme of things.

Of course I know that the Packard, the Lincoln, and others had big slow V12s long before Enzo had his done. But not 1.5 litre high-revving cars that made an immediate impact on the post-war sports car racing scene.

OK, then also - If I recall correctly, the old Stutz Bearcat had a transaxle way back about WWone, too - but again, I was speaking of the use of it in the GTB4 Berlinetta and Spyder, and then later in the Daytona. The competition of the day doing front engine cars (Maserati, Jaguar, MB, Aston) did not bother with this concept until later, some - never.

The Superleggera; I think this was a case of a collaboration between Ferrari & the coachbuilders; I sincerely doubt that the old man let much of anything happen on his watch without some direct supervision. I will look in the Antoine Prunet book to see if I can find the story.

Finally -

"" I don't like Italian cars for cutting edge technology, I like them for their connection to my love of car racing ... if I was into technology I'd be a British car nut (think Lotus, McLaren [yep even their earlier Can Am and F1 cars, etc. are far more advanced than the equivalent Ferrari], Cosworth, etc).
Pete ""

Well, thats a good enough reason, Pete! But I must admit, you are the FIRST ENTHUSIAST I HAVE EVER KNOWN to say the British were more into technology than the Italians!!!

Now, if you had said Germany, then I would have to concede the point.

James (off to admire the state of the art ASHWOOD FRAMEWORK in my buddy's Morgan)

 

Yes the 166 must have been a shock when it arrived on the car scene back then, but I'm talking about underlying technology. Italian cars have never been at the front here.

Cooper was winning races with the first mid-engined single seater of "this time" in the late 50's. Ferrari wasted many years ...

Agree.

You again forget Alfa Romeo and Lancia. When Alfa Romeo was winning Mille Miglia's BEFORE Ferrari was even created as a company they were using transaxles in a race winning competition GT.

Again you are missing my point, even with the Germans. Germans make well engineered cars BUT NOT cutting edge with the technology. The British usually were the first with ground braking ideas,ie:

Mag wheel - Other than Bugatti the nobbly mag wheel re-awoke the concept. First used on the Vanwall.
Space frame chassis - First true use of it was a British car, probably the Cooper. Ferrari chassis' are more correctly caller ladder frames, though by the time of the prototypes they were true space frames.
Mid-engined car - After Auto Union, Cooper and then Lotus made it a race winner and changed F1 forever.
Monocoque - Heck Ferrari didn't use one until they went to carbon tubs. Before that it was a elaborate stressed space frame with a few rivetted panels. Lotus also sold a road car with a fibreglass monocoque chassis at around the same time as the 250GTO!.
Disc brakes - Jaguar were the first competition car to make this a winner, years before Mercedes and Ferrari. I think the V16 BRM also used disc brakes but that hardly was a winner.
Carbon fibre tub - Brabham and McLaren I think were the leaders here.
Stressed engine - ie. engine acting as part of the chassis. Yes Lancia with the D50 (?) had a semi-stressed engine but it took until the Cosworth v8 (and Lotus) came on the scene for it to become the norm.
Wings - Yep Ferrari were slow here too, not sure who was first but McLaren were early in the development but Colin Chapman ofcourse really embraced the aero of the car with the wing car.
Rising rate suspension - McLaren in late 60's or early 70's.
Active suspension - Lotus.
v10 F1 engine - Ferrari were also the last F1 team to move to this configuration that Renault started. This optimised radiator size and fuel consumption, etc.

Thus the British might make very low quality debateably cr@p cars but often the concepts are advanced. The ultimate car would be created by committee, ie: British with the concept, Germans with the execution and Italians for the passion ... .
Pete

 

OUTSTANDING, Pete!!! I can only hope that some of the younger members are watching this little trip down memory lane.

It is no longer a debate; I agree with the committee concept - except that I cannot imagine putting Enzo, Ferdinand, Colin Chapman (& maybe Dan Gurney) into one room for very long without starting WW3 & 4.

OK, in the spirit of it all, here are some counterpoints:

Mag Wheel: "other than Bugatti". Exactly. He was an Italian, he just built his cars in France.
Space Frame Chassis: really an Airplane thing; but wasnt the 300SLR that Stirling Moss & Dennis Jenkinson drove in the MM made this way?
Carbon Fibre Tub: maybe they only had fiberglass, but you would have to give Jim Hall & the Chapparell team some credit.
Wings: Chapparell again.
Stressed Engine: Bugatti again - remember how the motor mounts of the type 35 actually formed a frame cross member?
Mid Engine Car: OMG - how can we ever forget Dr. Porsche and the AutoUnion? There were also a few Mercedes Benz mid-engine road sports cars (and even a prototype sedan) made in the 1920s.

Point being - there is not very much new under the sun; & I am happy that Enzo Ferrari had the wisdom to be an innovater when he had to, but to be conservative when it suited his purpose better.

PS - One recent Ferrari "innovation" I could bloody well do without is this F1 transmission fad. I drove the Testarossa today as this is my last workday this week before a long holiday weekend, and I thoroughly enjoyed the clink-vroom-doubleclutch-clink-clink a lot better than pushing a button.

My mom used to have a Rambler Ambassador that had push buttons, BTW. 1963. So blame that one on Mitt Romney's dad?

James

 

Let us not forget that Lucas = British, while Weber = Italian.

 

And here I thought that the Prince of Darkness came from Transylvania...

 

True and this is actually wise, as innovative race cars did not always win, sometimes the concept took years to work.

Regarding mid-engined race cars, the Auto-Unions and Porsche's were seen as odd balls, it took Cooper to make it the norm.

Agree and this is actually one of the very few innovations from the Ferrari race team. Are you aware of how it came about? It simply came about because Barnard got pissed with designing gear shift linkages while he was designing the chassis in England and the Italian's were designing the engine, etc. in Italy. Thus he removed the "hard" link from his design effort, it was only afterwards that they started down the "change is faster" route.

Pete

 

The first one who put a wing in a car was a German amateur driver in a Porsche. He was faster than the works Porsche and therefore banned. But must be said that Ferrari was the first one in Formula 1. They were the first ones to put adjustable wings in F1 "a la" Chaparral too.

By the way, regarding the V10 engine. A few years back, maybe in 2001 or 2002, Ferrari (and I suppose that others too) was designing a new V12, because they realized that with the technology available at that time it was more competitive than a V10 again. Sadly the FIA banned V12s to reduce costs.