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Reading all this ("most beautiful F1 car ever made") makes me wonder about, "what happened during the history classes at school?".
It is simply appalling to witness an entire society of new children absolutely oblivious about what happened yesterday. No wonder the youth of today makes so many judgment mistakes... Luckily, some ARE more interested and are eager to learn more, and old pharts here are willing to help spray the lost information.
I am not even going to try to argue that a "wing" car is prettier or uglier than a Mercedes W163 or Bugatti T35 or even an Eagle-Weslake (note the correct spelling of Harry Weslake's name please... no "T").
I am just going to argue this statement by Ecosse:
QUOTE That Lotus from 77 was a crate of sh** then and would be even more so by the eighties.
According to the recent test of the Lotus Collection car by Motorsport, the only thing wrong with the Geoff Aldridge designed "77" was its tires, developed for "another" team (McLaren) and not suited to the particular characteristics of the Lotus. As everyone knows, the "78" did not have such problems after Chapman and JPS convinced Goodyear to make tires more adapted to their car and utterly dominated the F1 field with its inventive Maurice Philippe designed (and NOT Colin Chapman as often claimed) ground-effects technology.
Maurice Philippe had this idea a long time before. While in the employment of Scotsman Reeves Whitson in 1972 in the USA and sub-contracted to the Vel's-Parnelli team, he devised this idea on paper. As I was also an employee of Mr. Whitson and sub-contracted to Cox Hobbies, Maurice and I were good friends, and during a particular dinner one evening, as we were discussing pro-racing slot cars, he told me about this ground-effect idea. He and I translated it onto a pro-racing chassis (see the surviving pictures below) fitted with the latest aerodynamic devices. It did not increase the performance but did not hurt either... the car was on par with the world's King Track record then, which I held. Reynolds's Scale worked against it. Maurice actually drove the car at Speed & Sport on their King track. He was not too bad at it either, driving within 1/10th of what I could do!
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Who was Reeves Whitson? This man was the first to establish a system of licensing model cars by the actual manufacturers. In 1968, a story on Miniature Auto (UK) showed a "whole new line of Manufacturer-Approved clear plastic bodies". Brabham, McLaren, Lotus and others had signed up on to this new idea. It fizzled as the bodies were so-so and the market was collapsing. Whitson moved to the USA and became a friend of people in high places, such as WWII hero General Curtis LeMay, Art Linkletter and especially, the head of the Immigration & Naturalization Service. Maurice Philippe received his permanent residency in the USA the same day I received mine, in a private champagne ceremony in the office of Howard Hazell, INS's Big Guy. Maurice was at the time, the design engineer for the Vel's-Parnelli "Super Team", employing Joe Leonard, Al Unser and Mario Andretti as drivers for their advanced (but not that good) VP Indy cars. Later, Maurice designed the pretty and very effective VP F1, then returned to Lotus to design the 76-77-78 series.
He then devised plans to manufacture advanced licensed slot cars, prototypes of which were built by Bryan Warmack of Team Riggen. Bryan later went to work as a mechanic for Team Surtees and now has his own fabrication business in California. This plan also faltered, and Whitson tried other things: a stupendously beautiful 1/43 scale model of the 1975 Eagle-Offy Indy 500 winner, the patterns of which were built by Lloyd Asbury, the master modeler for the Lancer bodies.
I was personally in charge of the instruction sheets and all graphics. The following gouache was the cover of the press kit when the kit was released to the general public:
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I took this picture during the press conference at the Indy Speedway, and it was published in all the local newspapers and in many auto-racing mags and newspapers. Yes, Tony Hulman was still with us then... The little car was just gorgeous and was to be followed by a whole line of other Indy cars sanctioned by the Speeday and designed in collaboration with the actual manufacturers.
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Whitson's project failed as he refused to delegate authority that would have allowed the project to progress. Today, nearly 30 years later, these gorgeous 1/43rd scale models have few equals in precision in the kit industry. Whitson also had Philippe (Maurice, not me!) design an advance children's pedal car, and this was built by AAR's Phil Remington. A beautiful little alloy tub had a push-push system supposedly superior to that of a rotating bicycle-like device.
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The 3 prototypes built used a smaller version of the 1974 Eagle-Offy which I designed around the tub as well as a Ferrari 312 F1, trying to keep the proportions realistic.
The Eagle bodies were built in fiberglass and the cars were demonstrated in 1975 on front of the Queen Mary during the F1 Grand Prix weekend. Again, the project fizzled because Whitson would not let anyone help him, he HAD to do everything, and his recruits eventually just walked away... Whitson returned to Scotland and died of a heart attack about 10 years ago. Probably the boiled mutton got him...
