Pre-War Classics – Page 3 – Autoprova

The 1924 Alfa Romeo P2 Grand Prix Engine: Vittorio Jano’s brainchild…

May 5, 2018Posted in Automobilia, Automotive drawings and art, Pre-War ClassicsLeave a comment

Dear reader, we now take you back to the twenties. To the days where engines counted most in a racing car. Aerodynamics and chassis design, tyres and brakes where timidly starting to develop, the focus was on the engine. A true genius designed it for Alfa Romeo. His name was Vittorio Jano.

Actually, he was born as Viktor János in San Giorgio Canavese, in Piedmont, son of Hungarian immigrants, who settled there several years earlier. He began at the car and truck company Società Torinese Automobili Rapid owned by G.B. Ceirano. In 1911 he moved to Fiat under Luigi Bazzi. He went with Bazzi to Alfa Romeo in 1923 to replace Giuseppe Merosi as chief engineer.

There is also a truly wondrous story to tell about the designers of Fiat and their engineers in the period between the two world wars, and it will be subject of a later series where we will present drawn portraits of the men and women who marked our automotive history.

Here one sees the carburettor side of the engine, its architecture being an example for all Alfa engines to follow, right until this day… On both drawings, some watercolor was added.

His first design with Alfa Romeo was the 8-cylinder in-line mounted P2 Grand Prix car, which won Alfa Romeo the inaugural world championship for Grand Prix cars in 1925. But he was going to do much, much more for Alfa. In 1932, he produced the sensational P3 model which later was raced with great success by Enzo Ferrari when he began Scuderia Ferrari in 1933. We will also bring a special about this marvelous engine.

Jano also definitely established Alfa’s engine architecture, and indeed made Alfa technically what is Alfa all about. For the Alfa series production cars, Jano developed a series of small-to-medium-displacement 4-, 6-, and 8-cylinder inline power plants based on the P2 unit that established the classic architecture of Alfa engines, with light alloy construction, hemispherical combustion chambers, centrally located plugs, two rows of overhead valves per cylinder bank and dual overhead cams…

Indeed, this straight 8 engine is the architectural forerunner of what a classic Alfa engine is right until this day.

This 1,987 cc engine had Twin Roots Superchargers and 2 Memini carburettors, developed 140 bhp (104 kW) @ 5500 rpm in 1924, and 155 bhp (115 kW) a year later. As the P2 did only weigh 614 kg, it was fast enough to win 14 grand prix until 1930, and embodied together with the Bugatti 35 the most iconic grand prix cars in the twenties.

Its designer Vittorio Jano would in 1937 move to Lancia, and later to Ferrari, where he designed the V6 and V8 engines, which are still a technical basis for the Ferrari’s today…

Hans Knol ten Bensel

The formidable V16 Auto Union Type C engine…

May 2, 2018Posted in Automobilia, Automotive drawings and art, Classic and Vintage Cars, Pre-War ClassicsLeave a comment

Without any doubt, the powerful rear engine Auto Unions were ahead of their time. Their sheer “Leistung” or power was absolutely legendary. Just tires couldn’t cope, and the sheer chassis dynamics and even more importantly aerodynamics were not fully understood at the time. So the cars had no downforce at racing speeds, and the narrow tires with their still softer construction and not so adhesive compounds did not help.

The V16 engine of this Type C was a Porsche design, and started off in the type A with a displacement of 4360 cc. But it was originally meant to be a 6 litre engine, and this it was in the Type C. The two cylinder banks were angled at 45 degrees, and one central camshaft operated all the 32 valves. That is why the engine has this typical look of 16 pushrods in their gleaming chromed shafts connected with the exhaust valves, while the intake valves were actuated by the camshaft through rocker arms. So we see three valve covers on this beautiful engine.

The engine was laid out to develop massive low end torque, and for a racing engine, it revved quite low, as the rev counter clearly tells.

All this torque, a hefty 853 Nm being available at 2500 rpm, was very difficult to handle for the narrow rear wheel tires, and a limited slip differential was badly needed to stop the inner wheel in narrow corners from spinning fiercely through under full throttle, even in the dry!

The impressive two-stage Roots compressor at the back of the engine, fed by a battery of two carburetors…

Maximum power ranged from 485 to 520 PS or 357-382 kW during the racing seasons, and whether the race was to be long or short. It was achieved at – at least for a racing engine –a very lowish 5000 rpm. A two stage roots compressor was used, with 0,95 bar pressure.

One last item, which one tends to forget when talking about the sheer performance of this engines, is that the 200 L tank did not contain ordinary fuel. A (secret) mixture using amongst others ethanol and methanol was used. This did allow higher combustion chamber pressures and temperatures, without problems of knocking or lack of cooling. One needs to flush the system after races because the mixture is corrosive.

In our next edition, we will go for the equally stunning Alfa Romeo P2 straight 8 compressor engine…

We just let you look here at our drawings!

Hans Knol ten Bensel

A new series on Car Museums and Classic Heritage Centers…

April 23, 2018Posted in Automobilia, Classic and Vintage Cars, History in photos, Pre-War ClassicsLeave a comment

Soon we will start here with a new series on the heritage activities of car manufacturers, as the interest in preserving their heritage in historic sites, buildings and cars is ever growing. The same can be said for the increasing love and interest for vintage and classic cars by the greater public, and therefore a comprehensive series on the subject is long overdue.

Besides the plethora of museums, there are also the services which manufacturers with a keen interest in their mobile heritage are offering to their customers, in the form of Classic Cars Service Centers.

We will first start off with two main German pioneers in the latter concept, Daimler and BMW. But of course there is more to come, just think of Porsche, and not to forget the British museums and heritage centers

and their activities like the Land Rover Series I Reborn programme executed in their Classic Works.Indeed, there is Jaguar Land Rover Classic… And a lot more.

Just stay posted!

Hans Knol ten Bensel

A 1937 Škoda steals the jury’s hearts at the Zoute Concours d’Elégance®

October 19, 2017Posted in Automobilia, History in photos, Pre-War Classics, prototypesLeave a comment

We promised you, dear reader, that we would come back to you with more reports about the delightful 2017 edition of the Zoute Grand Prix®.

The cars presented at the Zoute Concours d’Elégance® certainly turned heads, and there was one little gem, brought from the Škoda Museum, a 1937 Škoda Popular “Monte Carlo”. A rare car indeed, lovingly restored to former glory by the craftsmen of the museum, as engineer Michal Velebný explained us. We show him here with the car in the following two films, and some photos, and treat you to an interesting story…

Hans Knol ten Bensel

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