19/01/2011
FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
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The FIA has announced a new engine formula from 2013, and these are going to be little bitty engines with turbochargers. I cannot say that the prospect thrilled me when I first heard of the proposal, but I am prepared to give the FIA the benefit of the doubt.
Most of us are aware of the FIA only when something goes wrong, or we think it has. Under Max Mosley, the FIA worked with manufacturers to improve car safety and it achieved a lot. Renault was the first company to score a five star N-CAP rating across its entire range and that galvanised other makers. For years Volvo had traded on safety and I thought that its greatest contribution was putting its name on the boot, warning you that the car in front was driven by a Volvo driver.
The FIA is the blanket organisation and it means the RAC in Britain, the AAA in the States, and so on. That translates into knowledge and experience, roadside assistance organisations accumulate a lot of data. The FIA knows things we do not and among them are future developments.
Fiat has announced a variant of the 500 with a twin-cylinder 875cc turbo engine which out-performs the 1400cc engine in the Fiat Punto in every department. It has more power, more torque, better economy and lower emissions. It is a marvel.
I never thought I would see a two-cylinder engine in a mainstream car ever again, but then I never thought I would see a diesel car win at Le Mans. Granted, the organisers framed the rules to encourage diesels, but Audi still had to run for 24 hours at racing speed. Audi's record at Le Mans is one of the truly great achievements of motor racing history.
Incidentally, a consultant to Audi is Caterpillar. Yup, the people who make those huge yellow tractors and earth-movers. At first sight it seems an unlikely partnership until you consider that Caterpillar's expertise in diesel power must be second to none.
The secret behind both Fiat's twin and Audi's success at Le Mans is the turbocharger. In 1985, Gordon Murray, then chief designer at Brabham, said that he saw no future for turbochargers. Gordon went on to design the McLaren F1, which is normally aspirated and is still, in my view, the ultimate motor car.
At the time that Gordon expressed his opinion manufacturers were slapping on turbos (and flash decals) to make performance versions of mundane saloons. Thus we got the MG Montego Turbo, which was actually dangerous. I once met the guy who was charged with trying to make it work, after it had gone on sale.
Saab used turbochargers in the most sensible way, to provide mid-range muscle for overtaking. The 0-60 time, beloved by manufacturers and road testers, is a nonsense when it comes to road cars.
Most of the time when we move from a standing start is either when we move away from hour homes or at traffic lights. Where are most traffic lights? They are in towns where you cannot do 60 mph, except in Naples.
Going from north to south in Italy: in Milan, traffic lights are to be obeyed. In Rome, they are advisory. In Naples, they are illuminations.
You can anyway only show off the muscle under the bonnet if you are at the head of the queue, otherwise you are slower than the slowest person in front.
I have done road tests and 0-60 is a nightmare, you have to replicate what some works driver has done or else you are a wimp. The trouble is, that to do it, you do things that you would not do with a car that you have actually bought.
Adding a turbocharger was a short-term solution; of much more significance was the growing use of computer-controlled machine tools. These achieved tolerances previously confined to makers such as Rolls-Royce.
In Formula One, it means that a team can make two identical cars and that gave rise to the notion that a driver's greatest rival was his team-mate. Nobody doubted that, in 1957, Fangio got the best Maserati 250F, Behra got the second best, and so on.
Such machinery has also allowed the economical construction of engines with double overhead camshafts and four valves per cylinder. Before long cars bore badges boasting how many valves they had. I cannot imagine it meant much to most people, but 16V became a treasured emblem.
The configuration had been known to be the ideal since the early days of motoring. In the postwar era, Borgward made a small number of such engines. Borgward's competition programme was sporadic, but when fitted to a Cooper, they were formidable, in Formula Two especially when Stirling Moss was at the wheel.
Coventry Climax made a handful of four-valve variants of its 1500cc V8 F1 engines, but the significant designs were the Cosworth DFV and FVA. Cosworth became a consultant to the motor industry. The Ford Sierra RS Cosworth is an example, what it less well-known is that Cosworth designed the mid-range engines which transformed Vauxhall/Opel.
Hand in glove with improvements in manufacturing methods came fuel injection for all. Volkswagen had been so proud of using it on a small car in 1976 that it was incorporated into the name of the GTI. Before long, fuel injection became a given.
Among the things that electronic fuel injection is able to do is to squirt the precise dose to the engine for every individual rpm, accelerating or decelerating, under load or not. Systems can even design the shape of the fuel molecule.
The microchip allowed Bosch to develop electronic ABS and, by basically reversing the process, traction control. Bosch and other subcontractors, Siemens springs to mind, deserves much more credit than usually it receives because car manufacturers tend to take the glory, not their suppliers.
Turbocharging has transformed the old oil burning clunker, yesterday's diesel, into a smooth operator with so much torque that some cars could be used to uproot tree stumps. Many road testers now reckon that the turbo-diesel engine is the first choice in a given range, and we speak of Alfa Romeo, BMW and Jaguar, companies you would not associate with the noisy thumpers of not so long ago.
