The D-type Jaguar had a central monocoque and it was normal aircraft practice by the 50's so a lot of people looked into making monocoques in the 50's. The car would have had the 2.5 litre Climax Godiva V8 attached to a 5 speed pre-selector transaxle.Īpparently the chassis was designed and some progress was made on its construction, the gearboxes were made but the engine was dropped by Climax so the whole project stalled.Ī drawing of the chassis design appeared in one of the motor racing magazines of the time. What is certainly true is that Connaught were going to build a rear engined monocoque car around 1955. is taken? Is that the Klausen run again?Īpparently the Voisin was the first monocoque car to be raced - not sure how true that is (the French always did everything first). Yes, thank you - that is the one! Do you know where the pic. (I'm sure there's much to discuss here, but maybe in other thread.) In fact, I think in all Chaparral only built seven chassis themselves that were actually raced. One aspect of the Chaparrals I find interesting is that the '2Fs' that were so competitive in '67 were actually built on the chassis of the original '2As' from five years before. Something of a technological dichotomy here - my two great automotive passions are the Lotus/Caterham 7 and Chaparral.
(Amongst my local circle I'm an ''expert'', but on TNF I know my place!) ''at the time Chapman was making his so-called monocoque from bits of bent metal, Chaparral were building theirs in molded composites'' but in this company I thought I might get shot down ) I have often, gleefully, told my fellow Lotus enthusiasts (I'm a member of the Lotus 7 Club in GB) that
I was sorely tempted, but in honesty wasn't too sure about making ''first'' claims. In the case of the 1915 Cornelian the target was nearly the same: a small, light car with low frontal area to compensate humble power output and to reduce tyre wear.
The only solution was more homogeneous force distribution: a monocoque. A higher torsional moment had to be caught by a smaller skin. At the same time tyres built up more grip. Lower frontal area meant reduced dimensions. The 1500 cc racers were cigarillos on wheels. But the tubular frame was cheaper, cheaper meaning preferable in this case, easier to repair after an accident. Of course in the (purely fictional) “old monocoques” the force distribution was more homogeneous and hence the torsional stiffness was higher. Then an ingenious workshop, for example Gilco, came and proposed a tubular frame: Such a frame was much easier to build, less expensive and strong enough to deal with the forces coming from the wheels. Imagine that in the thirties and forties for some reason monocoques were standard. The introduction in the sixties of what we call monocoque today was a consequence of the requirements of the 1500 cc formula and enhanced tyre grip. It wasn't until 1964 and introduction of the BRM P261 with stressed-skin engine-mounting horns at the rear that the fully wrap-around stressed-skin monocoque reached Formula 1 - to race against the open-top 'bath-tub monocoque' Lotus 25/33 family (And the BRP), and the internal tube-framed stressed-skin stiffened Ferrari 'Aero' malarkey. BRM then introduced the 360-degree skinned 'full monocque' - or what became known as such - in their 1963 Type 61, but even then that car was a hybrid, in that its stressed-skin fuselage terminated behind the driver, and the engine was then slung in a multi-tubular engine bay. It was impure in that its strength derived from two separate, parallel, D-section fuel-bearing torsion boxes, interlinked by transverse bulkheads and the floor panel.
#MONOCOQUE CAR BODY DESIGN PRINCIPLES PLUS#
The Type 25 BRM in its original 1955-57 form had stressed-skin stiffening permanently fixed to a tubular basic frame, and the 1958-60 Type 25 second series cars had spoon-shaped stressed-skin undertrays stiffening their otherwise all 'spaceframe' chassis.īUT, all of this - plus other obscurities - still left the Lotus 25 to introduce successfully to Formula 1 the pure stressed-skin 'monocoque' form of construction - pure in that no other form of stress-bearing longeron was used to stiffen the completed chassis structure. In an early edition of his wonderful annual 'Racing Car review' DSJ screwed-up by describing the early Gordini as having a monocoque 's dangerous ground. The Cornelian, the Voisin, the Lightweight Special, the Bond, the Trimax are all prior claimants in racing car terms - while the D-Type Jaguar, the Killeen and the MPS and others staked a claim in sports car form. There are obviously many luvverly stressed-skin chassis predecessors to the Lotus 25 but if you apply the 'Formula 1' tag it obviously precludes anything built pre-1948 at the earliest - forgetting all the Formula 'A' versus Formula '1' debate - and it also prohibits inclusion of anything which did not comply with said Formulae.