Thoughts and images on the Ferrari V12

Nathan, who recently reviewed Observations on Ferrari 1946 - 1966 in Prancing Horse, suggested, insisted really, I post these images from the book here on the Vintage forum.
If you're interested in seeing more go to: www.VelocityGroup.net

 

While I work on solving the image problem to make the text readable, I thought a photo or two from the book might be fun.

The shots presented were taken with a 1964 Nikon F, using a hand held light meter. The film was 50 asa Fuji Velvia: very high contrast, very tricky, but great color saturation.

As part of my experiment to achieve image clarity, this is another format.

Perhaps someone recognizes this car.

 

Here is another.

 

Ok, these are PDFs of the above pages produced straight out of the original galley for the book.

Now these are lower res than the 83Meg per page press plate PDFs, so the FC servers don't have a problem, but the text should be quite readable.

If you're unfamiliar with reading a PDF in this forum: Just tap or click the PDF link, it will download to the browser bar below, tap or click the download and it will open a new tab with the image for viewing.

 

In Nathan Beehl's reviews appearing in #17 Automobilia and The Prancing Horse he states: " …All of this is presented with unique photographs, as well as detailed charts. and technical diagrams…"

On the Colombo V12 spread page 36 & 37 we showed one of the 'technical diagrams'.
This is a new illustration system developed to bring forth visual explanation of the internal mechanical elements of the engines, transmissions and suspensions in a method that gives depth and perspective.

In this and the next post I thought we would present an example of the 'detailed charts'.

The charts come in two flavors in Observations, one is the racing season chart that tracks the activity across an F1 or Sports World Sports Car season. Placing challenge, achievement and victory in perspective.

The other is the annualized model charts. These charts visually address the improvisation and unusual economy of scale attained in Maranello's production of V12s, as expressed in the passage from the beginning of the chapter: Why a V12?;

"…In the field of internal combustion engines there are few individuals so personally responsible for advancing its potentials. Sound overstated? Well let's see, in 1956 his company was manufacturing seven different engines, in nine variations, by six designers, all under his none too subtle direction. So apparently his company's study of specific horsepower development and realization of these concepts in numerous configurations are legion…"

At the beginning of the Observations project I put together two wall size charts, maybe 24" X 48", to put the above statement in perspective and detail.

Here we will examine two sections. We start with the evolution of the Colombo V12 as it began to define road cars as a viable income option for the company.

The second chart is the interesting evolution of the Lampredi long block, as it came forth on its way to the full 4.5 liter F1 rules engine. Pointing out its ancillary impact.

 

These two graphics are examples of the racing season charts that track the activity across an F1 season, 1951, and World Sports Car Championship season, 1962. Placing the firm's challenges, achievements and victories in context.