Regards,
Philippe
It is simply appalling to witness an entire society of new children absolutely oblivious about what happened yesterday. No wonder the youth of today makes so many judgment mistakes... Luckily, some ARE more interested and are eager to learn more, and old pharts here are willing to help spray the lost information.
I am not even going to try to argue that a "wing" car is prettier or uglier than a Mercedes W163 or Bugatti T35 or even an Eagle-Weslake (note the correct spelling of Harry Weslake's name please... no "T").
I am just going to argue this statement by Ecosse:
QUOTE That Lotus from 77 was a crate of sh** then and would be even more so by the eighties.
According to the recent test of the Lotus Collection car by Motorsport, the only thing wrong with the Geoff Aldridge designed "77" was its tires, developed for "another" team (McLaren) and not suited to the particular characteristics of the Lotus. As everyone knows, the "78" did not have such problems after Chapman and JPS convinced Goodyear to make tires more adapted to their car and utterly dominated the F1 field with its inventive Maurice Philippe designed (and NOT Colin Chapman as often claimed) ground-effects technology.
Maurice Philippe had this idea a long time before. While in the employment of Scotsman Reeves Whitson in 1972 in the USA and sub-contracted to the Vel's-Parnelli team, he devised this idea on paper. As I was also an employee of Mr. Whitson and sub-contracted to Cox Hobbies, Maurice and I were good friends, and during a particular dinner one evening, as we were discussing pro-racing slot cars, he told me about this ground-effect idea. He and I translated it onto a pro-racing chassis (see the surviving pictures below) fitted with the latest aerodynamic devices. It did not increase the performance but did not hurt either... the car was on par with the world's King Track record then, which I held. Reynolds's Scale worked against it. Maurice actually drove the car at Speed & Sport on their King track. He was not too bad at it either, driving within 1/10th of what I could do!
Who was Reeves Whitson? This man was the first to establish a system of licensing model cars by the actual manufacturers. In 1968, a story on Miniature Auto (UK) showed a "whole new line of Manufacturer-Approved clear plastic bodies". Brabham, McLaren, Lotus and others had signed up on to this new idea. It fizzled as the bodies were so-so and the market was collapsing. Whitson moved to the USA and became a friend of people in high places, such as WWII hero General Curtis LeMay, Art Linkletter and especially, the head of the Immigration & Naturalization Service. Maurice Philippe received his permanent residency in the USA the same day I received mine, in a private champagne ceremony in the office of Howard Hazell, INS's Big Guy. Maurice was at the time, the design engineer for the Vel's-Parnelli "Super Team", employing Joe Leonard, Al Unser and Mario Andretti as drivers for their advanced (but not that good) VP Indy cars. Later, Maurice designed the pretty and very effective VP F1, then returned to Lotus to design the 76-77-78 series.
He then devised plans to manufacture advanced licensed slot cars, prototypes of which were built by Bryan Warmack of Team Riggen. Bryan later went to work as a mechanic for Team Surtees and now has his own fabrication business in California. This plan also faltered, and Whitson tried other things: a stupendously beautiful 1/43 scale model of the 1975 Eagle-Offy Indy 500 winner, the patterns of which were built by Lloyd Asbury, the master modeler for the Lancer bodies.
I was personally in charge of the instruction sheets and all graphics. The following gouache was the cover of the press kit when the kit was released to the general public:
I took this picture during the press conference at the Indy Speedway, and it was published in all the local newspapers and in many auto-racing mags and newspapers. Yes, Tony Hulman was still with us then... The little car was just gorgeous and was to be followed by a whole line of other Indy cars sanctioned by the Speeday and designed in collaboration with the actual manufacturers.
Whitson's project failed as he refused to delegate authority that would have allowed the project to progress. Today, nearly 30 years later, these gorgeous 1/43rd scale models have few equals in precision in the kit industry. Whitson also had Philippe (Maurice, not me!) design an advance children's pedal car, and this was built by AAR's Phil Remington. A beautiful little alloy tub had a push-push system supposedly superior to that of a rotating bicycle-like device.
The 3 prototypes built used a smaller version of the 1974 Eagle-Offy which I designed around the tub as well as a Ferrari 312 F1, trying to keep the proportions realistic.
The Eagle bodies were built in fiberglass and the cars were demonstrated in 1975 on front of the Queen Mary during the F1 Grand Prix weekend. Again, the project fizzled because Whitson would not let anyone help him, he HAD to do everything, and his recruits eventually just walked away... Whitson returned to Scotland and died of a heart attack about 10 years ago. Probably the boiled mutton got him...
Regards,
Philippe
