Most beautiful F1 car contest

[Ciro Pabón]

I tried to resist, but I couldn't. Here you have some Grand Prix cars that shouldn't be forgotten, all made before 1950, so they shouldn't be in this thread if they weren't so beautiful. Please, remember them, in case you have to desing a new car.

Bugatti Type 35, the most successful racing car in history: over 1.000 victories.


Mercedes Grand Prix, 1908: the first car to win a Grand Prix for Mercedes.


O.S.C.A., MT4, 1947, made by the Maserait brothers when they sold their shop. Villoresi won the GP of Napoli with it.


Allard, J2X, 1948. This car inspired Carroll Shelby, who drove it, to build the AC Cobra. First attempt, to my knowledge, to place an american engine in a british chassis, so, the power to weight ratio was amazing. I like it.


Cooper Climax. Do I have to say more? Yeah, yeah, it's post-1950, but who cares?


Ford GT40. It's not even a GP car, but I don't mind. By now, I'm out of bounds...


I should look for an HWM or a Lister, but that's enough.

[timbo]

I already posted F92A, but I also want to post this -
first ground effect car ever, coincidentally car that took life of Bernd Rosemeyer...

[waynes]

stunning

[donskar]

Thanks, Ciro, for posting the photo of the Bugatti. I'm a rabid Ferrari fan, but the Bugatti is a gorgeous car.

SLightly off the subject - I think the 1.5 liter F1s are the most beautiful generation of F1 cars - clean and purposeful, with no extraneous add-ons.

[ben_watkins]

Here's a couple of images I took at the Silverstone Classic.. Beautiful cars


© ben watkins


© ben watkins

[modbaraban]

O.S.C.A., MT4, 1947, made by the Maserait brothers when they sold their shop. Villoresi won the GP of Napoli with it.


............................

I should look for an HWM or a Lister, but that's enough.

I think you did actually! That's a beautiful british racing green Lister on the background isn't it?

Great looking car in perfect colour!

[tarzoon]

For me this is one of the nicest recent cars. Without the extra wings and gizmos.

[yzfr7]

I am between the mp4/14 and /20. The WEST livery is so nice (I don't like the current chrome one).







And what about the early winged cars? Somewhere between the super-clean and the aero-era.

[Carbon]

Beautiful examples, all of them. Perhaps not *beautiful* in the true sense of the word, but nevertheless, quite interesting to look at from any angle, the Ferrari Spazzaneve.

[xpensive]

Finally...love Mauro Forghieri's concept car of 1972, shape of great things to come from Maranello.

[Carbon]

Whoops, not sure what happened to the image of the Spazzaneve, here it is again, in all its strange glory.

For a car built to campaign in the early '70's, I find that there are a few striking similarities with the current breed of F1 cars.



Pic courtesy of www.jacky-ickx-fan.net.

[Carbon]

Whoops, not sure what happened to the image of the Spazzaneve, here it is again, in all its strange glory.

For a car built to campaign in the early '70's, I find that there are a few striking similarities with the current breed of F1 cars.



Pic courtesy of www.jacky-ickx-fan.net.

[modbaraban]

Pic courtesy of http://www.jacky-ickx-fan.net.

That site has anti-hotlinking protection apparently. The pic won't appear until you actually visit the website and see the pic there.


For such cases I use transload function at photobucket.

[xpensive]

What Mauro Forghieri had realized with this design, was the value of a low polar inertia, collecting all heavy compnents within the wheelbase.
At the same time his wind-tunnel studies had shown that the 312PB sportscar had a much higher level of downforce, why his conclusion was the benefit of a wider body.
Doubtful if the good engineer fully understood the concept of ground-effect at the time, but this was certainly a beginning.

From 1974 to 77, until the full-blown venturi-cars took over, Ferrari reaped the benefit of this work with 2 WDCs for Lauda, which very easily could have been four.

[xpensive]

http://www.f1technical.net/f1db/cars/638