Monaco Historic GP

My guess is to put the contact patch of the tire in line with the steering axis. Those wheels had a high positive offset due to their design, the hub is outside the wheel while modern wheels have negative offset that puts the hub in the middle of the wheel.

 

Just a thought but might it have something to do with the crowned roads of the time?

 

The rims have nothing to do with it. Have a look at the tires and how they've changed.

 

While I agree that tyres have changed considerably, whether they had negative or positive camber makes no difference to the tyre ... still generating heat in the edge instead of the middle.

When you think about it the best angle for the tyre is straight up and down like the rear wheels. Why didn't they do that?. I believe the answer is in my previous post. You have to think about the stresses and strains on the front wheels caused by cornering. Postive camber ensures the loads are always in the same direction, whether driving straight or cornering.

Negative camber would cause the bottom of the wheel to be pushed out when going straight and this would change to the bottom of the wheel being pushed in (I'm thinking outside wheel here) during cornering. This constant change in direction of loading would cause early weak (remember wooden spoked wheels, etc.) to fail very quickly.
Pete
ps: It appears that crown of the old roads might be the reason, ie:

 

This also makes sense to me, remember that cars chassis' and beam axles (back then) were pretty weak and flexible.

Pete

 

Thank you all for answers to my question, especially Pete. I'm embarrassed to admit how long this has puzzled me.

Highly crowned roads had always been an unconfirmed suspicion, but I assumed race tracks of the day to be flat and/or banked. The (larger) inner wheel bearing/load sharing makes sense too.

Even given all the positive evidence, I'm still going to keep my Healey set up with a degree (or two) of negative camber; I mean, I went to the trouble to make my own eccentric bushings and all...
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I found the video of the accident

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ycWmREml58w&feature=related

 

Thanks for posting..

Somewhat ironic that the the cameraman was videoing the "live" tv footage on a screen directly in front of them in Casino Square...which just happened to be where the accident happened!!!!