Car manufacturers are under pressure on many fronts, not least from the green lobby. Hollywood stars showed how caring they are by driving Toyota Prius hybrids. Now the whoosh from Sunset Boulevard is that the Prius is being ditched in favour of electric cars because they are sooo eco-friendly, except they are not.
It is a fact that 85 per-cent of a car's carbon footprint is made before it leaves the showroom. You have to dig up the ore and process it a few times, you have to light and heat your factories and throw prototypes at concrete. An electric car makes the same ecological impact in its making as a Ferrari, plus it uses rare metals, plus you have the batteries to dispose of. Electricity has to be generated, so will that be coal, gas, oil or nuclear?
Recently, the University of Wales undertook a serious study into the impact cars made in their manufacture. The three models which came top were the Citroen C1, Lotus Elise and Morgan Plus Four. Imagine, the bubbleheads were driving Prius when they would have been more green driving a Lotus Elise.
The energy a car uses to propel it over a lifetime is a fraction of its carbon footprint, but that does not grab the headlines. Image, alas, is more important than fact.
When it comes to global warming, I am sceptical about the part that humankind, and the motor car, has to play. What I think does not matter, most politicians are convinced and there is nothing like a scare story to keep us all in line.
On the other hand, it has generated awareness that that fossil fuels are finite and any move to lower toxic emissions is to be welcomed. We no longer have leaded petrol. Further, we are right to worry about the security of energy supply.
It is hard to credit it today, but the USA was the first country to be concerned about fuel economy and emissions. That was back in the 1960s and those measures, plus safety regulations, caused the demise of the popular British sports car. To be fair, it was the failure of British manufacturers to meet American requirements because Datsun (now Nissan) did meet requirements..
I can understand why Ferrari has issues with the proposed formula. You do not buy a Ferrari, or a Lamborghini, or an Aston Martin, to be sensible. You do not worry what she'll do to the gallon. You chose your supercar because you feel that it makes a statement about you, in the same way that you may sport a Rolex rather then a cheap watch which will record time just as well.
Ferrari is in Formula One because racing is in its DNA. Even before it bought into the company, Fiat supported Ferrari because it was an advertisement for all things Italian. Ferrari cars, and the coachbuilders which clothed them, sold the idea of Italy and so sold Fiats, Olivetti typewriters, Italian clothes, anything Italian.
A 1600cc engine is, somehow, just not Ferrari. Enzo did make an 850cc four cylinder mini-Ferrari, but thought better of it and sold the rights to an industrialist who made a 1,032cc version under the name ASA. ASA later added a couple of cylinders to make a straight-six.
Mercedes-Benz makes supercars, but they are the icing on the cake. M-B also makes the majority of the world's taxis. See TV pictures from some unfortunate place and smoking in the foreground is the wreck of a Mercedes taxi.
Until McLaren production gets under way, in a couple of months, Ferrari is alone in being an outfit which is in Formula One and which makes only supercars. Mark you, Ferrari did make 1500cc turbocharged F1 engines and they did the company no harm.
The FIA knows what manufacturers have in the pipeline and I think we should trust them. Most of us have no idea what manufacturers have up their sleeves. Fiat came from the left field with its amazing turbocharged twin.
A V6 engine was supposed to be impossible, there were too many issues about balance and vibration and then Lancia made the Aurelia in 1950. Similarly, a V10 was desirable, but unachievable. Luckily, Renault was unaware of this and, for a time, it was mandatory in Formula One to use a V10 and every engine supplier was able to comply.
In the 1500cc turbo era, some amazing power outputs were achieved, but that ended more than 20 years ago, before the Internet and when most readers of this column did not even have a home computer.
Output of up 1500 bhp was achieved, briefly, when teams made 'hand grenade' engines for qualifying. A formula requiring only 200cc fewer, while maintaining restrictions on the number of engines a driver can use in a season is a very interesting, and difficult, challenge.
Ferrari will fall into line. It remains part of Fiat, in essence, even though the paperwork has been shifted about and Fiat has made the first twin from a major manufacturer since Honda in 1962. Back then, Honda was not a major manufacturer and export of the N360 and N600 saloons did not start until 1968, By then, Honda was the world's leading maker of motorcycles, but its two-cylinder cars were considered a joke when exported to the West.
Believe me, Fiat's turbocharged twin is a serious piece of kit and I am prepared to bet that other makers have similar surprises. Jaguar has shown a concept hybrid which employs gas turbine engines to generate electricity and the turbine engine, even in competition cars, has been dead to the automotive world for more than 40 years.
We are in for an interesting time, most of us have no idea what is now possible. When there was last a turbo formula mobile phones were the size of bricks and they were simply telephones.
Mike Lawrence
mike.lawrence@pitpass.com
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